‘Hip-hop is bigger than religion,” Erykah Badu sings on her latest album “New AmErykah, Pt. One: 4th World War,” which is released today. Ms. Badu should know. A little more than a decade ago, the singer, born Erica Wright 37 years ago today, became the reigning deity of neo-soul, a movement that did for mindless, gyrating R&B what grunge did for hair metal.

In 1997, the Dallas native released her first record, “Baduizm,” an album of jazzy soul songs that sounded like nothing else on the radio at the time. Moreover, Ms. Badu, adorned in a mile-high head wrap and draped in flowing, African-inspired wrappers, looked like no one else in possession of a recording contract. Her pinched-nose warble drew comparisons to Billie Holiday, but Ms. Badu’s mantras favoring good sense (“I picks my friends like I pick my fruit”) and her sensibility were not of the “(Hush Now), Don’t Explain” variety. Indeed, when she’d had enough of a do-nothing boyfriend who seemed to materialize only on her payday, her chart-topping advice to him was to “call ‘Tyrone.'”

The double-platinum, Grammy-winning collection and the live album that quickly followed helped to spark a movement that was, for a faction of listeners, as much about music as it was about identity politics. Layered over well-timed rim shots and lush backing vocals was a discourse that espoused black nationalism, Yoruba ritual, and ungranulated hip-hop. Ms. Badu eagerly took on the role of the high priestess tasked with delivering a sorely needed sonic balm to soul music. Her flock of fans proved faithful, heartily swallowing the wheatgrass. Soon it wasn’t unusual to look out over a multicolored crowd of concertgoers and find one’s view of the stage was partially obstructed by a sea of head wraps. The scene played out offstage as well: In Ms. Badu’s adopted Fort Greene, Brooklyn, there cropped up a veritable Mecca, where the like-minded could gather.

She followed her breakthrough three years later with the more somber but no less stirring “Mama’s Gun,” which inadvertently shined because of the residue left from the dissolution of Ms. Badu’s failed relationship with the rapper Andre 3000.

With the release today of “New AmErykah,” her first full-length album in eight years, Ms. Badu returns to a vastly changed music landscape.

The contingent of neo-soul singers who emerged when Ms. Badu did — notably Jill Scott, D’Angelo, and the troubled Lauryn Hill — has since weathered diminishing degrees of success or faded entirely from the mainstream.

So if neo-soul is dead, then Ms. Badu has wasted little time grieving. Now liberated from the weight of wearing the Egyptian ankhs and head-scarves where everyone could see them, Ms. Badu (currently sporting a Mohawk) appears to be having more fun this time around. A stream of 1970s funk and R&B (think Chaka Khan circa “Rufus”) courses through her new album, which The Sun did not get to hear in full prior to this piece, and is paired with beat-heavy hip-hop and psychedelia. On the outstanding “The Healer,” with producer Madlib at the boards, Ms. Badu in effect kills all her gods, name checking them consecutively.

There are love songs, too, including the self-affirming “Me” and the lead single, “Honey” (produced by the prodigy 9th Wonder), on which the singer asks an ambivalent prospect to stick his “pinky finger in her tea.” Over a the sticky-sweet bass line and horns, Ms. Badu playfully drenches her diction in Dallas drawl such that “everything” becomes “err-y-thing” and a “drink” becomes a “draa-nk,” with a twist of lemon.

The spacey “My People” leans on the repetition of African chanting, while “Soldier” nods to Curtis Mayfield in capturing the inner-city corner atop an airy chorus.

“New AmErykah” is intended as the first installment of multiple volumes, the second of which is tentatively slated for release this summer. So what of the ankhs, incense, and other signifiers that were so integral to Ms. Badu’s act? Well, she seems to have discovered that an artist can make love — and war.

In her upbeat Michel Gondryesque clip for “Honey,” Ms. Badu pays homage to her musical heroes, comically re-creating the covers of seminal rap albums, including Nas’s “Illmatic,” De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising,” and Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid in Full.” But she also pokes fun at herself, reprising the famous 1981 Rolling Stone cover on which Yoko Ono appeared fully clothed with a naked John Lennon. The scene is likely a reaction to the scorn that was heaped upon Ms. Badu after her breakup with the rapper Common. To some, she gave the impression of having cast off the Chicago rapper — and famously ruined his entire 2002 album — after making him over in her image, crochet pants and all. Ms. Badu is making good music on her own terms after a decade in the industry, but more important, she continues to show what can happen when one minds the soul first and the sales second.