Me'shell Ndegeocello Biography
29 August 1969, Berlin, West Germany. Introduced early on in her career by her PR machine as a female equivalent to Prince, Ndegéocello has embraced both the hip-hop and R&B markets while producing music that has grown increasingly ambitious and challenging.
Like Prince, Ndegéocello is a multi-instrumentalist, and writes, produces and plays on all her songs. Her name is Swahili, meaning "free like a bird". After a nomadic life as the child of a US forces man, her first love was art rather than the jazz skills of her father and brother. Much of her youth was spent in Washington's "go-go" scene, where at one point she was actually shot at while on stage with Little Bennie And The Masters, at the Cherry Atlantic Skating Rink. Her interest in music blossomed when her brother started playing guitar in a local band; when the bass player left his instrument lying around after rehearsal, Ndegéocello was a quick convert. At the age of 19, she left for New York "with my baby and my bass". There she joined Living Colour's Black Rock Coalition, and recorded sessions for artists of the calibre of Caron Wheeler and Steve Coleman. She was the musical director for Arrested Development's Saturday Night Live appearance, though her own demos attracted little response. Madonna subsequently stepped in, inviting her to become one of the first artists signed to her Maverick empire. A palpable maturity was revealed on Ndegéocello's 1993 debut, with a combination of acid jazz and R&B rhythms backing her beat poetry and sexually provocative stance. She gained a breakthrough hit with "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)", a provocative post-feminist statement. Despite the sexual overtones of her packaging, she was not averse to strong political statements, with material such as "Step Into The Projects" retaining a strong cutting edge, and lines such as "The white man shall forever sleep with one eye open" (from "Shoot'n Up And Gett'n High") suggesting overtones of Public Enemy. The album was produced by Bob Power, alongside guests including DJ Premier and Geri Allen. Although she attracted some criticism for espousing the corporate rebellion angle, her connections with Maverick hardly passing unobserved, there was substance and fire in the best of her work. In 1994, she had a US Top 3 hit with "Wild Night" a duet with John Mellencamp. Ndegéocello's second album, Peace Beyond Passion, was a less effective attempt at 70s retro-funk although it did include a lovely take on Bill Withers' "Who Is He (And What Is He To You)?'. A more effective change in style was apparent on 1999"s Bitter, with the stripped down sound complementing Ndegéocello's highly introspective lyrics concerning the slow breakdown of a relationship. A further three year gap between albums ensued before the release of the striking Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, on which she embraced a more hip-hop based direction and moved away from affairs of the heart to explore the problems besetting contemporary black culture. Appearing relatively quickly by Ndegéocello's standards, the following year's Comfort Woman was the artist's finest since her debut, an inspired mélange of soul, funk, reggae and rock which played out as a more positive update on the romantic entanglements of Bitter. Ndegéocello subsequently parted ways with Maverick and signed a new recording contract with Universal Records. She established a jazz group, the Spirit Music Jamia, with which she recorded her new album Dance Of The Infidel. The album was initially released in France only at the start of 2005.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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