TMD: Name some artists you’re currently into. I think that definitely hampered (“Hot Night”) from being the first single. TMD: In a song on your new album you say we’re “suffering in a world trade paradise,” which is ironic since you wrote this album months before the Sept. It’s hard, but I just have to believe waiting was good. I’m sure I could get upset my record wasn’t coming out, but instead I wrote more tunes. Everything happens for a reason and you can’t really question it because that’s how you create your own suffering. MN: Yeah, somebody blew up some buildings, made things difficult, but I understand. Do you feel about the numerous pushbacks it has faced?
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TMD: Your album was created almost a year ago but still hasn’t been released. It’s just trying to figure out where I fit in the world. My album discusses where I am in my life now. MN: Yes, it’s the last chapter in the memoir. Would you say your newest album is an amalgamation of all three? TMD: The larger themes of your first three albums dealt with race, spirituality and love, respectively. My album is a “mix tape.” I want you to copy it for your friends and let them check it out because that’s communal, that’s life. Hopefully, people who are afraid of Napster will see. That’s how you kept up to date with information, and I wanted this record to have that vibe. Also, there’s a great book by Oliver Sacks, which influenced me to look at my life “anthropologically.” I’m also from the generation where my friends made mix tapes all the time. He reflects the record industry as I see it, as this sort of do anything, do whatever you can to make money. Me’shell Ndegeocello: There’s a song by Stevie Wonder called “Misstra Know It All.” Tyrone Cookie Goldberg is the modern day Misstra Know It All. The Michigan Daily: What’s behind the title of your upcoming album Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape? She is an artist who would much rather blind listeners with a message than “bling, bling.”Ĭontroversial in her subject matter, but always real, Ndegeocello talks exclusively with The Michigan Daily from the Chelsea Hotel in New York about her life, politics, the human condition, the “gay” thing, the upcoming tour and her forthcoming studio album Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, released on June 4. A multidimensional singer, songwriter, musician and producer, Ndegeocello is one of the last of the true “revolutionary soul singers.” Often considered to be the predecessor to the current Neo-Soul boom (a la Jill Scott, D’Angelo, Maxwell), her music is innovative yet nonconforming.
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She is an unabashed artist who doesn’t compromise her art for huge record sales, nor does she cater to the devices of the mainstream. She’s fringed along the pop margins for almost a decade, creating a string of classic albums. Me’shell Ndegeocello is one of modern music’s most underrated artists.