Talking With Meshell Ndegeocello
By Eugene Holley Jr. for the Village Voice
Tuesday, September 29th 2009 at 2:38pm

Bassist/composer Meshell Ndegeocello's artistry represents a hejira: a spiritual journey that began with her 1993 debut CD Plantation Lullabies and continues eight records later with Devil's Halo, a 12-track collection of ethereal, moody musings buoyed by Caribbean riddims and guitar-centric, country-rock grooves, all laced with her caressing, occasionally falsettoed contralto. We talked with Ndegeocello by phone from her upstate New York home about her love of Sade, strippers, and life's gray areas.

Devil's Halo brims with a lot of musical and spiritual complexity and ambiguity.

I love the myth of the devil: the fallen angel who became jealous. So the symbolism of the Devil's Halo for me is that there are gray areas in music and life. I'm a songwriter, and I just go and write about the people in my life, and where I've come to at this point in my life—from making records at 22 to being 41. I've seen other things, met all kinds of people, and had all kinds of experiences.

You aurally illustrate your experiences with some interesting tempos, tones, and textures. "Slaughter" shows your extraordinary love for Sade, and tracks like "Tie One On" and "Lola" highlight a wide array of influences, from pop to rap.

The RZA is one of the greatest songwriters and programmers. I'm really into the Human League, and Trevor Horn is a genius in the way he constructs recordings. Sade is that $200 bottle of wine: You're not going to have that every night at dinner. She's a great song stylist; her writing and her voice are amazing. The older Yes records had these beautiful tapestries and guitars. That's what I tried to achieve in this particular recording: some sonic tapestries that people, even if they're not listening to the lyrics, could just feel or hear, or just have a deep, inner dialogue with.

I definitely feel some ska-reggae basslines on "Mass Transit" and "White Girl."

My bass playing is super-influenced by Sting, Prince, and Family Man Barrett, who has the most well-constructed, melodic basslines I've ever heard, and his pocket is just astounding. I'll always have that sort of ska-reggae feel because it feels good.

Speaking of the pocket, please tell me how you turned Ready for the World's 1986 hit "Love You Down" into—paraphrasing one of your compositions—a stripper's classic?

I have a great respect and admiration for strippers! (Laughs.) I remember just grooving on that song for a while, and the melody and the beat just circled in my head, and that's what came out of my body. I love taking other people's songs and totally deconstructing them into my filter.

The title track is an instrumental interlude that captures the essence of the CD.

To me, that interlude or lullaby is a transition out of being so self-absorbed, to looking at things in another way. And I'm very glad to get to that point: I'm ready to see things not so much in black and white. And I'm going to continue to change as a human being.

Thank u 4 that. Great to hear some of her words on the cd.

The Early Riser
by K. Leander Williams for United Airlines Hemispheres (in flight magazine)

Neo-soul pioneer Meshell Ndegeocello is one of the great riddles in R&B music today. Her newest album, Devil's Halo, provides a couple of clues.

SHOWBIZ MYTH NO. 3: Rock stars don’t keep the same hours as the rest of us. Mythbuster? It’s just shy of 2 p.m. in bucolic upstate New York, and bassist/singer/songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello is preparing lunch at her home after several hours of rehearsal for an upcoming tour. Practice has gone well, and Ndegeocello and her band are buoyant—especially considering they started practice around the time most of us are hitting the snooze bar.

“We had work to do,” Ndegeocello explains, her husky voice deepening even further, feigning seriousness before breaking into a chuckle. “Believe me, I’m quite capable of sleeping all day, too.”

Still, the rehearsal schedule adds yet another (thin) layer to Ndegeocello’s mystique. She has spent two decades keeping audiences guessing about everything from her sexuality (album title from 2007: The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams) to what sort of artist she really is. Ndegeocello scored a hit single with a duet with John Mellencamp back in 1994 (a raucous cover of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night”), but since then she’s flitted between genres, from the groove-oriented autobiography of 1999’s Bitter to the instrumental jazz of 2005’s The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel.

“There have been times when I’ve considered not making any more records, just to be rid of this whole music industry process of categorization,” she confesses. “What keeps me doing it is how much I enjoy the process of making something that people can listen to forever, no matter what the style of music is.”

Ndegeocello feels Devil’s Halo, her latest disc, is yet another departure from previous efforts, not so much musically as lyrically. “It’s not as autobiographical,” she says, referring to her signature frankness about lovesickness, promiscuity and spiritual awakening. “I see these songs more as people-watching, which I’ve been doing a lot of when I’m at my apartment in Brooklyn.”

Perhaps the piece that’s closest to her heart is the dreamy cover of the ’80s R&B group Ready for the World’s slow jam, “Love You Down.”

“It’s a favorite from childhood, and there’s a real drama about transcending age differences in dating,” she says. “It’s cool that it’s about the lyrics as well as the beat. You can either nod your head to the music or check out the story.”

(Brooklyn-based writer K. Leander Williams burns the candle at one end)

Romance stalks Meshell Ndegeocello like a killer on "Devil's Halo," which features such murderous tunes as "Slaughter" and "Die Young." Yet Ndegeocello has rarely sounded stronger, and the disc's stripped-down approach accentuates her musical brawn.

An alumna of both Howard University and the District's go-go scene, Ndegeocello has explored pop, jazz, hip-hop and other forms. Where 2007's "The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams" was eclectic and expansive, "Devil's Halo" keeps things simple. With just a three-piece band behind her, Ndegeocello alternates between starkly catchy pop-funk numbers and torch songs that sometimes burst into flames. The opening "Slaughter" sets the tone: "Don't say you love me/I'll run away," croons Ndegeocello, playing the lounge singer on the verses but boosting her voice to match co-producer Chris Bruce's guitar during the hard-rock refrains.

Sonically, the busiest track is the up-tempo yet dejected "Lola," whose heroine turns to drink after "the boy she loved/Left her for another girl/The girl she loved/Left her for another boy." The song has a playful energy that belies its subject. The album can also be potent at lower speeds, as "Love You Down" demonstrates. This come-on is slow and sultry, but its bristling guitar coda proclaims that Ndegeocello can never be mellow.

-- Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, Weekend (Oct. 2009)

Making music on her own terms
by Sarah Rodman for the Boston Globe on October 2, 2009

Meshell Ndegeocello lets out a low chuckle when asked if she's worried her fans might think she's been hitting the bottle based on some of the boozy characters on her new album, "Devil's Halo."

There is "Lola," who imbibes until she passes out. One drink is too many and yet there are not enough drinks in the world to get over an ex on "Hair of the Dog." And the album ends with "Crying in Your Beer," a bleak plea from someone who seems to have fully grasped the concept of mortality.

"I live in a small town that's full of watering holes, and I get to see a lot of drama unfold," she says, letting her throaty laugh fade over the line from her home in Hudson, N.Y. "That's what's hard — everyone thinks everything's about me."

To the mainstream pop audience, Ndegeocello is best known for her "Wild Night" with John Mellencamp in 1994. But the singer-songwriter and bassist has made a series of solo albums devastating in their emotional content and adventurous in their musical spirit. "Devil's Halo" — with its collisions of trip-hop, psychedelia, pop, R&B, and jazz — is no exception.

"I listen to everything from prog rock to Human League to Joy Division to Ready for the World," says Ndegeocello, who'll play the Middle East Downstairs next Wednesday. "I'm one of those people — I really, really, really love music. So I just try to listen to as much as I can, and I guess through my filter it comes out in different ways."

Indeed, Ndegeocello's unique filtering process has endeared her to critics, fellow musicians, and a robust cult of followers who managed to find a point of entry at some stage of her deliriously eclectic career. Some signed on with her hipster funk hit "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" when she was among the first signees to Madonna's Maverick label in the early '90s. Others came on board with the Mellencamp duet. Jazz fans became enamored following her improvisationally minded, all-star releases featuring luminaries like Jack DeJohnette, Pat Metheny, and Cassandra Wilson. And still others came to know Ndegeocello first as a sought-after side woman with artists as disparate as Joshua Redman, Alanis Morissette, Indigo Girls, and Karl Denson.

Metheny, who calls Ndegeocello "one of my very favorite artists," says the element that truly sets her apart is her "deep sense of personal vision."

"She is a strong and unique player with a strong and unique concept — and for me that is the draw," Metheny says. "There just are not that many people around that truly have their own thing. She is one of them."

Ndegeocello lets out a mock nefarious chuckle when she ponders the underlying reason she has been able to synthesize so many influences without sounding derivative. "I'm kind of an [expletive]. I really like my individuality, so I guess there's something in my psyche that's always like, 'but how can I destroy it and make it my own?"'

She certainly manages to do that to a cover of "Love You Down" by aforementioned boy band Ready for the World. Ndegeocello deconstructs the '80s slow jam for the 21st century, breaking down the backdrop with pounding high-hats and serpentine keyboards covered in fuzz but never losing sight of the core melody or innate sexiness of the May-December homage.

"I don't buy a lot of R&B; it hasn't fed me lately," she says of her decision to revisit a high school favorite. "I wanted to do something that would show that I really have love for it but was trying to hear it in a different way."

That statement could essentially serve as Ndegeocello's musical motto. It's evident in the catholicity of sounds on "Halo" that somehow hang together — like the way that "Slaughter" shifts on a dime from trippy electro-folk to violent rock swells, or how the bitter and dramatic "Lola" unspools with an unwieldy guitar solo into a wash of dreamy ambience that wouldn't sound out of place on a mid-period Genesis album. Darkness and light battle for equal time with the former winning beautifully in the deep melancholy of Lisa Germano's cello on "Hair of the Dog."

"I guess I'm weird. I like the darkness. I'm not afraid of it as much anymore," she says.

Ndegeocello has her work cut out for her when it comes to composing a set list.

While she reassures that she will be playing some of her older material, she says she's reached a "new place."

"What influenced the making of 'Devil's Halo' is I wanted to write songs that I'd like to play for a long time," she says. "These are grooves that can grow and change and evolve, and the songs are solid enough to depart from them. So when you come to the live show, I hope people understand I'm not ever going to be Katy Perry or Beyoncé, who I love. I'm just a musician and I play with amazing musicians, so hopefully they'll come check it out and I can keep live music alive."

Coming soon, my favorite music critic/writer is going to write another piece on Meshell.

Here's a preview: http://ernesthardy.blogspot.co...9/10/me-meshell.html

m, thanks so much for sharing these man!....

next tuesday it's ON.

Meshell Ndegeocello - Devil's Halo
by Mike Ragogna for the Huffington Post on October 5, 2009 at 7:09am

On Devil's Halo, singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello's recordings span from pop to light avant-garde, combining those unlikely styles and many others in between to create the most satisfying amalgam of her eight-album career. You not only can hear this bassist's Jaco Pastorius and Sting influences, but, as producer, she also employs some of the best tricks hip-hop (with some beats) and minimalist Juno-era artists have circulated. The songwriting covers low key/high concept subject matter such as what's discussed in the slyly multi-tempo'd "Crying In Your Beer" (more like shots of Glenlivet), and there's the simplistic instrumental title track that says much without a single word. "Die Young," with its retro-synth use, well-intentioned "I hope you all die young" sentiment (you have to hear the context), Peter Gabriel/Robbie Robertson atmospherics, and Sade-meets-Joan Armatrading with Sarah Cracknell affectations create something that combines external inspiration with internal exploration for something you probably have never heard the likes of before.

But then, most of this highly original album does that. Because of its abundance of sensuous sonic experiments (think Roxy Music, Robert Fripp, and Pat Metheny), much of the project could be categorized as "progressive quiet storm"; but there also are energized, rhythm-generated, character observations like "Lola" (who "...drinks until she passes out on the floor") that, conceptually, have much in common with the archetypes that populated Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. Guests include Lisa Germano, Oren Bloedow, and Mark Kelley, their performances melting into the aural stew. Warning: The opening track "Slaughter" will, at first, fool you into thinking its Sade, but then it breaks into electric-guitar driven passages that would have the Astrid Gilberto disciple calling her lawyer. While we're making the comparison, if you're curious where Sade should have ended up after all these years, listen to "Tie One On" and "White Girl," two tracks that might have you itching to hear about the sweetest taboo from Meshell this time out. START HERE: "Bright Shiny Morning" or "Slaughter"

Meshell Ndegeocello's unpredictable eighth album curses the darkness, then dives right in
by Heather Havrilesky for Salon.com on October 7, 2009

No one defies categorization like Meshell Ndegeocello. Her eighth album, "Devil's Halo," veers wildly between genres, alternating slow R&B grooves with quiet folks songs and meandering jazz-pop, but the mellow depth of Ndegeocello's voice and the sonic boom of her bass lines tie this jumbled gift together with a big, velvet bow.

Ndegeocello has always had the dangerous charisma of a gorgeous depressive: You're drawn in, only to find that everything is darker and heavier than you expected it to be. "Love You Down" takes an early, sex-obsessed Prince groove, knocks out the treble entirely and slows the whole thing down to an almost hypnotic crawl. The off-kilter percussive "White Girl" wobbles between anger and lovelorn flights of fantasy, tumbling into ambient, daydreamy canyons and then climbing out again. There's a little Kate Bush in the unexpected rhythms, digital effects and spoken lines of "Mass Transit," which reminds us that "At the end of the day, no one wants to be alone." "Slaughter" is spaced-out bliss that solidifies into enraged rock 'n' roll; "I'll make you suffer," Ndegeocello sings, sounding like a mix of Sade and the Marquis de Sade.

Even the friendly, quiet Sunday morning strumming of "Blood on the Curb" comes unraveled with the line "I wanna kill you all." From anyone else, this album would be a big messy pile of one-offs, but Ndegeocello's rich, consistent voice is always there to pull us in, even as she's throwing us off her scent once again. Like a world-weary muse, Ndegeocello taps into something rich and melancholy at the sludgy bottom of our hearts, then steps back and watches, amused, as we're undone by her latest trail of mournful oddities.

Devil in the White City
by Jason A. Heidemann for Time Out Chicago on October 7, 2009

Singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello gives us fair warning: She doesn’t love being interviewed. One journalist, she explains, had some pointed things to say about her 1993 song “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night),” in which the openly bisexual musician sings effusively about stealing another woman’s man. “I had an interviewer who just berated me about that and thought I was this horrible person,” Ndegeocello says.

It wasn’t the only time she had to consider her lyrics’ impact on listeners. Her 2002 album, Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, tackled racial inequality, corporate greed and the Almighty, and featured song titles like “Dead Nigga Blvd” and frequent use of the f-bomb. “Cookie is the first record I couldn’t play in front of my kid or any other kids,” Ndegeocello says, referring to her then-adolescent son. “It had such explicit language in it, I felt almost a bit ashamed about it. It made me a little uneasy.”

Her just-released eighth studio album, Devil’s Halo (Downtown Records), finds the 41-year-old multi-instrumentalist and ten-time Grammy nominee still outspoken, if a bit more introspective. On October 16, she’ll perform tracks from Devil’s Halo at the Old Town School of Folk Music as part of the Decibelle Music and Culture Festival.

Ndegeocello (an adopted surname that means “free like a bird” in Swahili) was born Michelle Lynn Johnson in Berlin, and raised in Washington, D.C., where, in the late ’80s, she played in the flourishing go-go scene, a funk subgenre. In 1993, she was the first female solo artist to sign with Madonna’s Maverick Records, which released her debut album, Plantation Lullabies.

A self-proclaimed army brat, Ndegeocello moved around a lot as a kid, a habit she’s continued into adulthood (though for the past three years she’s lived in the Hudson Valley with partner Alison). Constant change, she says, inspires her eclectic musical tastes. The tender opening of “Slaughter,” for example, the first track on Devil’s Halo, is suddenly gutted by loud rock & roll guitar riffs. That’s followed by the soulful “Tie Me On,” a Sade-esque gem full of sultry, gossamer vocal prowess. The album also spans R & B, spoken word, jazz and other genres with great aplomb, though sometimes also to the confusion of a fanbase that can’t readily predict her next musical step.

For such expectations, Ndegeocello partly blames an artist-compartmentalizing record industry. But she also sees the old model fading with the advent of online listening. “I’m hoping music listeners will start to realize [music] is no longer controlled by a machine that uses these generalizations for marketing tools,” she says. “You as a human being, you can make choices. I know we have our likes and dislikes, and that’s great, [but] I’d rather you just say you don’t like my music instead of saying, ‘It wasn’t like what I expected before.’ That’s the only thing that would truly bore me.”

While Devil’s Halo was recorded in just seven days, a first for the artist, she says the wordplay of bands such as the Pogues inspired her to work harder on lyric construction. And this time, perhaps, the taciturn musician would rather not have to explain her message. “On other records, I’ll do a song in a day,” she says. “I worked on these songs for over a year. I wanted them to not be questioned. Either you get it or you don’t.”

The album’s title, Ndegeocello says, refers to understanding the good in evil and vice versa. “I have a devil’s halo,” she says. “There’s parts of me I need to work on and there’s parts of me I’m becoming more comfortable with; I chose songs that would give people an audible view into that part of myself.”

Here's a new interview (+ live studio performances):
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soun...0/06/segments/142071

One more from allmusic.com:

Review by Thom Jurek
On three of her last four recordings, Me'Shell Ndegéocello has showcased her aesthetic restlessness, expanding her musical horizons to jazz, hip-hop, and the far-flung reaches of rock as well as funk and soul. On Devil's Halo, she focuses her vision deliberately on a dozen soulish, near-pop, rock tunes. Recorded by S. Husky Höskulds, it's stark compared to her last three albums. Ndegéocello plays bass and sings backed by guitarist Chris Bruce, drummer Deantoni Parks, and keyboardist Keith Ciancia, with guest appearances by Oren Bloedow, and Lisa Germano.

Desire haunts all the songs on Devil's Halo, beginning with "Slaughter," its opening track. Ndegéocello sings slowly, softly, deliberately, without a hint of irony: "She said she loved me/I ran away/ Don't say you love me/I'll run away..." The refrain explodes with guitars, bass, and vocals in a shattering crescendo: "...My love will leave you slaughter..." Romance, substance abuse, and one woman speaking candidly to another are themes in this musical meditation on bliss, lust, loneliness, and emotional wreckage, which are inseparable when the amorous is even considered, at least in Ndegéocello's world. "Lola" begins with the lines: "She drinks until she passes out/on the floor..." then erupts with a series of double-timed breaks to underscore confusion: "The boy she loved/left her for another girl/The girl she loved/left her for another boy..." A staccato explosion from Bruce's guitar engages her bassline in an instrumental bridge that Frank Zappa would have loved. "Mass Transit" is funkier, a bit more aggressive from the outset with Bruce's guitar leading the way, though Ndegéocello's bassline offers an alternate read on both melody and rhythmic pulse. Her voice is a soft croon despite the music's aggression, and it keeps the tune grounded in the seductive. "White Girl" may be the straightest pop song Ndegéocello's ever written, but its bassline is strictly dubwise. The vocals are smoky and elliptical, they create their own chorus in reverb and in the singer's deliberately stretched-out phrase, all around a very simple, hooky melody. The title track is a nearly ambient instrumental, with Ndegéocello playing harmonics on her bass in the mix just underneath a snare and kick drum barely outlining the time signature. Bruce paints it gingerly with his chord voicings. "A Bright Shiny Morning" is a gorgeous if lithe rocker, while "Blood on the Curb" is a more soulful, spacy rockist number with Ndegéocello's voice barely crooning above the heavyweight instrumentation, though she practices dynamic restraint. The album ends with another ballad, the brief but startling "Crying in Your Beer" with Bruce playing a spidery banjo as well as guitar atop Ciancia's ghostly keyboards and a skeletal bassline. It's an atmospheric tune, made taut by the words: " Sometimes, I forget where we are/Sometimes, I forget we're in love/Don't let me/die alone...."

Ndegéocello can always, it seems, quite literally articulate her musical vision, but she hasn't been so nakedly vulnerable and brazenly honest on record as she is here. She remains musically mercurial and virtually unclassifiable, even if she is at her most accessible on Devil's Halo.

Less Neo, Plenty of Soul: Meshell Ndegeocello
by Paul Stelter for the Washington Post's "Express Night Out" blog on October 8, 2009

While neo-soul pioneer Meshell Ndegeocello's CD-release show Thursday night is technically a homecoming — she's a veteran of both the Ellington School and the late-'80s go-go scene — "Devil's Halo" is far from the bass-heavy, jazz-funk roots of her taunting 1993 Grammy-nominated hit "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)."

"I think I wrote that when I was 18, and now I'm 41. So I've learned a lot," she laughs. "The so-called funk thing I've been away from for a while. I also love folk and bluegrass," she added, noting the banjo on "Crying in Your Beer."

Drinking and especially loneliness are the album's themes: "I live in Hudson, N.Y., and you can walk the whole town in about 10 minutes. The unifying factor is the watering hole, and I sit and watch people."

It's there we meet "Lola," whose boy "left her for another girl" while "the girl she loved left her for another boy." It's a non-Kinks gender bender that features Ndegeocello's husky, velvet tones, but like "Mass Transit" veers dangerously close to new-wave performance art cacophony.

"I definitely like the tempo and percussive construction of that period," she says of the album's new-wave moments.

Actually, the best retro moment on "Halo" is a cover of the 1986 R&B hit "Love You Down," which replaces the boy-band sound with a crashing staccato beat and fuzzy, atmospheric guitar. "It was a huge hit in D.C. growing up, so hearing it again just flooded my mind with memories."

Onstage, she's mostly leaving the music to her band. "When I play the bass, I'm in my own world. I play on a couple of tunes, but in order to sing and be present, I have another bass player."

While admitting it would be fun to break out her version of Dolly Parton's "Two Doors Down," she notes she "rarely" sings her old songs like "Boyfriend" live.

"Neil Young writes classics; I don't think I write classics."

Ugly Truths, Proclaimed Seductively
by Ben Ratliff for the New York Times on October 7, 2009

Meshell Ndegeocello sat down at center stage on a drummer’s stool several times during her show at the Highline Ballroom on Tuesday. The words to her songs make a blood sport out of honesty; getting closer to the crowd’s level gives her a break from being imposing.

At one point she took a casual shot at the MTV Video Music Awards. She didn’t like how much this year’s big performances relied on props, alluding to Pink’s trapeze act and Lady Gaga’s complicated scenario involving a doppelgänger in a wheelchair. “We made this music with our hands,” she said, opening up her palms.

She meant that her rockish new record, “Devil’s Halo” (Mercer Street), was created by a band playing live instruments in the studio, without digital postproduction. Well, O.K. But it’s not a string quartet. Most of it doesn’t feel organic and natural; it’s pretty uncomfortable, machinelike music. At the Highline the keyboardist, Keefus Ciancia, sprayed the atmosphere with metallic digital tones; the guitarist, Chris Bruce, engaged lots of reverb and delay; the drummer, Deantoni Parks, who put a heavy stamp on the show, played stiff, hiccuping new-wave rhythms, sometimes scaling back to skeletal beats during dublike sections. He’s the weirdest musician in the band, and Ms. Ndegeocello crowed over him, singling him out repeatedly during the show.

She’s a contrarian and doesn’t take her disposition lightly. Her songs on “Devil’s Halo” keep framing ugly truths in deep, seductive plaints. Love, especially, never comes as advertised. “I always pick the wrong way,” she sang in “Die Young.” “It feels right.” And in “Blood on the Curb,” she wondered, “What good is loving me if I can’t feel it?”

One of the great bassists in pop, Ms. Ndegeocello plays nubby notes, way back on the beat, creating friction and leaving space. But she made it clear that this music isn’t meant to show her off as a bassist or even as a singer; she backed away from the lights and picked up her instrument only a few times, giving the tune a new rhythmic slant when she did. (Mark Kelley is the band’s regular bassist, and he tended to stop playing whenever she started.) In addition to about half of the new album, she played Prince’s “Dirty Mind,” and a few of her older songs accompanied by guitar and little else: “Fool of Me” and “Bitter,” sturdy, forthright admissions of weakness.

Unfortunately, it didn’t much matter who was playing bass, because the Highline Ballroom’s sound was shockingly bad, either piercing or muddy. Many of the new songs are oddly shaped sketches, changing character in the middle or expanding with echo. They depend on good sound to put them over, but they never had a proper chance.

(I guess that Ben hasn't been to a show of her's lately -- or perhaps has never seen her live. How many of you remember the last time she performed "Boyfriend" or played bass all night? In the 10 years that I've been seeing her live, this is how it's been. The 2nd bass plays most of the time, and stops when she picks up. Deantoni Parks is weird? He's the best drummer I have ever seen/heard in a live setting. Sounds like Ben wrote this before giving the album multiple listens. Then again, maybe he's just one of those people that don't get it. That's cool. -- Matthew

Edit: Not the first time Ratliff has seen her. He reviewed her Spirit Music Jamia set in 2005 in NYC, and also wrote a tiny review on Comfort Woman.)

Meshell Ndegeocello - Devil's Halo
by Frazia Lee for the October 14-20, 2009 issue of the Augusta Metro Spirit

AUGUSTA, GA - Since 1993, Meshell Ndegeocello has been captivating audiences with her hypnotic alto either in the form of singing, rapping or spoken word. Her genres of choice include a bevy of styles from jazz to rock to soul, and on her latest offering, she mixes pop, rock and soul to form a collection of dramatic, soul-wrenching features; most under three and four minutes.

A minimal instrumental with an accompanying staggering drumbeat covers “Devil’s Halo,” presenting a gentle ear massage. “Slaughter” makes it possible for you to float and crash back down to earth at the introduction of a crazy percussion marrying the chorus. “Love will lead you to slaughter, when I see it coming I run the other way,” she vocalizes. Speaking of floating, try your hand at the ethereal “Tie One On,” a syrupy slow piece of enchantment.

Ndeogecello remakes Ready for the World’s “Love You Down” by incorporating stinging percussion, which turns it into a progressive, soulful treat. “Bright Shiny Morning” echoes its title with an upbeat rhythm, and “Die Young” experiments with slight reverbs.

With “Devil’s Halo,” Ndegeocello illustrates a quiet calm that allows you to engage in poetic mediation.

Pop Making Sense
by David Byrne with Tony Peregrin for the Windy City Times on October 14, 2009

The ever-evolving artist Meshell Ndegeocello made an everlasting impression with her promising 1993 debut, Plantation Lullabies, on Madonna's label Maverick Records. Then, a cover of Van Morrison's "Wild Nights" with John Mellencamp became her biggest hit to date. She continues to do some remakes, as her artistry shines on new takes on "Fantasy" on last year's Earth Wind and Fire tribute compilation Interpretations and "Two Doors Down" from Just Because I'm a Woman: The Songs of Dolly Parton. On Ndegeocello's latest, Devil's Halo, she puts her own seductive spin on Ready for the World's "Love You Down."

The outstanding Devil's Halo has her effortlessly treading forth with soul ( "Hair of the Dog," "Crying in Your Beer" ) and alternative rock ( "Slaughter," "Lola" ).

Meshell Ndegeocello Is Back With a New Album—‘Devil’s Halo’
by John Murph for The Root on October 12, 2009 at 2:05pm

“I get a lot more criticism,” says the jazz-funk veteran, “from people of color when I’m in a relationship with someone outside my race.”

Fearless. Naked. Meshell Ndegeocello always seems to leave herself exposed.

Her latest disc, Devil’s Halo (Downtown/Mercer) picks up where the sonic assault of her previous album (2007’s The World Made Me The Man of My Dreams) left off. Again Ndegeocello eschews the R&B art-funk that distinguished her ’90s material as a gripping ménage of rock, pop, ska and punk. In an exclusive interview with The Root, Ndegeocello talks candidly about her wounded love ballads—as well as how she deals with the backlash that comes with her wanton spirit.

The Root: It seems the mythical “Devil” plays a crucial role all of your new songs.

Meshell Ndegeocello: (Laughs.) The devil has always been one of the most intriguing characters—a former angel who suffered from a broken heart, and eventually jealousy, more than anything else. He became this evil dark lord. It’s one of those, “I hurt, so I’m going to make everyone else feel what I feel.” That’s pretty human. I really relate to that.

TR: Some songs on the new disc—“Slaughter,” “Crying in Your Beer” and “Bright Shiny Morning” are filled with snarky humor, but also emotional wreckage and naked honesty. Did you write them from personal experiences or from observations?

MN: A little bit of both. “Crying in Your Beer”—I had a few family members in my life pass away. I haven’t experienced that with my parents, but I know I’m getting closer to that point. That overwhelms my subconscious. So I used that and other little stories to illustrate how we’re all searching for immortality through fame or other ways. That’s why in one song I end, “There is no encore.” Maybe there is no encore. I’ve been asking myself that for a while.

TR: What about “Slaughter”? It’s sung from such a painful, passive/aggressive position: “She said she loved me/ I run away/ Don’t say you love me/ I’ll run away/ My love will leave you slaughtered.”

MN: “Slaughter” is a little autobiographical. You have to learn how to love, I guess. No one really has a manual of how to do that.

TR: In “White Girl,” you weave in elements of whiteness as being pure and innocent. Were you exploring the idea that some people of color give white people more benefit of the doubt, emotionally, than we do to other people of color?

MN: It’s a play on words, a joke about the puritanical white beauty. But what I’m trying to say is that love is about the attraction and the warmth that we have for each other. I feel like I get a lot more criticism from people of color when I’m in a relationship with someone outside my race. So I’m playing with the idea of the white beauty, but our feelings are what’s most important—the fact that the two people actually love each other.

TR: Tell me about “Lola.” It’s a great ballad about this lonely, barfly of a woman who seems to be grappling with abandonment issues.

MN: You have to deal with the consequences of your choices. I live in a small town in upstate New York. It seems like the commonplace to meet (people) is a bar. And there you see a lot of different people, and the different personalities that come out when they’ve had one too many, or been there too long. In all my songs on the disc, no one is innocent. There’s an exchange, and both parties are not making good choices sometimes.

TR: You surprised me with the makeover of Ready for the World’s 1986 “Love Me Down.”

MN: It’s a song that brings up fond memories. It has a great melody. Also I had a great time trying to put the song through my (artistic) filter. I hope people hear the love in my version.

TR: Your recent music is worlds apart from your early-’90s material. Were you ever concerned about disenfranchising your fan base? Did you suffer much backlash for being artistically courageous?

MN: Oh yeah! When I made (the Grammy-nominated, 2005) The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel, this improvisational/instrumental record—that was the beginning of the backlash. Even Bitter (1999) was a beginning of people questioning my artistic choices. But I’m a musician. The most important thing for me is becoming a better musician and becoming a better person. I wouldn’t be honest if I was just concerned about what other people wanted to hear. That would limit my growth.

TR: Talk about your role as a producer. You’ve produced discs for a handful of envelope-pushing jazz artists like Ron Blake, Oliver Lake and Steve Lehman, and Jason Lindner.

MN: What I bring to the production table is being a good guide and sounding board. I want to create an atmosphere where the artist can feel free to explore whatever is in their head. It helps me to be more of a nurturer. I enjoy that—being a positive influence on other people.

Love, Meshell style
by Britt Robson, special to the Minneapolis Star Tribune on October 15, 2009 at 5:33pm

Meshell Ndegeocello began her career having her cake and eating it, too. Her 1993 debut album, "Plantation Lullabies," spun out a minor hit, "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)," and was nominated for three Grammys. A year later, she was ubiquitous on radio and MTV with John Mellencamp on a version of Van Morrison's "Wild Night."

Just like that, this black, bisexual singer/songwriter with a shaved head was an artistic renegade with commercial cachet, ringing the cash registers while zinging the zeitgeist on race and gender issues.

Ndegeocello has always been a genuine iconoclast, the sort of often-romanticized yet too rarely found artist who fearlessly follows her muse. (Born Michelle Johnson in 1968, she changed her name to the Swahili phrase for "free like a bird" when she was a teen.) She spent years honing her subsequent recordings, which often had little in common with the one before.

Having helped launch the neo-soul movement with "Plantation Lullabies," she moved on to more ethereal, biblical-themed social critiques ("Peace Beyond Passion"), scorn-focused folk rock ("Bitter"), ambitiously stylized hip-hop ("Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape") and sophisticated, straight-ahead jazz ("The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel").

On Sunday, she will bring a quartet to the Dakota Jazz Club, but her new album, "Devil's Halo," isn't jazz.

"I wanted to get back to doing music you can make with your hands," she said by phone from New York, contrasting the disc to her more polished studio work of recent years.

Her persona this time out is reminiscent of both the lithe, breathy apparitions of Sade and the plain-spoken panache of Joan Armatrading.

"Devil's Halo" blends the more acoustic intimacy of "Bitter" with the varied stylistic palette of her previous CD, "The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams." There are angular rockers with a punk urgency, gauzy soul ballads, light reggae-pop and confessional, richly textured tone poems. The depth and invention of Ndegeocello's bass lines penetrate the arrangements. (She tours with a bassist in order to concentrate on singing.)

Married to a 'White Girl'

The album is laden with love songs, but, this being Ndegeocello, they contain as much anger, woe and insecurity as bliss, satisfaction and desire -- the opposite of the Hallmark Card ethos.

"I hate Hallmark Cards!" she said with a laugh. "And these reality shows, like Tila Tequila -- aren't we getting tired of fooling ourselves with these fantasies of love, the things that are unattainable? I like seeing the other aspects of love, the ones that may not seem so lovey-dovey."

That doesn't mean she can't simply tumble on occasion. Ndegeocello puts a sexy spin on "Love You Down," the mid-'80s soul-pop confection by Ready for the World. And on the pop song "White Girl," she seems awestruck at the reciprocity of affection taking place, even as she's diddling with race and gender stereotypes.

Asked why the song's cherished protagonist is reduced to a "White Girl" construction, Ndegeocello doesn't flinch: "Just existing can be a pretty political experience for me. Because when I started an interracial relationship, my so-called people were the ones who were hardest on me."

Together four years now, she and this "White Girl" have married and are expecting a child. "It is the most revolutionary thing I can do to help make these racial and gender preferences fall" as factors of strife and prejudice, she says of her commitment to family.

'My rationality kicked in'

As much as she subverts the status quo, there is a kindness and grace accompanying the unflinching honesty, a generosity of spirit that enriches her songs. There was a time, in rebellious response to a doctrinaire upbringing she defines as "super-Christian," when she converted to Islam. Now, citing the experience of 9/11 and the way the Muslim world often treats women and people who are gay, she's not afraid to say she's not so sure.

"I guess I consider myself an Islam agnostic heading toward atheism. I started to see the world through new eyes and I guess my rationality kicked in. To quote Thomas Jefferson, religion is an insult to god. I mean, someone out there made all these beautiful flowers and things. I hope I am getting to a place where I can die without fear that someone is going to punish me -- or reward me."

Instead, the final song of "Devil's Halo" reveals a more humanistic fear: "Sometimes I float too far from shore/ Sometimes I forget who we are/ I forget who we are/ Don't let me die alone/ Don't let me die alone."

Suite903
by Julianne Shepherd on October 16, 2009

Meshell Ndegeocello came through the Suite903 offices to discuss her new album, "Devil’s Halo," and a whole lot of other great stuff while nibbling on a heart-shaped lollipop.

Meshell Ndegeocello, Deep Blue Field

For quite a few years after her variegated 1993 debut, Plantation Lullabies, Meshell Ndegeocello seemed to have a real shot at commercial success, but rather than reach for the brass ring she's always stuck to her own circuitous path. The singer, songwriter, and virtuoso electric bassist orbits several centers of gravity—rock, funk, soul, jazz, pop, hip-hop—and never ends up in the same place twice. One album might be straight-up jazz, the next a collection of romantically fraught soul-rock ballads. Given that context, the fine new Devil's Halo (Mercer Street), with its unusually stripped-down quartet arrangements and relatively concise songs, doesn't seem like a radical departure, just one more example of her restlessness. The tunes mix and match soul, hip-hop, and progressive rock, and guitarist Chris Bruce contributes kaleidoscopic chords, ghostly atmospherics, and driving riffs, allowing Ndegeocello to concentrate on her rich but unadorned singing. This show is part of the Decibelle Music and Culture Festival. —Peter Margasak

"DEVIL'S HALO," Meshell Ndegeocello
by Chuck Campbell for Scripps Howard News Service on October 16, 2009

Love songs are popular music's attempt to package, summarize and rationalize one of our most irrational emotions. So if nothing else, Meshell Ndegeocello's mind-bending "Devil's Halo" is refreshing for its honesty, its surrender to the inexplicable with an unapologetic lack of reason.

Still, her head-trip is likely to prove too austere, her unconventional framework too untethered for many listeners.

The vocalist and bass player makes generous use of echo effects and keyboard fills on "Devil's Halo" as she strays from her past work (e.g. neo-soul) into an ill-defined territory that's more experimental than genre-tied.

Opener "Slaughter" is arranged in alternating bouts of crashing chorus and subdued verses as she warns, "Don't say you love me, I'll run away," and her study in contrasts marches on from there: Ndegeocello unspools spacious, jazz-like textures for "The One On," succumbs to the nervous energy of "White Girl" and staggers through "Hair of the Dog."

She also turns in a stupendously offbeat cover of Ready for the World's "Love You Down," deadpanning her way through the chorus as if it's a threat, with only bass jolts shocking the track out of a narcotic stupor. And while "Lola's" portrayal of a hard-luck bisexual ("She drinks until she passes out on the floor") is a pop song at its core, the irregular, hustling beat keeps it off-balance.

Ndegeocello has a few other moments that resemble traditional rock/pop -- an exceptional one in the shimmering rhythm of "Bright Shiny Morning" plus some in the glowing bliss of "Die Young" and acoustic closer "Crying in Your Beer" (with its ominous line, "Don't let me die alone"). Yet "Devil's Halo" is dominated by tracks that are mere hints of "songs," near-hookless cuts that cave under swarming ambience. It's no less surreal than love itself, but that doesn't make it a crowd pleaser.

Rating (five possible) : 3-1/2

(Note to critics from Matthew -- PLEASE DEAR GOD stop saying Meshell is a neo-soul artist. I can't think of a single established artist out there that's referred to as a neo-soul artist by critics, refers to themselves that way. I remember in one interview Jill Scott got pretty testy about it, actually. It's lazy reviews like this that have me longing for Ernest Hardy's upcoming piece in the LA Weekly.)

Here's a new interview (suite903.com) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifl1-i-6ViI

Thank you amoergosum, see 3 posts above your's though

'Hearing' Meshell Ndgeocello Again
by Mark Anthony Neal on October 18, 2009

Part of the initial appeal of Meshell Ndegeocello, one off the first artists signed to Madonna’s Maverick label, was her effortless exoticism. Arriving on the scene in 1993 with Plantation Lullabies and seemingly from a nether post somewhere between Trey Ellis’s “new black aesthetic” and Biggie’s “Big Poppa,” it wasn’t difficult for Ndegeocello, like Dionne Farris or PM Dawn’s Prince Be, to be easily cited as that other-type Negro—whatever that happened to be on any given day. But baby-gurl could pluck it with the best of them—Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, Nathan East, Larry Graham, and of course Bootsy—so the regular, round-the-way Negros took notice. Wasn’t a black radio station in the country that wasn’t featuring “Outside Your Door” on their Quiet Storm program in those days. For the white folk not likely to venture down the radio dial, there was that duet with John Cougar Mellencamp, flipping the old Van Morrison classic “Wild Night” into an MTV staple. It was the only whiff a pop chart that Ndegeocello would ever get.

When Ndegeocello returned in 1996 with Peace Beyond Passion, courting controversy with a decidedly innocuous indictment of homophobia—by contemporary standards at least—on “Leviticus: Faggot,” her sound was lean, fierce and muscular, driving originals like “The Way” and her gender-bending cover of Bill Withers’ “Who is He and What is He to You?.” Folk might not have known what to do with the message and even less with the messenger, but it was clear that if you gave the woman more than a few moments, you too would be moving your ass.

With a winning formula in the mix—an old adage really, “free your mind and your ass will follow”—Ndegeocello played against expectation, making the first of several artistic statements. Bitter, her 1999 follow-up to Peace Beyond Passion, wasn’t so much a recording as it was musical brooding session and with it she had my ears and my heart. I have not listened to anything quite the same since, finding disparate passions in the music of Terry Callier, Laura Nyro, Alana Davis, Chocolate Genius, Lizz Wright, Bill Withers (quiet as it’s kept) and a host of others whose most common resonances were in registers far beneath the surface. What has been clear over the last decade is that Ndgeocello herself, has been most comfortable when she trust her ears instead of her body, so that even when she made that last stab at other-chartly and political relevance with Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, it was the darker hues of “Jabril” and “Earth” that told on her—and on us for that matter.

Seems as if 2003’s Comfort Woman—an overlooked gem in any era, like Robert Marley’s Kaya—marks the beginning of Ndegeocello’s loss of faith in her ears, though as the primary composer and conductor of Dance of the Infidel (2005) she conjured, with Lalah Hathaway, beauty unrequited on the slow as death cover of “When Did You Leave Heaven.” With Devil’s Halo, her new recording on the Downtown/Mercer Street label, Ndegeocello’s faith in her ears and our ability to 'hear' her is renewed.

While there are still hints of the Emo rock that marked 2007’s The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, Devil’s Halo settles on a mood somewhere in between The World… and Bitter. The bassist remains lyrically provocative throughout—Ernest Hardy notes this ditty from “Lola:” “a wife’s just a whore with a diamond ring”—but here is wordless quality about Ndegeocello’s vocal performance. Tracks like “Tie One On” and the twangy (in the tradition of Craig Street’s work with Lizz Wright and Cassandra Wilson) “Crying in My Beer,” are simply beautiful in their starkness; the lyrics largely served as adornments. Tellingly, the title track is an instrumental that Ndegeocello wrote when she was a teen growing up in Washington, DC.

Though Ndegeocello has long distanced herself from mainstream contemporary R&B, her most striking artistic statement on Devil Halo comes from the R&B world of the 1980s. Ready for the World’s classic slow drag, “Love You Down” was ripe for a post-auto-tune update, but Ndegeocello gives the song a breathtaking new edge—dreamy and urgent. Ndegeocello tells music journalist John Murph, “Love You Down” is a song that “brings up fond memories. It has a great melody. Also I had a great time trying to put the song through my [artistic] filter. I hope people hear the love in my version.”

Verse-Chorus-Verse: An Interview with Meshell Ndegeocello by PC Muñoz

The stellar 2003 Dolly Parton tribute album, Just Because I’m a Woman, features a fine batch of rock and country flavored arrangements of Dolly Parton songs performed by Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, and Melissa Etheridge, amongst others. It’s a great, highly listenable set, but as flavorful as it is, nothing in it quite prepares the listener for Meshell Ndegeocello’s penultimate track—an elastic-funk re-imagination of Parton’s party-ready hit “Two Doors Down”. Beat-centric, atmospheric, and half-rapped, Ndegeocello’s re-working of the Parton classic is not only sly and musically imaginative, it’s also an apt embodiment of Ndegeocello’s overall approach: bold, adventurous, defiantly singular, and funky as hell.

I’m convinced that if Meshell Ndegeocello’s work and persona weren’t so thoroughly infused with a hip-hop spirit, it would be much easier for music-heads to locate her as part of the same continuum as Bob Dylan, Prince, Neil Young, and other quirky pop maverick-geniuses known for bravely and consistently paving their own path in the industry. As an (often) bald, (always) black bi-sexual female bassist who raps as much as she sings, writes deeply and confrontationally about race and sex (amongst other things), and mashes-up genres with every project, Ndegeocello’s mere presence on the scene (let alone the gestalt of her work) presents a taxonomical problem to solve for a large segment of music lovers, and an even trickier problem for those specifically on the lookout for singer-songwriters who may be the rightful heirs to the rock royalty named above. Part of the difficulty for some of these folks, of course, is the fact that killer grooves and textured rhythm parts (which are treasured elements in funk and hip-hop, while sometimes mere arrangement considerations in other genres), no matter how intricately conceived and executed, are still often not considered components of “great songwriting”, although they are, perhaps hypocritically, definitely understood as potential building blocks of “great records”. Hence, someone like Jeff Tweedy, who I like and respect quite a bit, is generally considered to be one of the handful of Gen X songwriters who deserves a place in the pantheon of great, adventurous artists, while Ndegeocello, who has traversed much more diverse ground, including a fairly straightforward guitar-based singer-songwriter album (1999’s gorgeous Bitter), is often in danger of being considered a high-profile cult artist.

I recommend the aforementioned Bitter as a starting point for folks who want to get familiar with Ndegeocello’s music. Soulful, affecting, and beautifully produced by the abundantly gifted Craig Street, it’s a warm introduction to Ndegocello’s music, and a wonderful way to first encounter her enticing and intimate vocal style. It also includes one of her patented unique covers, Jimi Hendrix’s “May This Be Love”. From there, you can have lots of fun jumping around to prior or subsequent releases, each one an adventure.

What was the first song you fell in love with, and what is your current relationship to the piece?
“Soft and Wet” by Prince. It just sounded angelic, the way his vocals were layered, and it made me want to dance. It’s still the song and the album that made me say, “That’s what I’m gonna do.”

Who is your favorite “unsung” artist or songwriter, someone who you feel never gets their due? Talk a little bit about him/her.
Doyle Bramhall II. When he sings a song, his heart is just on the stage. He transports me. He’s an incredible songwriter and a ridiculous guitarist. He’s also just a nice person.

Is there an artist, genre, author, filmmaker, etc. who/which has had a significant impact/influence on you, but that influence can’t be directly heard in your music?
Probably most. Film for sure. I love Fassbinder. I have a lyric on the new record that goes “fear eats the soul”, which is from a title of one of his films.

Do you view songwriting as a calling, a gig, a hobby, other…?
Other. It’s a transmission.

Name one contemporary song that encourages you about the future of songwriting/pop music.
“Love Dog” by TV on the Radio. They give me hope.

On Meshell Ndegocello’s newest release, Devil’s Halo, she continues her tradition of curve-ball covers, this time with an undulating, super-sexy version of “Love You Down”, the ‘80s R&B hit originally performed by Ready for the World. Because the songs she covers can sometimes be nearly unrecognizable in her renderings, it’s tempting to call her arrangements “complete deconstructions”, but I think a more accurate term would be “creative distillations”: she gets to the heart of each piece and retains what’s needed (whether it’s a musical component or not), and proceeds from there to build a new version. In her hands, “Love You Down” is completely transformed.

Ndegeocello was definitely my adopted spiritual patron saint when I was working on my version of Pixies’ “I Bleed” (which featured Oakland’s mighty funk-soul queen, FEMI) for American Laundromat Records’ Pixies tribute album, Dig for Fire. That record featured tracks by the Rosebuds, They Might Be Giants, and other indie-rock stalwarts. Knowing that I would be the only non-indie-rocker on the project, and hearing stories about the ferocity of Pixies fans regarding covers of the group’s material, was a little daunting at first, but I took inspiration in the implicit attitude of Ndegeocello’s Parton cover—- the message I took from it was to wear my stylistic difference loud and proud.

In addition to the “Love You Down” cover, there’s also a bunch of cool new original material on Devil’s Halo. Visit meshell.com for information on the new album, discography, tour dates and more.

—PC Muñoz