For extraterrestrial freaks from Lil Wayne to OutKast to George Clinton, the desire to leave earth in search of finer orbits shows a "yearning for and fantastical reclamation of an ennobling African history," according to Slate's Jonah Weiner, who wrote a piece about the "Afronaut Invasion" a couple years back. Erykah Badu is no stranger to this quest, but on "Window Seat", she brings her universe-spanning travel plans down to earth. "If anybody speak to Scotty, tell him, 'Beam me up,'" she says, her words grounded by an effortlessly organic funk. But she knows it's not that easy. "I need you to want me/ I need you to miss me," goes the other side of her inner dialogue, the side that needs more than a solitary seat on a plane to get by. The song ends ambivalent, somewhere between Dallas and Mars. Badu can't escape gravity, but she can think about it.

[from New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh); out now on Universal Motown]