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SPIN
Brian Keizer
December 1993
Just when it seemed Madonna's Maverick label was a publicity stunt to showcase product as unimaginative and dirivative as the Material Girl's Video Music Awards song and dance, along comes Meshell Ndegeocello (pronounced "en-day-gay-oh-chello"). Her debut, Plantation Lullabies, is a bodacious, invigorating, self-assured suite of songs that accent the best elements of soul, funk, jazz, and their aggro-meltdown in hip hop's style wars.
Ndegeocello, 24, has logged considerable time as a bassist with an impressive list of jazz and funk heavies, and was one of the few auditioned to fill the bass void in Living Colour, since sealed up by Doug Wimbush. She wrote, arranged, and played piano, keyboard, bass, guitar, and drums on her debut, occasionally allowing a sideman—Joshua Redman, Geri Allen, or DJ Premier of Gang Starr—to elevate the sparkling arrangements of sweet soul, reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield's melodic languor driven by Bootsy Collins' bass thump. Her voice, a bell-like alto, sets up her rap forays, a deft interweaving of the long-metered funk cant of Ntozake Shange's poetics and simpler, clipped rhymes wrapped around hard grooves.
When Ndegeocello says "back in the day," it's the '60s and '70s she's referencing, and her musical prowess provides a retro-aural living room free of canned corn or kulchur theory. "Sit back, relax, listen to the eight-track/ I'll dig you like an old soul record," she raps on "I'm Diggin' You (Like An Old Soul Record)." The plantations of the title are not evocations of some long-gone slave nobility updated with hip-hop style, but the wage-slave pits, projects, and reservations of the present-day Pan-African world. "Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High" is a clear-eyed reality play sans melodrama that only the '90s street gravity between Curtis Mayfield's "Freddy's Dead," and Gil Scott Heron's "Angel Dust," and the cerebral and emotional apprehension of the Potter's Fields of "dead homiez" could sustain. Anger and nihilism poor forth, and no contrived positivism or cartoon head-bashings come to the rescue.
The quiet storminess of tunes such as "Dred Loc," "Call Me," and "Outside Your Door" seem like permissible and deserved sanctuary from the unrelenting urban exteriors, twilight rhapsodies for the weary and pissed off. Ndegeocello comprehends why Stevie Wonder is the perennial modern day soul standard-bearer, and when she goes gently into the inscrutable night slumber, it's with Wonder's sublime grace. This is the kind of deep soul we need in this decade of disintegration.
PHILADELPHIA TRIBUNE
January 4, 1994
People, places and things to watch in 1994: Meshell Ndegeocello. The protegé of raunchy Madonna proves that she has one thing that her mentor doesn't—talent. A credit to Meshell as well is that you can't quite pin her sound down to R&B, dance, or rock so she'll be able to grasp all of those markets. Her album is all that!!
CHARLOTTE OBSERVER
Langston Wertz, Jr. & Mark Price
January 7, 1994
* * * *
We can't give an album more than a four-star rating, but here is one deserving of five. Ndegeocello delivers some whoppingly realistic views of male-female relationships and the black struggle in America that are equally frank (you can tell by the title). And she does all this behind some ultra-funky tracks featuring some very fly bass riffs, the likes of which have not been heard before in rap (or most anywhere else).
The music is live—real instruments—and Ndegeocello's approach is new. The entry single, "Dred Loc," is almost reggae in nature, with a haunting groove that is sure to gain popularity with airplay. (Hear us, WPEG?)
Ndegeocello spends much of this debut album talking about how badly sisters have things, and how they shouldn't take it anymore. She raps that sisters shouldn't be beaten, pushed around or cursed at anymore. And she's right.
Her album is right, too.
As they say on the streets, it's all that.
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN
Caroline Sullivan
October 22, 1993
The first female signing to Madonna's Maverick label is more intriguing than the average American rapstress. Her cool, solemn rhyming style is more evocative of Nina Simone than of other hip hoppers. Around half of the 13 songs proselytise about the African-American experience; the rest are straightforward love epistles. The common links are the unruffled soul arrangements (producer David Gamson's association with Luther Vandross is plain here) and Ndegeocello's reflective voice. Whether she's addressing black pride, eg "Soul On Ice" ("We've been indoctrinated and convinced by the white racist standard of beauty") or something baser, as in "Picture Show" ("The way you eat your cereal / So cute reading Shakespeare in your birthday suit"), the sense of calm contemplation never wavers. This is an album that will only improve over time.
UTNE READER
J. Poet
May/June 1994
Female producers are rare in the music business; rarer still are women who sing/write/produce and play all the instruments on their debut albums; rarest of all is an artist with something new to say and a unique way of saying it. Ndegeocello ("free like a bird" in Swahili) takes flight with a collection that marries a melange of hip-hop, jazz, pop, and R&B to a batch of catchy melodies and streetwise Afrocentric lyrics that celebrate the highs and lows of ghetto life in America.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Greg Kot
January 27, 1994
* * *
For her bass-playing alone, this 24-year-old newcomer would be worthy of attention. But Plantation Lullabies also reveals an artistic vision that, if not quite fully formed, announces a major new voice in the making. Meshell's bass weaves through simmering drum tracks and syncopated piano, evoking the lighter moments of the '70s jazz-funk; Herbie Hancock, Les McCann, et al. Her insinuating vocals are as much sung as rapped, making consciousness-raising seem sensual and vice-versa. This holistic approach to the African-American experience seems designed to disrupt as much as seduce, to challenge as much as uplift, and for much of this album it succeeds.
USA TODAY
James T. Jones, IV
December 28, 1993
Half-rapping, half-talking, this singer/bassist/producer/keyboardist from Washington, D.C., spins fiercely Afrocentric tales of love and inner-city life over live in-studio funk-jazz instrumentation that recalls Gil Scott-Heron, while her indictments of racism bring to mind the Last Poets.
OREGONIAN
Marty Hughley
December 26, 1993
The first few releases from Madonna's new boutique label were ugly strikes, but with the debut of this 24-year-old singer, rapper and multi-instrumentalist, Maverick has whacked one right out of the park. Seamlessly blending funk, hip-hop, soul and jazz influences, Ndegeocello (that's "n-DAY-gay-O-CHELLO") addresses racial and sexual politics with dead-eye insights and unabashed opinions. She can get annoyingly dogmatic (what's the difference between lambasting black men who date white women and any white bigot's diatribe against "race-mixing"?). But most of this album is a thought-provoking tour-de-force.
PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
Chuck Arnold
November 30, 1993
* * * *
Here beginneth the lesson: You pronounce her last name "N-Day-Gay-O-Chello." It's Swahili for "free like a bird."
You may never get it right, but you will never forget the street knowledge she drops on her funkadelic debut album, Plantation Lullabies. It smacks you upside the head, kicks you in the booty, and rubs you down you know where, all without wasting a beat.
Meshell is a rapper, singer, musician and poet who defies crude classification. But I guess you could call her music alternative hip-hop or jazz-funk or beat poetry or superfly soul. Take your pick—it's all basic black.
Don't be surprised if you get picked on along this fantastic ghetto voyage, though. Meshell gives it to sisters who front like they've got a man on "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)," brothers who dig on white women on "Soul on Ice" and buppies who can't relate to their brothers and sisters in the 'hood on "Step into the Projects."
But Meshell is not an angry black woman who's over love in all its colors. On a black (as in dark) love song like "Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High" and a silly one like "Dred Loc," she shows she still believes in romance amidst her race. She just ain't down with no whitewashed fantasy.
Here endeth the lesson.
NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS
Traci Morris
November 13, 1993
Meshell Ndegeocello's debut album, Plantation Lullabies, deserves the positive attention it's been getting. It offers a rich array of reminiscence, political commentary, sensuality and compelling music. Drawing strongly from funk, jazz and their hip hop offspring, the record is a groovy one which manages to span generational tastes.
A formidable electric bassist, Ndegeocello also displays her nimble fingers on keyboards. Rooted in '60s and '70s funk, best expressed in the cut "I'm Digging You (Like an Old Soul Record)," Meshell elicits a nostalgia for times when strong positive music was the rule of the day.
Vocally, Meshell is a sensuous blend like a jazzy Odetta with gangster rapper inflections. The album progresses from the abstract and ethereal beginning with the title cut and untitled, to the practical and profane with "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" and "Shoot'n Up And Gett'n High," which could be considered the 1993 companion to Mayfield's Freddie's Dead in the microcosm of a racist world.
Pointed social and political commentary is most strongly conveyed in Ndegeocello's musical approach. Moody, funky, progressive with interesting twists, turns, breaks and bridges.
Lyrical gems also sparkle throughout the record most notably on "Soul on Ice" with great lines: "Does your White woman go better with your Brooks Brothers suit?/ You let the sisters go by/ Illusions of her virginal White beauty dancing in your head/ Soul on Ice/ You want blond-haired, blue-eyed soul, snow-white passion without the hotcomb."
For the most part, however, Meshell's passion gets very personal. In "Dred Loc," the album's first single, the theme is the politics of love: "In the land where life began stands a man/ One of nature his head held high/ he never questions why/ together we make the fruit of life, so I love him and treat him right, rest your weary head and let me run my fingers through your dreds."
Ndegeocello addresses love as the ultimate goal. Whether it's love for one's community or a companion, it's about connecting, bonding. In "Step Into the Projects," she asks you to walk a mile in her shoes. She infuses universal sensibilities applicable for any woman or man.
Some rappers could catch a hint or two here not only about not being bitches and tricks, but alluding to love in more than purely sexual terms. Meshell describes urban bonding where: "Project aristocrats gather..." as seamlessly and blithely as the song's sax. On a more gutsy level, however, "Sweet Love" gets to the point": "Let me make sweet love to you, baby. I'm so all alone, hey."
Despite the sexual undertones, urban edge and lonesome melancholy asides, Meshell conveys demureness, innocence and optimism in a utopian love-filled world. As she states in "Picture Show": I'm in the mood for love/ I'm just a hopeless romantic/ Hopelessly in love with you/ I want to hold your hand take you to a picture show."
Musician/singer/song writer Meshell Ndegeocello first attracted attention as the bass player for Mark and Scott Batson's (aka Kundalini and Kwabena) group Get Set V.O.P. when the band emerged from the Howard University campus in 1989. Ndegeocello is featured on the group's newly released debut album.
As a performer, Meshell projects a take-control attitude, commanding respect with a strong bandleader presence, crop tops spotlighting flexed abs and a short, natural coiffure. Her infectious, haughty grin, big innocent eyes and demure vulnerability belie her "hardrock" facade.
Being a Black woman bass player in a male-oriented business probably has a lot to do with that effective, tough exterior. Her artistic soul flows through it, however, creating an atmosphere of dance and romance live and on wax.
SLANT
Sal Cinquemani
2001
* * * * ½
Before Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, rapper/singer Meshell Ndegeocello injected hip-hop with the adrenaline of Alternative; organic soul humming with the politics of sex and "black-on-black love." A significant influence on Madonna (her boss at Maverick), Ndegeocello's debut, Plantation Lullabies, is the quintessential hip-hop album, mixing the soul of Sly Stone and the funk of James Brown with the pop sensibilities of Prince and the grace of Lena Horne. The album's lead single, "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" was the most unlikely of hits with the most unlikely of pop hooks: "Boyfriend, boyfriend/Yes I had your boyfriend." If anyone had ever doubted that the Civil Rights Movement was still alive and necessary, Plantation Lullabies exists to prove them otherwise. "Soul On Ice" bitterly challenges the motivations of interracial coupling: "You no longer burn for the motherland brown skin/You want blonde-haired, blue-eyed soul." She scratches at the surface of a culture defined by a capitalistic (read: white) standard of beauty on the track "Shoot'n Up & Gett'n High." Her warning is filled with both remorse and hostility: "The white man shall forever sleep with one eye open." Drugs provide her clichéd escape and, ultimately, her salvation ("We both found God when he O.D.'d"). While much of the album is a work of young rage, it's the platform from which Ndegeocello has evolved and defied the bounds of hip-hop.
THE IRISH TIMES
November 26, 1993
Meshell is Madonna's great black hope for her Maverick label, a project which has so far failed to set the world alight. A 24-year-old beat poet, Meshell has tagged herself a heart broken revolutionary playing hip-hop-Lullabies, then, is the sound of one woman's protest, a very Nineties take on Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets styled bursts of anger and frustration. But whereas they concentrated on social and political agendas, Meshell prefers to battle with the cut and thrust of human relationships of all sorts.
So if "I'm Digging You (Like An Old Soul Record)" is her comfy, slinky paean to the pleasures of black-on-black love, "If That's Your Boyfriend He Wasn't Last Night)" is the exact opposite. It's catty and bitchy, a fem-rap equivalent of gangsta-rap's tuff catcalls and taus, with Meshell the one who's shouting harder and louder than the rest. Besides great titles, Meshell always has a grip on the essence of what great soul is about. If the tracks do veer in a couple of musical directions, her great purring voice is always there to lock them back into place. Meshell claims her next album will be "a danceable rock'n'roll album about God, sexuality and lies". If it's anything like this one, it will be well worth the wait.
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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Marisa Fox
October 23, 1993
Grade: B+
The organic funk grooves, live drums, piano, flute, and other jazz flourishing under a laid-back beat-poet vibe couldn't be more trendy. So it's no wonder that Madonna signed this woman to her label. But guess what? Despite an un-original voice shaped by pre-hip-hop rappers like Gil Scott-Heron and lyrics that can run to cliché, Meshell delivers her cool cocktail talk with a winning bluesy resignation.
VIBE
Greg Tate
1993
This is the future of funk. Funk like it was back in the day, 'black and conscious' in Meshell's memory. A loving cup flowing over with clavinet ear candy, 10-inch bass lines and Wah-Wah Watson guitar strokes. Not to mention the topical lyrics: Her songs funk with race, sex, drugs, unrequited lust, and the tragedy of the black man.
TIME
Christopher John Farley
February 7, 1994
Grade: B
Literate, smart music about black life, like a Terry McMillan book set to a beat.
ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION
Sonia Murray
November 13, 1993
If Grace Jones' sensuality, wickedly amusing personality and vocal strength were put in the hands of a great music marketer, the result would sound a lot like Plantation Lullabies.
This formula is concurrent with a lot of recent rap releases—coffeehouse poetry over your favorite jazz records—but Ndegeocello's bluesy/hip-hop delivery is what makes it not only palatable, but endearing. While the De La Souls and Tribe Called Quests in that category create (very well, mind you) vibes for others to get into, she makes each song (especially "Call Me" and "Outside Your Door") seem like a personal experience she's sharing. You can't help but relate, and almost abashedly nod along to her sometimes woeful pleas.
And, guess whose label it's on? The great one-woman-marketer herself, Madonna.
ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION
Sonia Murray
November 26, 1993
Something for peace of mind, body and soul. Sit back, relax and listen to the eight-track soul driven by one of the most prolific beat poets since Prince. Speaking of which, isn't that her on drums, bass, background vocals and keyboards too?
ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION
Sonia Murray
December 25, 1993
Album of the Year
Rap, R&B, funk, almost any urban category could claim her; but anyone with an ear for talent unheard of since Prince, can embrace her.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Robert Hilburn
November 28, 1993
The husky command in the voice and the sharp, unpredictable twists in the jazz 'n' funk arrangements may be what first catch your attention in this debut album, but the ambition and daring of the key songs about sexual and social politics are what suggest that this 25-year-old New Yorker could be a major figure. "I'm Diggin' You (Like an Old Soul Record)" isn't just about a romantic interlude—it's a salute to the Afro-American solidarity of the '60s. Much to admire.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Robert Hilburn
December 25, 1993
Here's proof an artist's own label can be more than an ego massage. A tip of the hat to Madonna for finding this 25-year-old New Yorker who, in this deftly crafted jazz 'n' funk piece, celebrates '60s Afro-American solidarity in the context of a sexy love song.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Robert Hilburn
February 13, 1994
This 25-year-old New Yorker, whose musical influences are based in jazz and soul, is one of the most captivating arrivals of the '90s. "I'm Diggin' You (Like an Old Soul Record)" is as artful and sophisticated as "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night") is playful and sly.
WASHINGTON POST
Richard Harrington
December 26, 1993
Oxon Hill's Michelle Johnson has recast herself in a Princelike studio mold—she plays most of the instruments here—with a new name that bespeaks her obsession with sexual and racial identity, as well as the search for honest partnership. This is soul-funk that's as challenging as it is mesmerizing.
WASHINGTON POST
Mike Joyce
November 21, 1993
Several Washington-bred acts have recently released recordings that embrace rap, hip-hop and nostalgic soul harmonies, but none is more provocative, poetic and unpredictable than Meshell Ndegeocello's Plantation Lullabies.
Ndegeocello (pronounced "en-day-oh-chello") has been the subject of a lot of hype ever since Madonna asked her to record for the fledgling Maverick. "Madonna's Great Black Hope" shouted one headline; "In Bed With Madonna" whispered another.
Ndegeocello grew up in the Washington area. She attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and Howard University and participated in the city's go-go scene in the late '80s, playing with Little Bennie and the Masters and Rare Essence. In 1990, she won three "Wammies" before moving to New York, where, eventually, she attracted Madonna's notice.
As a vocalist and a musician - she plays a wide variety of instruments on the album, though she's primarily a bassist - Ndegeocello is wed to the rhythms of hip-hop, infatuated with the freedom of jazz and a sucker for Curtis Mayfield-like soul. Yet she's careful to make sure that her lyrics, whether pointed or poignant, contentious or consoling, righteous or self-righteous, get the emphasis they deserve. She considers herself a modern-day griot, after all, an urban storyteller, a tradition-bearer, so everything else on the album is subordinate to her words, including the deep grooves colorfully augmented by saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Geri Allen and guitarist "Wah Wah" Watson.
To say that Ndegeocello views the world from the perspective of a young African American woman would be sorely understating the case; her Afrocentrism is evident throughout the album. But just as her voice, a dark and supple alto, holds surprises as it gracefully moves between melodies and recitations, so too do her songs, which are informed by a curious mixture of anger, pride, rebellion, romance and playfulness.
On "Soul on Ice," she scolds black men who pursue white women: "You let the sisters go by/ we've been indoctrinated and convinced by the white racist standard of beauty/ excuse me, does your white woman go better with your Brooks Brothers suit."
On the poem "Untitled," she cuts to the bone of a love affair of another complexion: "Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind/ her features are broad and striking/ she cradles her body with her large hands/ her fingers stretching endlessly into his world of pain."
On "Shoot'n Up And Gettin' High," she conjures the despair and fatalism she feels is produced by a racist society, a feeling of "living in the midst of genocide," where shooting heroin is seen by some as a means of coping.
At other times, however, Ndegeocello loses herself entirely in the sultry refrains of unabashed and comparatively uncomplicated love songs, or tosses in a tune as totally unexpected and seemingly uncharacteristic as "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)." She delivers that lyric coldly, as if it were a schoolyard taunt: "Got what I wanted and the feeling was right/ if that's your boyfriend he wasn't last night/ mad sex and when we're through/ I really had no problem acting like I don't know you."
Small wonder Ndegeocello caught Madonna's ear, but it's clearly her more substantial and outspoken songs that make Plantation Lullabies one of the year's most intriguing and often unsettling pop releases.
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Rick Mitchell
November 28, 1993
* * * ½
Ndegeocello is a young singer, rapper and bassist who has worked with jazz saxophonist Steve Coleman, the rap group Arrested Development and the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra.
On Plantation Lullabies, her solo debut, she is joined by a stellar cast of guest musicians, including saxophonist Joshua Redman, keyboardist Geri Allen, guitarist Wah-Wah Watson and drummer/producer David Gamson. Ndegeocello handles all the voices herself and plays most of the instruments.
Her vocal style is a musically creative combination of singing and rapping. She can be as sultry as Nina Simone on "Picture Show" and "Sweet Love" and as sassy as Roxanne Shante on "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)."
Ndegeocello's songs combine the personal and the political in a potentially controversial manner. "Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High" appears to excuse drug abuse as the inevitable consequence of social oppression, while "Soul on Ice" casts a cold eye on black men who desire white women.
But even if you differ with her viewpoint, Ndegeocello's lyrics are never less than intelligent and provocative, which is more than can be said of many rappers who deliberately court controversy. And she's also capable of expressing mature tenderness, as on "I'm Diggin' You (Like an Old Soul Record)" and "Step Into the Projects."
Plantation Lullabies is one of the year's more promising pop/hip-hop debuts.
LONDON TIMES
David Toop
September 10, 1993
The last woman to make a big splash in the jazz fusion field was Patrice Rushen in the early Eighties. Since then, there has not been much more than flautist Bobbi Humphry and Gail Anne Dorsey.
Meshell Ndegeocello, however, is very much a woman of the Nineties. Her name, part Swahili, demonstrates that fact, even before we listen to the music. She is a multi-instrumentalist and rapper who delivers Afrocentric beatnik lyrics and Curtis Mayfield references with a casual aplomb that Madonna may learn to envy.
The customary take on hip-hop and jazz is that the fusion is not so much fused as inflated from the perfunctory borrowing of a few sample loops purloined from the great vinyl archive of jazz history. On compact discs, acts such as The Pharcyde and Meshell are digging deeper. The only question about their explorations concerns how far they can go live, since this is where jazz should expand, rather than shrivel in the depressing manner of live rap.
On the spot observers of Meshell's performances at small New York clubs have reported bohemian outbreaks of poetry reading alongside dynamic work from the future star herself on vocals, bass, piano and guitar. She can also write a potential hit. After Wynton Marsalis and his stifling curatorial strictness, the expansive, rough and ready retro-futurism of Meshell's debut album, Planation Lullabies, feels like a wind of change.
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Cary Darling
November 19, 1993
Riot grrrls may have been put on the back burner by audiences hungry for the next batch of pop-culture junk food, but that doesn't mean there aren't some angry rock women out there demanding attention. England's P.J. Harvey came out of the gate with a blast of righteous anger, and now there's Meshell Ndegeocello—an Afrocentric, bisexual feminist—who raises the stakes considerably.
Her lyrical stance is confrontational, if rather predictable. As could be expected, she talks about war and sexism (guess what, she's against 'em) and, in perfect Afrocentric fashion, questions the basis for many interracial relationships. It's not what she says that's as earth-shaking (all of this has been said before by female rappers) as how she says it.
Instead of turning out another blast of urban rap, Ndegeocello whips up an intoxicating blend of hip-hop, R&B, jazz and rock—shot through with a dash of urban sophistication. To top it off, Ndegeocello co-produced the album and played many of the instruments.
The result is what you might get if Sade, Grace Jones, Prince, Queen Latifah and Soul II Soul got together for a collaboration, though she's not aping any of them.
Such tracks as "I'm Diggin' You (Like an Old Soul Record)" and "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" and "Picture Show" make for mesmerizing pop. Ndegeocello is a major discovery.
THE RECORD
Barbara Jaeger
December 4, 1994
Classy and sassy. That's Meshell Ndegeocello, who floats her sexy voice over a solid blend of soul, jazz, and hip-hop.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Thor Christensen
June 10, 1999
Back then, she was so politically minded. She's still very political, but she's so astute. She's a really bright, bright girl. She expresses herself in a very good way. She's so funky. She has soul in the truest sense. And she's another fusionist.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Charles Shaar Murray
February 12, 1994
Fortunately, the singer/songwriter category also stretches to include a charismatic oddball like Meshell Ndegeocello, whose debut album—which slipped surreptitiously into the shops late last year—is now reactivated to coincide with a recent visit here. Her ancillary skills as multi-instrumentalist (mainly bass and keyboards, both of which she plays
superbly) enable her to fuse jazz, soul and hip-hop into a miraculously unlikely idiom with no real precedent this side of Stevie Wonder. Sardonic and sensual, muscular and musicianly, aphrodisiac and Afrocentric, Ndegeocello makes the name of her record company—Maverick—seem like a personal description. Expect to be hearing a lot of her splendidly bitchy single "If He's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)."
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Robert Hilburn
July 2, 1994
Meshell Ndegeocello's "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)." A tale of infidelity that is classic both for its sensual beat and for the way Ndegeocello puts down everybody involved in the triangle.
THE ADVOCATE
Peter Galvin
October 19, 1993
Click here to read a review that has very little to do with the music.
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ROLLING STONE
Elysa Gardner
November 11, 1993
* * * ½
Pop music has traditionally been a man's world, but it would be nothing without the contributions of strong, outspoken women. Unfortunately, some of today's post-feminist wave makers have confused empowerment with imitation, mimicking the bravado of rock and rap's baddest boys. In their infamous song "Fast and Frightening," the grrrl group L7 recently presented a heroine who had so much clit she don't need no ball." Well, who said she needed balls in the first place?
Meshell Ndegeocello possesses a confident, intelligent sexuality that's more potent than any crotch-grabbing shtick. On her debut album, Plantation Lullabies, she alternates singing and rapping with a sensuous ease; her style is all mellow, majestic cool. A one-woman band who plays supple guitar and keyboards and superb bass (her primary instrument), Ndegeocello concocts a warm yet decidedly urban olio of R&B textures in relaying her tales of romantic obsession and social outrage. Ballads such as "Outside Your Door" and the reggae-laced "Sweet Love" use quiet-storm arrangements to capture the slow burn of unrequited love. More sobering numbers such as "Soul on Ice" and "Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High," on which the singer denounces black men who pursue white women, offset funky rhythms with sophisticated jazz colorings.
Most striking, perhaps, is Ndegeocello's voice, a darkly compelling alto that contains - both in its tone and its dignified emotiveness - shades of the legendary Nina Simone. It's a voice that lends emphasis and authority to Ndegeocello's lyrics - and makes it difficult to ignore those occasions when her Afrocentrism becomes overzealous. Her basic point in "Soul on Ice" - that African Americans have "been indoctrinated and convinced by the white, racist standard of beauty" - is well-taken. But when the singer sneers about the inferiority of "blond-haired, blue-eyed/snow-white passion," her scorn borders on racism. More often, though, Ndegeocello's demands that her brothers and sisters unite against oppression are distinguished by reason, and they offer eloquent proof that classiness can be just as gripping as crassness.
BILLBOARD
Outside Your Door
June 11, 1994
* Critic's Choice
Follow-up to "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" is a languid pop/R&B rhythm ballad that showcases artist's talent as a hip-hop chanteuse. The chorus slowly seeps into the brain as the spoken verses sooth and caress the senses. Warm, smart entry is raw enough to work at top 40 street level, but complex enough to appeal at adult-oriented R&B stations.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)
Chris Willman
March 27, 1994
Another video on the slightly experimental side: Director Jean-Baptiste Mondino has taken Meshell's funky R&B declaration of infidelity and overlaid it with actress-models speaking directly into the camera, over the track and even, in a lot of cases, over the lyrics. The disjointed close-up comments from the women on screen come in a rush: "I feel like such an ass." "I am a very jealous person. I don't like other women." "Once you have a child, suicide is no longer an option." "I love love!" "I don't need sex. I need companionship. I need a dog."
What is this, a Henry Jaglom movie?
Well, it's a pretty good Jaglom movie, as it were, then. The parade of co-dependency may dismay some feminists, and some of the lipstick-smearing neuroticism may be a little overacted, but Mondino's latest ground-breaker has the ring of exaggerated truth. And the hearty bass-slapping by Ndegeocello that underlies her braggadocio covers a multitude of sins.
GUITAR PLAYER
James Rotondi
February 1994
Grade: A
Calling on a wealth of cool influences - funk-fusion, hip-hop, R&B, and beyond - Ndegeocello offers one of the year's outstandingly funky records. The musicianship is top-flight: Meshell is a frightening multi-instrumentalist, and the LP features stellar guitar performances by Wah-Wah Watson and Manhattan hotshot David "Fuze" Fiuczynski, who sets "I'm Diggin' You (Like An Old Soul Record)" on fire with wiry, warbly lead lines as fresh as mother's milk. Sax prodigy Joshua Redman blows cool over a number of cuts, while Meshell's bass playing is consistently insteresting and solid. A major talent on the verge of something thrillingly new.
VIBE
Christian Wright
October 1993
"Remember back in the day when everyone was black and conscious and down for the struggle?" sings Meshell on "I'm Diggin' You (Like An Old Soul Record)," the second track on her stunning debut. Back then, she reckons, "everything was cool."
Clearly nostalgic for a time of unconditional black solidarity, the freedom of funk, classic Motown, and obsolete technology, she sings in her deep, commanding purr, "Sit back, relax/ listen to the eight-track." But Meshell doesn't slip into easy retro-bohemia; she uses the familiar—a fat bass, a borrowed lyric—to bridge the gap between a bygone era and her own, in which the struggle is for identity.
Meshell Ndegeocello's last name means "free like a bird" in Swahili. That might account for the ease with which she flutters through musical styles (jazz, pop, funk, hip-hop, and rock & roll), a remarkable vocal range (masculine resonance to a sweet, sexy coo), and a wide array of subjects (the political to the purely carnal).
"Step into the Projects," a dance track that evolves into freeform jazz, is a love-against-the-odds story "serenaded by the violence outside my window." On "Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High," an uptempo Sly and the Family Stone-like cut introduced as "a song about sadness," she describes the setting as "politics, low-income housing, birth control, and abortion." It's also a song about a couple's survival—amid squalor, poverty, and the indifference of the federal government. She talk-sings, "The capitalistic hand around my throat/ shootin' up dope to cope/ ...we both found god when he OD'd."
Heavy going, but Meshell has a way of juxtaposing sound and sensibility that prevents bleeding-heart sentimentality. There are even a few smooth, simple ballads ("Call Me" and "Dred Loc") and a bitchy girl song ("If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)") to prove her agenda isn't without lusty undertones. Plantation Lullabies—on which Meshell plays bass, guitar, and keyboards, as well as wrote and arranged all the songs—explores the black condition with an intricate, seductive sound.
PEOPLE
Karen Good
February 21, 1994
Grade: A
As one of the newest artists on Madonna's label, this singer-songwriter and one-woman band (bass, guitar and keyboards) mixes a smooth, sexy alto with a revolutionary vibe on her impressive debut album. One minute, Ndegeocello (pronounced N-day-gay-o-chello) is sensuously purring permission to run her fingers through her lover's dreadlocks; the next minute she's protesting in "Soul on Ice" that African-Americans have "been indoctrinated... by the white racist standard of beauty." Blurring genres, Ndegeocello conjures a funky psychedelic jam session in "Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High," swings uptempo with heavy percussion and old-school jazz riffs in "Step into the Projects" and sings of unrequited love in the subtle reggae-spiced "Sweet Love." Painfully honest about the black experience, Ndegeocello takes hip hop to a higher level.
SASSY
Diane
January 1994
* * * *
I keep trying to come up with one sista songstress who can touch Meshell Ndegeocello. I come up with no one. All the others are squirrels in her world trying to get a nut, because she's definitely running the show. I'm not shitting ya either. Her songs are more than those overplayed "Baby, I need you 'cause you can do me right" tunes flooding urban-contemporary radio these days. Her voice is sort of Nina-Simone-ish, deep and smooth as she talks-sings to these funky-hip hoppy-jazzy grooves. In my favorite cut, "I'm Diggin' You (Like An Old Soul Record)," she sings about the '60s, "when people were black and conscious, and down for the struggle that brought us all together... blue lights in the basement, freedom was at hand and you could just taste it." I'm barely old enough to remember. Okay, so I'm not old enough at all, but I can still "dig it like an old soul record" as Ndegeocello says. Trust me, you don't want to be the last one on the block plugged into this girl.
ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION
Tonya Pendleton
June 26, 1998
On Meshell Ndegeocello's tremendous debut, she combines elements of hip-hop, soul and R&B to create an innovative sound all her own. Her mix of rap and singing predated the Fugees' Lauryn Hill, who would really blow up on The Score four years later. As a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Ms. Ndegeocello's also one of the few women able to have musical control of her career. From "I'm Diggin' You (Like an Old Soul Record)" to the sassy "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" Ndegeocello also gave a platform to sexual ambiguity, acknowledging her bisexuality and writing love songs to both men and women.
MIAMI HERALD
Leonard Pitts, Jr.
November 17, 1993
Meshell Ndegeocello is one of the first fruits of Madonna's label deal. Give the devil her due: Maddy's got an ear for talent.
Plantation Lullabies is a complex and challenging piece of work, jazzy hip-hop delivered in a rich and sensuous burr. Although it's technically a rap album, Plantation Lullabies doesn't owe much to the traditional rhythms of that form. These beats are more Nikki Giovanni than Public Enemy, more Maya Angelou than Ice-T.
Similarly, Ndegeocello is less concerned with hard B-boy fables than she is with love stories and wordplay (I'm Diggin' You Like An Old Soul Record), cool dis-offs, (If That's Your Boyfriend, He Wasn't Last Night) and social politics (Soul On Ice, a scornful, biting, politically incorrect and oh-so-juicy attack on black men with jungle fever). And ain't it nice, as the rap wars continue, to hear from a woman—not a B-boy, not a girl—for a change.
Plantation Lullabies is a fine new flavor in hip-hop. You ought to check it out.
AMERICAN VISIONS
Bill Hasson
April/May 1994
Hip-hop, hip flop. Refunkbracated adolescence being held in by spandex as a body views itself in a mirror. Its undecided puberty playing matchmaker to indentured mythology. Boss beats and lexicon lessons from teen town.
CAPITAL TIMES
Eric Rasmussen
November 25, 1993
(Madison, Wisconsin) In a year when gangsta rap has all but taken over the form, the debut from Meshell Ndegeocello seems revolutionary. It's probably not, but the mix of hip-hop and jazz is one of the truest yet, telling me that Ndegeocello listened to as much early '70s Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and even Jean Luc Ponty as she has rap and R&B. "I'm Diggin You (Like an Old Soul Record)" and "Step into the Projects" work up multilayered grooves; "Dred Loc" is as sexy as the best Anita Baker; and "Soul on Ice" is a pointed attack on people who date interracially for the wrong reasons.
BOSTON GLOBE
Richard Thorpe
1993
In a recent review of this new album by newcomer Meshell Ndegeocello, a writer referred to her as a mediocre protegé of Madonna. Well, this striking new artist shares only one thing with the successful pop star; Maverick, Madonna's record label. Ndegeocello (pronounced n-Day-Gay-O-Chello) has succeeded in doing something that the "material girl" has never done, and that is intelligent, probing, emotional and funky, with an Afro-centric point of view. The 13 tracks on the CD combine funk with a touch of hip-hop flavor and jazz sensibility. She writes lyrics that are feisty, rebellious and incisive, particularly on issues affecting African-Americans. Songs like "Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High," "Untitled," and "Step Into The Projects," describe the racism, angst, turmoil, pain, love, joy and exhilaration that many encounter living in the inner city. Musically, the CD percolates. The production is tight and even-handed, even with the multi-producer—David Gamson, André Betts, Bob Power and Ndegeocello—format. The list of standout musicians, including saxophonist Joshua Redman, and pianists Geri Allen and Bobby Lyle, adds color and depth to the enjoyable funk riffs from multi-instrumentalist Ndegeocello. With the Top 40 hit "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" to round out the CD, this debut is a winner. Kudos.
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Tony Green
November 19. 1993
* * * *
Face it. This album could have been made only by a hip-hop-sensible artist educated at Howard University who played bass around the D.C. go-go scene and was once commissioned by Jimi Hendrix estate executor Alan Douglas to do versions of songs from the Hendrix catalog.
What makes this debut so stunning is that Meshell Ndegeocello, while still in her 20s, has conquered and digested all her influences with a style, ease and proficiency that borders on the Prince-ley.
Her last name means "free like a bird" in Swahili. Ndegeocello's instrumental skills (in addition to writing and arranging every tune, she plays bass, guitar, and keyboards) highlights the music, an insinuating blend of acid-jazz, funk and hip-hop with hints of fusion.
Then there's her voice, which ranges from a Sly-Stoneish singsong to dreamy, plain-speak rapping. This lends an ironic edge to her politically conscious lyrical poetry. The speaker in "Shootin' Up and Gettin' High" lives in a world where the TV shouts 'forget where you come from/ livin' in the midst of genocide. Her slice-of-life approach heightens the impact of her tunes, her keen eye and ear painting portraits of people living in a world where the trick is to either connect with someone, grab whatever pleasure whizzes by you while managing to retain your dignity or find fulfillment in seemingly flat, everyday situations.
"Sweet Love" portrays an aching, lonely person waiting patiently for someone she knows doesn't love her," but the voice in "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" flaunts her other-woman status with a sister-girl bravado.
The speaker in "Two Lonely Hearts (On the Subway)" speaks to a perceived longing that could be "the everyday racism or a pain from deep within," and goes on to say "I may not understand now but then again, you can talk to me or we can just sit here and daydream."
Cool. Sit and daydream about the follow up.
BLACK COLLEGIAN
J.R. Reynolds
January 1994
Ndegeocello (pronounced "N-daygay-OH-chello") is Swahili for "free like a bird." That's also the best description for what may be one of the most musically and lyrically creative albums of the year. "Alternative Hip-Hop" is a more musical definition for what this young artist presents. In the same vein as Digable Planets and Arrested Development, Ndegeocello is probably the most consistent. The album has a sort of Tracy Chapman feel, but without the darker elements that ran mainstream listeners away from her. Highly recommended.
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