Via NPR
Over the course of a more-than-30-year career, Meshell Ndegeocello has combined soul, funk, pop, hip-hop and jazz to create a unique body of work. Her new album is called “The Omnichord Real Book,” and rock critic Ken Tucker says it serves as a kind of summation of Ndegeocello’s lifetime of making music thus far.
Ndegeocello began her career in the Washington, D.C. area, playing go-go music, the syncopated funk offshoot, as a member of Rare Essence and other bands. In the 1990s, she was one of the first artists signed to Madonna’s Maverick Records, where she released her debut album, “Plantation Lullabies.” It’s widely considered one of the first examples of the neo soul movement. In the same decade, she hit No. 3 on the Billboard pop charts with a duet with John Mellencamp, a cover of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night,” and later had a No. 1 dance chart hit with a cover of Bill Withers’ “Who Is He (And What Is He To You)?” In 2016, her theater piece, “Can I Get A Witness? The Gospel Of James Baldwin” was performed in Manhattan. All of these works suggest that saying Ndegeocello has range is putting it mildly.