Word: ndegeocello
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Bassist, singer, sometime hip-hopper Me'Shell NdegeOcello created a wake-up call in her first album, Plantation Lullabies, brimming with funk and flavor and attitude. Her new CD, Bitter, is more of a good-night kiss, slow, atmospheric and a bit weepy. Bitter, which features narcoleptic production by Craig Street, has carefully structured songs and cautious vocals, but it lacks NdegeOcello's edginess and verve. The songs are about breakups and betrayal, but the emotion is buried. This album feels like that uncomfortable pause in an argument when there's nothing left to say or throw...
Badu, 25, is part of a promising trend in pop music. Along with other neo-soul performers like Maxwell, Groove Theory and Me'Shell NdegeOcello, she is creating music that expands the boundaries of conventional R. and B., with lyrics that explore social issues (as Marvin Gaye's used to do), melodies that draw readily from jazz and blues, and wandering song structures that go beyond the standard verse-chorus-verse format. Hollywood has taken note. The sound track to the upcoming movie Love Jones (starring Larenz Tate) has a neo-soul theme. So far neo-soul hasn't demonstrated...
...flow will pick up over the next few weeks with three impressive neo-soul releases: seductive crooner Maxwell has an album just out called Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite; in early June singer-bassist Me'Shell NdegeOcello will come out with her second album, Peace Beyond Passion; and in July the wistfully named vocalist ambersunshower will release her debut CD, Walter T. Smith...
...NdegeOcello's Peace Beyond Passion is the most emotionally ambitious of these new albums, addressing racial, sexual and religious concerns in lyrics that are by turns inscrutable and revealing. On one song, The Way, NdegeOcello sings, "They say you're the way the light/The light is so blinding/Your followers condemn me your words used to enslave me." Her bitter words are a sharp contrast to the agreeably slick, burbling, bass-heavy groove of the music. On some of the other songs, though, one wishes NdegeOcello's music were as fiery as her lyrics...
...Various Artists, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool (GRP). The goal: to raise money for the fight against AIDS. The high concept: to match some of the most | exciting performers in hip-hop (the bands Digable Planets and Us3, bassist- rapper Me'Shell NdegeOcello and others) with some of the finest performers in jazz (including saxophonist Joshua Redman, trumpeter Donald Byrd and keyboardist Herbie Hancock) and create a benefit CD of jazz-rap songs. The result: a landmark album that brilliantly harnesses the fire of rap and the cool of jazz, transcending genres and generations...