Meshell Ndegeocello - The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams (Limited Edition Soft Pack)
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Meshell NdegeocelloEdition: Music CD
Format: Limited Edition
CD Release Date: 2007-09-25
Music Label: Emarcy / Umgd
Soundtracks:
- Haditha
- The Sloganeer: Paradise
- Evolution
- Virgo
- Lovely Lovely
- Elliptical
- Shirk
- Article 3
- Michelle Johnson
- Headline
- Solomon
- Relief: A Stripper Classic
- Soul Spaceship [*]
Free Music Notes for The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams (Limited Edition Soft Pack)
Free Music Review: The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams
Hit: 5 Stars
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.
The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams (Limited Edition Soft Pack) Poster
Canonized, marginalized or just scrutinized, Meshell Ndegeocello has given up with the politics of explaining herself. After 20 years in an industry that has called her everything from avant garde to a dying breed, what unquestionably remains is the fearsome bassist, prolific songwriter and the creativity and curiosity of an authentic musical force. With that, she has earned critical acclaim, the unfailing respect of fellow players, songwriters and composers, and the dedication of her diverse, unclassifiable fans. For the sake of setting the record straight, a few brass tacks remain: Meshell was born in Germany, raised in DC, signed at 23, and has been nominated for 9 Grammy awards. With the upcoming release of The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams, Meshell Ndegeocello releases her 7th musical wonder to the world. With it, Meshell questions the inevitable, inconceivable brutality of the world with an arsenal of familiar themes: faith, rage, despair, fleeting joy and nagging doubt. For those who jones for the devastating bass lines and aching lyrics of prior releases, The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams does not disappoint. A continuation of the journey, it is a quest for truth, a plea for beauty, and an elegy for former selves. That said, the truest hallmark of a Meshell Ndegeocello record is in its honest evolution from the last, from any before, and as another stop on the way to transcendence. Let good music prevail!Meshell Ndegeocello's seventh studio album opens with the curious "Haditha." The track's warnings of apocalypse are as resistant to easy interpretation as they are (potentially) ironic in light of contemporary world news. But that's Ndegeocello for you. The inimitable bassist, songwriter, and nine-time Grammy nominee has ecstatically defied pigeonholing of any stripe since breaking into the spotlight with 1993's Plantation Lullabies. Here, she returns with the most genre- (and, as usual, sometimes gender-) bending work since 1996's Peace Beyond Passion. Ndegeocello's elastic bass playing, breathy crooning, and career-long resistance to the low-currency melodic aesthetic of outright pop music remain, but nevertheless, these 13 songs pack plenty of superficially new calling cards, including a penchant for the vocoder, recurring bilingualism, and guest appearances by jazzmen Pat Metheny, Jason Lindner, and Robert Glasper. Casual fans can recall Ndegeocello's early successes with the unapologetic return to pure funk workouts on display in songs like "Michelle Johnson," "Headline," and "Solomon." Even in its duller moments--the flaccid ballad "Shirk," the truncated sax solo that closes "Virgo," rainbow messages from God ("Elliptical")--this record fails to depart from the serious verve that has kept this artist relevant and refreshing for years. --Jason Kirk
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