Erykah Badu at the 2017 Soul Train Awards on Nov. 5, 2017, in Las Vegas (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET)

Erykah Badu’s new year certainly started off on an interesting note after she was pulled over by cops in Dallas for no reason other than that the officers wanted to “say hi.”


The multitalented singer-songwriter posted a video to Instagram on New Year’s Eve captioned, “WTF BABYLON!! HAPPY NEW YEAREZZZZ!”

In the video, Badu speaks to the camera as red and blue lights are seen flashing behind her.


“Why are you pulling me over?” she asks the officers, panning the camera out of her car window.

“Because I wanted to say hi,” the officer (who is black) says, laughing.

Badu stares into the camera, hand to her face. You know that look your mom gives you when she’s completely done with you? It kind of looked like that.

“Hi,” Badu deadpans.

“Is this happening?” the officer is heard saying in the background, presumably to his colleague.


Badu bursts out laughing.

Badu took the situation in stride, with good humor, but commenters on her Instagram had widely varying reactions to the incident. Whereas some enjoyed it and loved that the cops were so starstruck, others were unnerved, calling the officers’ actions “unprofessional.”


“Can’t blame ’em,” one commenter quipped.

“Oh, my God!! I was scared for a moment till he said he wanted to say hi,” another commenter said.


Yet others were unimpressed.

“I would have been pissed,” one person wrote.

“SMH ... abuse of power at its finest,” another wrote.