The former acid jazz icon ventures on an airy framework of jazz, funk and soul.
There was a time in the ’90s when she was considered the Grace Jones of the acid jazz wave of the time. Unnoticed by the wider public, Meshell Ndegeocello has since proven that she is much more than that, producing eleven albums not dogmatically committed to jazz, while never creating the same work twice.
“I shy away from the word jazz, it’s such an important term,” she says of all things now that she’s releasing it for the first time on the jazz label Blue Note: an 18-track double album that not only includes umpteen jazz protagonists like Josh Johnson or Julius Rodriguez, but also a crazy genre mix of the likes of Joan As Policewoman or Jeff Parker (Tortoise).
Ndegeocello, who has already played with Prince, opens up a wide field beyond the usual chord progressions between jazz, soul and funk. Despite the remarkable ensemble, a lot seems unfinished, nothing overloaded or pasted over. In the funk-trained pieces like “Thank You For My Life” she commemorates Sly Stone without a trace of dust, while the lead single “Virgo” gets a rich synth bass underpinned. And it doesn’t take more than her gently murmuring soul voice and her mole-deep rumbling bass voice to mark the fundamentally different pieces with their scent. It’s remarkable how modern something can sound that doesn’t give a damn about the zeitgeist.
Author: Michael Prenner