Politics & Power Quote by Erykah Badu

Erykah Badu’s line lands like a shrug that’s also a boundary: a refusal to participate in the digital bargain where convenience quietly becomes consent. The double negative and plainspoken cadence aren’t a grammatical accident; they’re a stylistic choice that mirrors oral tradition and Southern Black vernacular, grounding the sentiment in lived experience rather than tech-policy debate. She’s not arguing about “data privacy.” She’s talking about autonomy.

The first clause, “I don’t want to have nothing to do with computers,” isn’t Luddite nostalgia so much as skepticism toward systems that demand constant input: logins, profiles, receipts of the self. “Computers” stands in for the wider apparatus of tracking and sorting, where identity becomes a dataset. Then she names the real antagonist: “the government in my business.” That phrase carries generational memory - surveillance of Black communities, policing, dossiers, informants, and the mundane bureaucracies that decide who gets watched, stopped, or denied. In that context, opting out isn’t paranoia; it’s self-defense.

Badu’s persona has long traded in the tension between futurism and refusal - neo-soul as a kind of analog resistance even while borrowing cosmic aesthetics. The quote captures that contradiction: an artist steeped in modern sound who still distrusts modern infrastructure. It’s compelling because it doesn’t pretend the choice is purely individual. The subtext is that “computerization” is political, and participation can feel less like empowerment than enrollment. The line’s power is its blunt clarity: privacy isn’t a preference; it’s a line you draw before someone else draws it for you.