Me'Shell Ndegeocello

Like Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Prince before her, Meshell Ndegeocello grabbed influences wherever she found them, combining James Brown funk, Beatlesque rock, and iconoclastic lyrics into songs that put the listener in motion at both ends of the spinal column. Because she was born in 1969 and debuted in 1993, she added hip-hop and go-go to the mix; because she was a bisexual woman, she added a fearless form of feminism; all this anticipated the later arrival of Erykah Badu, India.Arie, Lauryn Hill, and Jill Scott.

Born Michelle Johnson, the young bohemian adopted the Swahili name for "free like a bird" (she originally spelled it Me'Shell NdegéOcello but later dropped the strange punctuation and capitaliza-tion; she pronounces it mih-SHEL en-DAY-gay-oh-CHEL-lo). She was first and foremost a monster bass player, and that emphasis on a fat, percolating bottom made all her music -- even her gloomiest ruminations on race, sex, and power -- funky. Her instrumental skills also led her to melodic and harmonic adventures that distinguished her tunes from most hip-hop.

An army brat who was raised in Europe and D.C., she wound up in New York after college, joined the Black Rock Coalition, and signed with Madonna's label. Her debut, Plantation Lullabies, garnered three Grammy nominations and wound up on lots of year-end 10-best lists. Virtually a Prince-like one-person production, it bristled with irresistible hooks -- rhythmic, melodic, and verbal ("I'm digging you like an old soul record"). She celebrated African-American culture, but she also criticized its self-betrayals in the form of addiction and misogyny.

She enjoyed a modest hit single with "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" from her debut and a bigger hit single with Van Morrison's "Wild Night," a duet with John Mellencamp from his album. But rather than build on this initial success by refining her formula, Ndegeocello took a left turn on her much-delayed second album, Peace Beyond Passion. Her music was thickened with vocal and keyboard harmonies; her lyrics adopted biblical imagery to discuss racial and sexual politics in pointed detail. The hooks weren't as sharp as before, but her big ambitions clicked more often than they misfired.

Bitter replaced dance tracks with chamber pop in a shift as radical as Prince's move from 1999 to Around the World in a Day or the Beach Boys' move from The Beach Boys Today to Pet Sounds. Ndegeocello and producer Craig Street used a string quartet, Prince alumni Wendy and Lisa, and a tasteful rhythm section to create the hushed intimacy and bruised intensity that goes with fresh heartbreak. Not just the lyrics but also the melodies and arrangements capture that period right after a breakup when every pore in your skin becomes a deep-dish antenna for hurt and hope.

As the title implies, Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape pulls together all of Ndegeocello's far-flung interests, scrambling hip-hop, leftist politics, synth strings, street-corner observations, deep funk, romantic confessions, D.C. go-go music, sexual boundary-crossing, pretty pop keyboards, and sampled black orators. The sprawling, 19-track, 71-minute CD has its peaks ("Pocketbook," "Barry Farms"), but it also has plenty of valleys where the melody, groove, and imagery remain underdeveloped. (GEOFF HIMES)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide