Meshell Ndegeocello
17 787 fans
Artist's top tracks
| Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood | Meshell Ndegeocello, Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell, Marcus Sol | 04:10 | |
| Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear | Meshell Ndegeocello, Chris Bruce, Gabe Noel | 02:45 | |
| Sincerity | Meshell Ndegeocello | 05:29 | |
| Fool of Me | Meshell Ndegeocello | 03:32 | |
| The Things I've Seen Today | Madeleine Peyroux, Marc Ribot, Christopher Bruce, Meshell Ndegeocello | 03:43 | |
| Oysters | Benji Hughes, Meshell Ndegeocello | 02:40 | |
| Trust | Meshell Ndegeocello | 05:26 | |
| Satisfy | Meshell Ndegeocello | 04:05 | |
| Good Day Bad | Meshell Ndegeocello, Doyle Bramhall, Jonathan Wilson | 04:16 | |
| Faithful | Meshell Ndegeocello | 04:46 |
Most popular release
| Love Song #1 | |
| Come Smoke My Herb | |
| Andromeda and the Milky Way | |
| Love Song #2 |
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Biography
An extraordinarily versatile and energetic performer, Meshell Ndegeocello - who also works under the name of Meshell Suhaila Bashir-Shakur - is an acclaimed rapper, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, as well as being an ardent political activist campaigning on race and gender issues.
She was born Michelle Lynn Johnson in Berlin where her American father, a sergeant major who also played jazz saxophone, was serving in the army. She was mostly raised in Washington DC and attended the Duke Ellington School of Arts and adopted the surname of Ndegeocello when she was 17. She forged a local reputation playing in various DC bands before becoming one of the first artists signed to Madonna's Maverick Records label as a solo artist, releasing her debut album 'Plantation Lullabies' in 1993. It won her huge critical acclaim, encompassing hip-hop, soul, funk and jazz and was credited as a landmark release in the neo soul movement which incorporated a mix of soul, funk and R&B. It also spawned her first hit 'If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)' and went on to receive three Grammy nominations. She also had a hit duetting with John Mellencamp on a cover of Van Morrison's 'Wild Night' a year later and collaborated with Chaka Khan on the track 'Never Miss the Water' and sang on several movie soundtracks including 'White Man's Burden' and 'Money Talks'.
Her second album 'Peace Beyond Passion' was also well received with its broad range of styles and seductive tunes, political lyrics, new age sensitivity and a cover of Bill Withers' 'Who Is He and What Is He to You'. She went on to involve herself in numerous collaborations with jazz musicians and hip-hop artists and continued to explore a vast gamut of styles on subsequent solo releases 'Bitter' (1999), 'Cookie: The Anthropoligical Mixtape' (2002), 'Comfort Woman' (2003), 'The Spirit Music Jamia' (2005), 'Devil's Halo' (2009), 'Weather' (2011) and 'Comet Come to Me' (2014). In 2018 she surprised everyone again with a charity album of pop and R&B covers recorded in the 1990s with a proportion of the profits donated to the American Civil Liberties Union.