Badu earns her ovation

Toward the end of her two-hour show at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby Sunday night, Erykah Badu explained her philosophy of how individual expression leads to communal idealism: "If you can be more yourself, then we can all be more together."

For Badu, being herself comes naturally. The diva from Dallas, who emerged as a neo-soul sensation with her

Baduizm

debut in 1997, was in town to support

New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War

, her first album in five years. The disc's sociopolitical content is tipped by a cover drawing in which her trademark Afro is inhabited by all sorts of indicators of complicated modern times, from crying babies to satellite dishes to dollar signs.

Badu opened with the album's forward-thinking, funkadelic mission statement, "Amerykahn Promise." But while fronting a versatile 12-person ensemble that looked twice as big, playing in front of a mirrored backdrop, she was stylishly retro, eschewing the Angela Davis wig for a flapper hat and a strapless ruffled bubble dress.

She introduced herself as "Erykah Badu, also known as Medulla Oblongata, also known as Analog Girl in a Digital World." The backing players, including four singers and a flutist, wore gray. Badu, using a thermos and breath freshener as props, and playing air guitar and banging out polyrhythms on an electronic drum pad, commanded the stage in black.

Singing in a keening, soulful voice, Badu strategically employs Billie Holiday phrasing while avoiding the vocal excesses so common in the Mariah Carey age of oversinging. At the Tower, she toughened it up for more hard-edged tunes like the protest song "Soldier" ("To my folks in Iraqi fields / this ain't no time to kill") and "The Healer," in which she sang that "hip-hop is bigger than the government." (That same proclamation was made on T-shirts for sale in the lobby, along with "Obama for President" shirts.)

Before delivering a deliciously nuanced take on

Baduizm

's "Otherside of the Game," she took the time for a shout-out to Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, the drummer-producer of the Philadelphia hip-hop band the Roots, who was in attendance with his mother.

"Anyone who's come up under the neo-soul banner has been under the Roots' umbrella," she said, and praised Philadelphia as a place "where people don't have to look and see if somebody else likes something before they decide they like it."

The 36-year-old mother of two borrowed a cell phone from an audience member to call her grandmother and wish her a happy Mother's Day. And as an intro to the delicately jazzy "Orange Moon" she asked the women in the crowd to touch their wombs, and the guys to put their hands on their "male principals, if they're not there already."

For her encore, Badu changed into black tights and skullcap and sang "Green Eyes" while showing off her interpretative dance moves with the help of two red exercise balls. When she came to the song's final goodbye - "You can't be what I need you to, and I don't know what is up with you" - she gave one of the balls a final good-riddance kick into the crowd.

And before you knew it, Badu had followed the ball off the stage, for an extended audience-participation finale of "Bag Lady." She was particularly impressed by the vocal efforts of one male paying customer. "Get his phone number!" she ordered. She also pretended to be a talk-show host, doing a show about "audiences that spend the whole show sitting on their [rear ends]." That was enough, at last, to get her the standing ovation she so deserved.