"Didn't Cha Know" (Erykah Badu)

Back in 2000, there were three albums that I absolutely wore out: D'Angelo's Voodoo, Common's Like Water for Chocolate, and Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun.  It wasn't until I really scrutinized the liner notes of each disc that I realized all three were recorded simultaneously by the same collective of musicians, the "Soulaquarians": Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, James Poyser, Roy Hargrove, the late James "J Dilla" Yancey...  Those names kept showing up in the credits, track after track—not unlike how, if you look at the credits of any great track put out by Stax or Motown in the 60s, you'll find the same players and composers, over and over.  Only, instead of the Soulaquarians having a particular "sound" (like, you can instantly recognize a vintage Motown record just by the way the drums and rhythm section sound), they were more about an approach to making music.  If you listen to any of the aforementioned albums, there's this aura of creativity that surrounds each one.  It's as if nothing was off limits, all ideas and inspirations were valid, and everyone shared the same vast musical vocabulary, which ranged from the Baroque to the Boogie Down Bronx.  The result was daring, yet accessible, music with richness and depth.  
It's timeless stuff.
One of my favorite Soulaquarians collaborations of that period is "Didn't Cha Know" off Badu's Mama's Gun.  The track came about after Common (a.k.a. Lonnie Lynn, Jr.) introduced Badu to DJ/producer J Dilla.  She and Dilla were hanging out at his basement studio in Detroit, talking music and getting to know each other, when he told her to go pick any album out of his enormous library of vinyl records.
As Badu reminisced to Fader magazine in 2006, "I’m looking through these organized, tightly packed crates, and I just pulled out one record, and the artist was Tarika Blue.  I liked that name."
The moment she heard the opening track on the album, a laid-back jazz fusion piece called "Dreamflower," she knew it was the perfect foundation for a new track with Dilla.
In true Dilla fashion, the sample on "Didn't Cha Know" is subtle and tasteful.  In fact, it doesn't smack you in the face that it's a sample at all; it feels completely organic.  Which is why Badu's lyrics and vocals mesh so well with it.  It's almost as if that melody was always destined to dovetail with her introspective poetry about being human and making mistakes but never doubting her direction in life.
Incidentally, it's a song that spoke to me when I decided to change career paths after college.  I kept getting doors slammed in my face by an industry that I quickly grew to despise.  When I finally walked away from it and took an unpaid internship at a small magazine in late 2000, I was kind of beating myself up about the choices I'd made up to that point.  But then this song came along at the right time and convinced me that being regretful about the past wasn't doing anything for me in the present.  I didn't know exactly where my path was going to lead, but I knew I was on the right track.
I still go to this song any time I need to shake off self doubt.