Me’shell Ndegeocello was the first artist I ever saw in concert. It was in either 1993 or 1994, and the singer/bassist was riding high off of the critical success of Plantation Lullabies, her stellar, confrontational, passionate debut album. She delivered a killer set, but was in a dark mood, and ended the show by unstrapping her bass and letting it fall unceremoniously to the stage floor. It’s still in the top 5 of unsettling moments I’ve seen while at a concert-an artist clearly wrestling with demons, uncomfortable with all that came along with the sharing of her art.
I saw Me’shell again in 2002, touring behind Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, another stellar album in what had, up to that point, been a near-flawless catalog. The music was as great as ever, and this time around, Me’shell was in rare form: loose and funny, she was in a jocular mood and even dispensed relationship advice in between songs.
12 years later, Me’shell’s catalog is still near-flawless. I’ve spent quite a bit of the past couple of days trying to think of artists who have emerged in the past two decades or so that have yet to put out a bad (or at least, uninteresting) album. I can think of four artists: The Roots, Kanye West, Radiohead¹, and Me’shell. She has just released her 11th album: Comet, Come To Me, and while I’m still digesting it², I made a beeline to The Sinclair in Cambridge, MA to see Me’shell in concert for the third time.
She did not disappoint.
Joined by the tightest band she’s had in her career, Me’shell plowed through two sets: one containing “oldies”, and the other focusing almost exclusively on Comet. She opened with a 1-2-3 punch of songs from Plantation Lullabies; starting with a hushed version of the slow jam “Outside Your Door.” From there, she launched into a hypnotic version of “Dred Loc” and then kicked the party into high gear with “I’m Digging You (Like An Old Soul Record).” It barely took 15 minutes for the audience to be whipped into a frenzy. The diverse crowd-black folks in their thirties and forties, indie kids and more than a couple sisters of the sapphic variety-was in the palm of her hand.
Although Me’shell is a formidable front woman, she seemed most comfortable blending in with the band. She didn’t offer much in stage patter, but it’s not like one comes to a Me’shell show expecting to hear stories or make a new friend (although one particularly vocal woman in the audience didn’t get the memo, making repeated and loud overtures to Me’shell that were just short of annoying.) The power is all in the musicianship.
There wasn’t a bad song in the bunch. The crowd seemed most excited when Me’shell strapped on her bass and let loose into the dub-scented breakdowns that adorn many of Comet’s songs. She ended the show with a powerful cover of Whodini’s classic hit “Friends,” although she’d already established herself on the covers tip with an orgasmic version of Ready For The World’s R&B standard “Love You Down.”
As someone who is surrounded by music by profession and as a lifelong hobby, there are times when it’s hard to see through the smoke, mirrors and politics and be reminded of how much music has the power to make things inside you shift and rearrange your molecular structure. The fact that Me’shell (who I’d imagine deals with the same issues albeit from an incredibly different perspective than I) is still able to create vital art, evolve, and flourish, gives me hope. It was a hell of a show from a hell of a musician.
¹-We’ll give them a mulligan for Pablo Honey because “Creep” was on it.
²-I’ll review it, I promise.