Erykah Badu is bringing her fall tour home after all — just not in the way fans expected. Spotify announced Tuesday that the Dallas-born singer will headline the inaugural RNB X festival on November 1 at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving, filling a hole left when her fall 2026 tour with The Alchemist skipped a Dallas-area stop entirely.
The one-day festival marks Spotify's first standalone R&B concert event and the largest live expression of its flagship RNB X playlist brand to date, according to The Dallas Observer. Badu will co-headline alongside H.E.R., whose appearance marks a rare festival headlining slot for the multi-Grammy winner after several years away from solo touring, as noted by CultureMap Dallas. H.E.R.'s debut album, *Back of My Mind*, hit No. 1 on Billboard's R&B album chart back in 2021.
Badu's fall tour with The Alchemist is titled Before the World Blows, and it initially listed 13 North American cities featuring De La Soul and Smino — but no Dallas-area date, according to a Facebook announcement from Badu. The omission left local fans without a confirmed hometown stop, even as Badu, per the Observer's reporting, considers herself a live performer first and foremost. She also has a hometown birthday show that has been on hiatus for two years, the outlet notes.
A New Album Fuels the Live Show
The Irving date arrives just weeks after Badu released her first studio LP in 16 years. She and producer The Alchemist put out the 16-track collaborative album *Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment* on August 28, according to Complex, which reports the project was recorded over 18 months across Dallas and Los Angeles. The RNB X festival stop gives Badu a live platform to perform material from that record in her hometown market.
The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory is an 87,742-square-foot venue that opened in 2017 with a convertible design, capable of shifting between a 2,500-capacity intimate theater, a 4,000-seat indoor theater, and an 8,000-person open-air amphitheater, according to Live Nation Special Events. That flexibility has made the Irving complex a regular stop for major R&B acts — the same venue recently hosted a scheduled Jill Scott concert before the singer postponed her Sugar Land and Dallas shows after testing positive for COVID-19, as Hoodline reported.
Rising Artists Join the Bill
Rounding out the RNB X lineup are rising performers kwn, Destin Conrad and Jai'Len Josey, each selected through Spotify's Artists to Watch and Fresh Finds programs. Opening the show is rjtheweirdo, a Dallas-based artist featured as a Fresh Finds Favorite, according to a Spotify newsroom announcement. Spotify's Brandon Payano, the platform's lead of R&B artist partnerships, said RNB X Live in Dallas brings artists and fans together for powerful live R&B experiences.
Selected performances from the festival will be recorded and published as part of the Spotify Live video series, per reporting from The Dallas Observer, extending the event's reach well beyond the Irving crowd. RNB X itself is billed as Spotify's flagship R&B-centered live concert experience, built around bringing established artists together with emerging ones. The festival follows earlier regional RNB X events, including the RNB X Live: The UK Sound showcases in San Francisco and New York in August 2025 and an RNB X After Hours event in Washington, D.C.
How to Get Tickets
Pre-sale tickets are already available to eligible Spotify Top Fans in the Dallas area, with a Live Nation member presale following Wednesday. General admission tickets go on sale to the public September 11 at noon Central Time through Ticketmaster, with an eight-ticket limit per order.
The Irving show gives North Texas fans a chance to see Badu live for the first time since December 2025, when she staged a concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of her 2000 album *Mama's Gun*, according to CultureMap Dallas. Whether Badu eventually adds a full standalone Dallas tour stop for the Before the World Blows cycle, or whether the RNB X festival ends up serving as her main North Texas appearance this cycle, remains an open question the Observer's reporting leaves unresolved.
