Even if bassist/singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello had never developed beyond the elastic soul-funk hybrid she honed over the course of her first five albums, her legacy would be undeniable. But since 2003’s Comfort Woman, her last album for Madonna’s Maverick label, Ndegeocello has aspired to an increasingly sublime muse, finding power in a hushed intensity that nearly envelopes the audience when you see her in person. These days, Ndegeocello exudes an empathic luminosity from the stage, her demeanor light-years removed from the taunting homewrecker persona she presented on her biggest solo hit in 1993, the bass-popping “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night).” After venturing toward the outer edges of jazz for the past 15 years, Ndegeocello returns to accessible pop-R&B fare with her new covers album Ventriloquism, on which she finds a spiritual dimension in hits by Tina Turner, Prince, Al B. Sure!, TLC, George Clinton and even Snoop Dogg. Unsurprisingly, Ndegeocello reassembles the source material into a soul-searching meditation on the meaning of desire. Lots of people sing love songs, but few manage to capture what melts the heart quite like this. SABY REYES-KULKARNI
Meshell Ndegeocello
