yeah...i hate to admit this but IMHO meshell has surpassed Prince in the music catalog department...i listen to her work far more then i do his...and in a perfect world an intimidating bald lesbian would have just as much commercial/mainstream appeal as a draq queen midget dipped in pubic hair...that is the boy george quote, right?

sosgemini said:

I have no problems with Prince's overall catalog - it's pure genius, and given that he's released so much more music, like I said earlier, I'd vote for his entire catalog over Meshell's if I had to choose (which I luckily don't).

But right now, at this very moment, Meshell's output IMHO kicks Prince's little tail.
[Edited 10/17/07 22:41pm]

this cd is ridiculous.

it's so odd because i have never been impressed with any of her work, much to the disdain of people on this board and in the "real world."

but this work is just absolutely amazing.

damn. it's fucking good!
[Edited 10/17/07 22:54pm]

coltrane3 said:

oh no, i don't mean it as a diss to prince...i love his catalog too...but i listen to meshell more right now.

sosgemini said:

I'll definitely check out her new stuff!

On her myspace page

http://www.myspace.com/of...degeocello

on one of the tracks she's asked who's her favourite bass player. Without even thinking, she says "Prince". Then she's asked by the interviewer "I only thought of him as a guitar player" or something like that, and her answer is "he's killing on bass" IIRC. I don't want to add to any "Me'shell vs. Prince" stuff, I just think it's nice.

EmancipationLover said:

And from there, at the interviewer's request, she plays the bass (soooo tastefully) for a few bars. A cool moment, indeed.

sosgemini said:

Omou Sangare. Very popular Malian musician.

Who digs "Virgo"?

That tracks is pure gold

MikeMatronik said:

I do. And yes it is. As is Lovely lovely, Michell Johnson, Eliptical, Soul Spaceship...just to name a few.
Glad to see this CD getting so much love. It deserves it.
Best of 2007, Meshell and Radiohead. They are getting the most plays from me.

Graycap it's HARD to pick just one!..I like them all. Some of these songs have a "punk rock" feel to them..even without the electric guitar. This is my take:

"Paradise" - The bassline is sonic..the vocal is very "punk". Great tune.

"Evolution" - Meshell on all instruments! Very "Darling Nikki" like..The opening guitar riff kinda reminds me of "4 The Tears In Ur Eyes"..or at least that's the vibe I got from it..that middle offbeat lick is sick!!..great bass work...great use of space.

"Virgo" - Opening is very Claire Fisher like..a real nice tune..lush acoustic and slinky bass..vocals are nice too.

"Lovely Lovely" - I love her vocals on this one..and the lyrics..very sexy.
This is what every woman wants to hear a man say to her..and vice versa.

"Elliptical" - Another sexy,sexy song..vocals are tight..this song would have been right home on "Cookie" or "Comfort".

"Shirk" - Nice ballad..reminds me of something from "Bitter".

"Article 3" - More punk rock..The Japanese vocals are a trip..and Pat Metheny (one of my faves) ROCKS out on this. Never heard him play like that.

"Michelle Johnson" - Isn't that her real name? Great song..a cool soul-rock song. Meshell plays cool drums on this cut...I love the Hendrix/Isley like guitar soundscape at the end..very "Eletric Ladyland" like.

"Headline" - Another good laid back funk rock song.

"Solomon" - A positive song about parenthood..very reggae-dub like. Reminds me of the "Peace Beyond Passion" era.

"A Stripper Classic" - DAMN!!!..This song ROCKS!..the distorted guitar riff reminds me a little of Funkadelic. Just slow,evil, dark, and sexy. Wanting to be with a stripper..I used to know that feeling well. (lol)..the jazz piano at the end is a surprise.

"Soul Spaceship" - Kinda reminds me of a P outtake from 83 but darker.
Meshell on all instruments again! I love the synth bass on this cut and the guitar is nasty..I love the trip hop like ending.

All in all, this CD is incredible. This might be the closest thing Meshell does to a rock CD...and go ahead and shoot me for saying this..but this CD blows away
the recent CD Prince put out.

I'd like to hear Meshell do a entire CD by herself. I think she could easily pull it off. This is my new late nite headphone CD.

Bfunkthe1 said:

I love the fact that some tunes from the article 3 ep have been mixed or put with extra elements. I think Sloganeer has the bass more predominant in the mix and Elliptical is extended to 5 minutes

SPYZFAN1 said:

you nailed it. I couldnt place my finger on what that riff reminded me of, but its '4 the Tears..' great tune. Great album!

makes me smile this thread is surviving.

Graycap23 said:

I didn't even realize I ordered the limited edition but I do have Soul Spaceship (dug up this thread just to make sure I had it!!), DIGGIN' IT but just now getting into the album. Lovely Lovely (I think it's called) is cool shit, Soul Spaceship, a few others I don't know the titles of yet. MeShell just doesn't disappoint!

She's doing the Independent in SF VERY soon for anyone local, I've seen her too much this year or I'd go

unkemptpueblo said:

I'm so glad to see someone else say this!! I knew as soon as I heard it but it took me a minute to place the song, very "4 the Tears". LOVE IT

CalhounSq said:

This cd has been the only thing I've played for 2 weeks straight.

Graycap23 said:

Yea, I don't think it'll be leaving mine any time soon

CalhounSq said:

Which is your fav? I love Soul Spaceship.

Graycap23 said:

So far it's that "Lovely Lovely" one, but I've only had it in for 2 days to & from work, I need another week to really know what I'm talking about

It just becomes stronger each time I listen. For me, this album is like Lovesexy ~ it is meant to be played straight through and even though each song stands strong on it's own, as a body of work it is epic. I keep looking at the credits and finding new surprises. Some of the songs still have a defininte Tricky feeling to them. I'd love to hear them work together.

I finally got this record in from the mail last Wednesday and I was quite surprised in what I heard as a whole. It is definitely challenging and complex, but at the same time it's still Me'Shell all the way. I truly adore the substained level of quality and range of music that was put in this project. She, as always, demonstrates an amazing diversity on this record: going nearly everywhere from jazz, trip-hop, rock, punk, soul, and even a little bit of hip-hop. Even though there are some head-scratching moments, it all works and I'm glad that Me'Shell is in this zone she's in where she creates her own atmosphere and sound to make it acceptable to many audiences. It must take more than a single listen to love it, but I personally fell in love with it on the second listen with my headphones. I won't put it up there with Peace Beyond Passion, Cookie, or Bitter, but it is a great album.

My favorite cuts are: Solomon, Shirk (reminds me of something she would do from the Bitter-era), Michelle Johnson (my favorite line: "I'm just a soul on the planet/Trying to do good, be good and feel good"), Evolution, and Paradise.

sosgemini said:

Well, IMHO, Prince's 80's run ranks with the elite "runs" in modern popular music history, along with Stevie's in the 70's, the Beatles, Miles, et cetera. Me'Shell can't touch that.

Yet.

Her growing body of work from beginning to end is impressive, and there should be no doubt that she is his heir apparent. Few artists, if any, and yes, not even Prince, can compete with this run over the last decade:

Bitter
Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape
Comfort Woman
Spirit Music Jamia
The World Has Made Me The Woman Of My Dreams


Sadly, unlike many of her predecessors, she hasn't and likely won't achieve the popular recognition and success she should for this work. But it is brilliant.
[Edited 10/30/07 12:56pm]

I love the fact that she made a Rock album where the bass is treated as an instrument in it's own right as opposed to just a 3rd guitar.

Am I the only one feeling Solomon. Would love to get a Reggae album from her.

rebelsoldier said:

NO you are definitely not the only one feeling Solomon, that is an amazing track indeed...

.
[Edited 11/4/07 3:40am]

MUSIC LINKS

...AND...since several folks mentioned that they loved "Lovely Lovely"...how about a little LIVE clip that happens to include that lovely song?

ya want? ok then...enjoy! (and wait till you hear her cover that first track...WOW! KILLIN!)



http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IN2DGVGO



(mods don't worry, I'm not posting anything bad here, this is a public radio podcast thats already available for free to the public on iTunes so it's all good ...actually it's all GREAT!

support public radio!
support artists who still create great, challenging, unpredictable music!
enjoy folks!


.
[Edited 11/4/07 3:49am]

Graycap23 said:

Here are some reviews i came across...


...First someone who DIDN'T like it...

"* (1 star out of 5 rating)
'Not what I expected'
October 30, 2007
By William m Coles

Well Michelle has seemed to divulge all her talent to the Rock genre, which because of her own style is probably more profitable. I respect your gifts and brought this on a humble and this is definately no "Plantation Lullabies" too much of that heavy metal type rock for me and I had to resell it. It was BIzarre."



oooook then... Mr Coles is entitled to his opinion. He obviously has a specific genre preference and doesn't like his artists to step out of those boundries. If thats how he rolls then i guess thats fine for him...but i say his loss...

...and now several others who DID like it... (or actually LOVED it apparently)...




"***** (5 star out of 5 rating)
The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams,
October 22, 2007
By Mike Newmark

"Whatever you do, don't call Meshell Ndegeocello a diva--it's insulting. On the cover of 1996's Peace Beyond Passion, she could have been taken for Diana King, or Monica, or T-Boz, and its music only hinted at turning left from standard-issue R&B. That's all behind us now. Over a decade, Ndegeocello has used her leverage and her nine Grammy nominations to test her audience with consistently more challenging material, venturing into psych-rock and spoken-word while kicking her deep bass to the front lines. Along the way, she's established herself as a prophet of sorts, understanding the need for self-expression and warning us of others' attempts to impinge on it. And while that's not a novel technique, few soul artists weld their music and their sentiments into such a fascinating whole like Meshell Ndegeocello, exemplified by the sprawling, frequently brilliant The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams.

If Bitter revealed Ndegeocello's darker emotions, Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape upped the bass and the political overtones, and Comfort Woman bathed in styles divergent from R&B, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams is the place where she's comfortable doing it all at once. Yet this album busts out of the gate with a take-no-prisoners intensity that makes her previous masterworks look like warm-up exercises. The secret weapon may be her crop of collaborators--everyone from star mixer Bob Power to African folk singer Oumou Sangare to a handful of jazz greats--in all likelihood courtesy of her move to Mercury-owned jazz label Emarcy. Though World doesn't sound like a jazz record per se, it takes its inspiration from the genre's iconoclasm, and together, Ndegeocello and her guests work up a loud, dense, phantasmagoric sound. Oftentimes, it's difficult to tell where Ndegeocello ends and the others begin.

Before now, Cookie was Ndegocello's hardest-hitting record, balancing bump-and-grind funk with the dark, groove-laden sensuality for which she's become known. But World isn't just sensual--it's sexual, with more carnal bass and raunchy, squall-heavy guitar per minute than anything she's yet attempted. For Ndegeocello, sex isn't a brute act to be immediately forgotten or a strategy to sell records, but a bodily necessity, a human right, and manna for the soul. A line like "Let's make love and manifest creation" (in "Virgo") implies control over one's destiny--creating creation from the act of love--and moving closer to God, the creator, even as it's literal meaning speaks only to having a baby. On "Michelle Johnson," she explains, "I'm just a soul on the planet / I'm trying to do good, be good, and feel good." There's an apparent discrepancy between being good and feeling good here, as though they were mutually exclusive, and the rest of the song is devoted to feeling good ("Sometimes I drink too much / Smoke too much"), being good be damned.

So it would make sense that The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams is body music of a very particular stripe. In her apparent disregard for which sounds traditionally go together, Ndegeocello shatters R&B's musical boundaries and opens up a range of emotions. Think Subtle's For Hero: For Fool with the pricklier edges sanded down and more seductive textures. "Virgo" and "Elliptical" are particularly successful on this front, where Ndegeocello and her instrumentalists smear sci-fi soul-isms over a bed of clean bass and spare drum clicks. The lovely but reproachful "Shirk"--sung by Ndegeocello and Oumou Sangare, with jazz near-legend Pat Metheny on acoustic guitar--signals a turning of the tides before the one-two-three punch of "Article 3," "Michelle Johnson," and "Headline," a trio of guitar-led blazers more snarling and confrontational than anyone raised on Peace Beyond Passion could have expected. It's wildly ambitious music and it works, steeping you so fully in Ndegocello's universe that you'll easily forget that World is, by some margin, her most difficult outing to date.

What's missing from this album are things that don't matter much considering its context: a standout, a true R&B number, an epic slow-burner like "Akel Dama" from Cookie. It's more noteworthy that World is one of the most enormous-sounding soul records of the 2000s, dwarfing Sa-Ra's The Hollywood Recordings in about two-thirds of the time. And though only one song makes it to 150 bpm, World feels fast, running ever more swiftly along a tightly pulled zip-line until the soothing "Solomon" breaks the tension. The fact that Ndegeocello's best songs are her most forceful isn't entirely an accident; she has her hands gripped around the controls, from the writing to the playing to the arrangement, all in the service of making a statement. World makes it obvious that Ndegeocello believes in herself enough to make those statements, and to consequently release something this bold, this audacious, and this flat-out incredible. She'll make a believer out of you, too."





"***** (5 star out of 5 rating)
More brilliance.
November 1, 2007
By Dawoud Kringle "Mysticjaz"

Meshell is unique. There simply isn't anyone like her in any genre. A fearless musical warrior who follows her own vision regardless of accepted genres or markets. Such people are rare. And Meshell navigates these perilous waters with the skill and single mindedness of Ahab; guided by an inner spiritual vision that she presents without wearing it on her sleave.

Her previous CD Dance of the Infidels was a departure from what had been the general territory (and I do mean general) she'd treaded in the past. It was almost as if she held the role of enabler; an almost maternal figure wherein her own presence was downplayed in favor of bringing out the voices of the other musicians.

TWHMMTMOMD holds this quiality. But here she steps back into the forefront. And like all her musical works, she is painfully honest. Most artists hide themselves in their music. Meshell reveals herself.

Some of these tracks show a balance between contrasting elements. For example, "The Sloganeer" is a punkish angry song about those who abuse religious teachings for political purposes; yet there is an unmistakable undercurrent of sadness in the song. As if her anger was inspired by a desire to persuade rather than condem. It reminds me of the Qur'an (Meshell is a Muslim) in that English translations often sound angry and severe; while the tone of the original Arabic is sad and compassionate.

As always, the musicianship here is masterful, the production flawless, and the whole CD flows easily and seamlessly through a variety of moods and ideas.

All in all, a masterpiece. But then again, this is Meshel Ndegeocello. Can we expect anything less?"





"***** (5 star out of 5 rating)
Brilliance beyond category
October 30, 2007
By Jessica

Layers of sound. Pulsating rhythms. Lyrics that challenge you to expand beyond your own self-imposed boundaries. Meshell has delivered all this and more on this stunning new record.

Is this funk or soul or dance or rock or jazz? Or is this a new category of music: Meshell Ndegeocello.

Meshell will make you dance, but she will also make you think. Give it a try. I doubt you will be disappointed.

'Why am I here? To make love and shine my light. To make love and manifest creation.'"






"***** (5 star out of 5 rating)
Utterly fantastic,
October 24, 2007
By Olukayode Balogun

Ah, Meshell. The thing I love the most about this woman is how she mixes it up with every new release, always bringing us something new, never visiting the same terrain twice. She's flirted with funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz and the blues (but has fallen in love with none of them, apparently), infusing each flirtation with her deep, sexy basslines, poetry, the spoken word and rap; all the while singing songs of joy & pain, love & life and God & spirituality in that voice that does things to my soul I'll never be able to articulate as long as I live. As for her lyrics, sometimes I have to go sit down and think about them for a minute before I fully understand them. I think she's just awesome.

To be honest, I don't know what music genre she's playing around with here. It's not like anything I've ever heard before (though there was a moment that made me think of Bloc Party) but it's different, it's interesting and I like it. This is one musician who is steadfastly refusing to compromise her artistic integrity in the chase for SoundScan figures, airplay or awards. I have so much respect for her.

Part frenetic, part soothing, always mysterious and exciting, it's not for the faint-hearted. There are no radio/MTV/BET/middle school-age-friendly little ditties on offer here. This is deep stuff. It's challenging. Check out the prophetic pronouncements on the intro "Haditha" for a start. Personally, I found them worrying.

I haven't quite figured it all out yet after repeated listening, but I know for a fact I'm going to have a lot of fun trying. If you feel like a musical challenge and trying something far removed from the mediocre mainstream and with real bite, give this one a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Guest appearances by guitarists David Gilmore (of Pink Floyd fame) & Pat Metheny, vocalists Sy Smith & Thandiswa Mazwai and pianist Robert Glasper, lift the proceedings to a whole new level, especially for me as I'm a fan of all of them. Utterly fantastic."






"***** (5 star out of 5 rating)
Where R&B/Soul music should have been by now
October 12, 2007
By SBLove99

If every R&B artist was as nataurally good as Meshell, the whole scene would be on another level. Meshell continues to move Soul music into the future, whether or not the masses hear her. She is a genuine artist in the company of Prince, Miles Davis, & EWF.

This offering could really be called Comfort Woman 2.0; She picks up where she left off with that timeless classic and moves forward even more progressively layering funk & Soul, rock & techno rolled into one cohesive muscial trip light years ahead of anything being released by american R&B/Soul artists today. Brutally honest, spiritual, and just straight funky, the girl is BAD! Keep tapping into that Dark Matter, sister.

Mark my words, in the future her releases will be marked with the Legacy imprint, just like Miles.

Choice Tracks: Sloganeer, Evolution, Virgo, Shirk, lovely,lovely & Article 3, the headbanger! Hey, translate those African Lyrics for me, Pleeeeease!!!"



thats just a sample, and for what its worth, most of the reviews have been stellar (5 stars)

.

I dig the reviews.....funny how every one is trying 2 put a label on the genre of music.

Can't be done.
[Edited 11/4/07 7:47am]

It's a really good album. I'm still failry new to it, but I think Planet Earth is a better album.
[Edited 11/4/07 8:14am]

Romeoblu said:

PLANET EARTH cant hold a candle to Meshell's latest CD.....

Romeoblu said: