“I guess you just gotta take that first leap…huh? One night I did.”

Erykah Badu’s ‘On & On’ won her a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in 1998 and reached #12 in the Hot 100, but the neo-soul star had first tested the track on an unsuspecting audience in Brooklyn in 1995, two years before its release.

As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of Badu’s game-changing, Grammy-winning debut album Baduizm this year, the singer-songwriter has shared a video of her very first open mic performance of ‘On & On’ from 1995 – and her signature song sounds strikingly fully formed, even as she still seems to be growing into the eccentric stage performer we now know her as today.

“I guess you just gotta take that first leap…huh? One night I did,” wrote Badu on Facebook, accompanied by the caption: “Open Mic BROOKLYN MOON CAFE 1995AD #Baduizm20.” Watch the video below.

In October, it was announced that Baduizm would be coming to vinyl in its entirety for the first time – the first edition was missing interludes and the epic ‘Otherside of the Game’.