Unbowed By Badu Blowup, Coyne, Lips Aim For Record

“If you had to really consider all this in the beginning, you just simply wouldn’t want to do it,” Coyne said in a phone interview last week. “Luckily, it occurs to you when you get closer and closer. I think it’s a little bit like having a baby. At the beginning of it is a lot of fun, but by the time it’s here, really it’s too late to turn back.”

That analogy isn’t too far off the mark when it comes to describing the row between Badu and Coyne, either. Things seemed to be going great until the Lips released the video for “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face, their “Heady Fwends” record store day collaboration, earlier this month. The Lips eventually retracted the video after Badu accused the group of releasing it without her approval.

In the video Badu sits apparently naked in a tub, then later her sister Nayrok mucks about in a milky white substance and glitter. The disagreement spilled over on Twitter where Badu invited Coyne to kiss her “glittery” posterior and Coyne responded with a picture of himself with lips covered in glitter.

Coyne stopped short of saying Badu’s reaction was contrived, but said she and her management certainly knew what was going down as they spent two days filming. He says her opinion changed when “easily riled” members of her audience objected.

“This is not her fault. It’s just the nature of the way Twitter works,” Coyne said. “Her fans can just sometimes lash out and be as mean as they want to be, which I think is interesting. That’s the thing about Twitter – there’s no referee, you know.”

Coyne doesn’t believe anything else will come of the episode.

“Luckily I’m doing so many things I don’t have too much time to worry about it,” Coyne said. “And a lot of people I run into now loved, loved that video and I think it’s true to what Erykah and I, in the beginning at least, thought we were going to show the world.”