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© St. Petersburg Times, published May 12, 2002
MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO, COOKIE: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL MIXTAPE (MAVERICK) On her first new album in two years, bassist and singer Meshell Ndegeocello offers stirring ruminations on life, love, politics and sex. Ndegeocello's music is candid; many of her songs are id-invoking sexual journeys, accented by undulating bass lines and psychedelic grooves. Ndegeocello sounds free, leading listeners inward on her organic, improvisational tunes.
Ndegeocello's music tackles Afrocentric themes with a fierce sense of identity. She even samples speeches by black activists Dick Gregory and Angela Davis. Dead N--- Blvd rails against a society which perpetuates lives of emotional poverty. Meshell questions the meaning of freedom ("no longer do I blame others / for the way that we be/ 'cause n--- need to redefine/ what it means to be free").
Ndegeocello directs her energy toward romance in Pocketbook, a smoky meditation on desire. Her wah-wah bass and playful musings tell of her attraction to a woman to whom she sings "ya like to have money in your pocketbook/ and that's alright." The chorus, full of programmed drum beats, brims with lust.
Love ballads also populate Cookie, including Trust with its sleek bass and suggestive lyrics. Things turn tender in Earth, bathed in sinewy vox and Rhodes. She croons "you're my earth in paradise."
Better by the Pound, a cover of a George Clinton tune, brings the funk in a syrupy, brass-accompanied jam. She sings "pleasure is the motivation / for the human race." Ndegeocello's poetic hip-hop reflects that belief, fusing social commentary with a textured musical vision. A.
-- BRIAN ORLOFF, Times correspondent
LAURYN HILL, MTV UNPLUGGED 2.0 (COLUMBIA) As the adage says, music definitely has healing powers. Lauryn Hill's recent MTV Unplugged session, now captured on CD, served as part comeback concert, part therapy session. Emotionally battered and suffering from bouts of depression, Hill has not released an album of new material since her 1998 mega-hit, the multi-Grammy winning The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. This two-disc collection features new songs penned by Hill; she performs accompanied only by her own modest acoustic-guitar strumming.
Hill sounds empowered, showering her audience in praise and self-love homilies between tunes. Seeming wiser and more reflective, she tells the audience, "I used to be a performer. I really don't consider myself a performer so much anymore." Instead, Hill feels she should share just share her art without pretenses.
Mr. Intentional begins with a melodic introduction. Hill, in raspy voice, sings, "you're such a hopeless victim," but with motherly affection, not vitriol. The song unravels around Hill's tough-love barbs.
Other songs, such as the Marley-tinged Oh Jerusalem reflect Hill's newfound contentment. She closes the first disc with an emotional wallop -- especially with the unfettered Just Want You Around, and I Gotta Find a Peace of Mind, in which Hill breaks down in tearful catharsis. Mystery of Iniquity showcases Hill's piercing lyrics as she raps over waning guitar.
This album is for dedicated Hill fans. Despite a homogenous sound, MTV Unplugged 2.0 proves that Hill has a career ahead of her, one worth awaiting with whetted appetite. B.
-- B.O.
EWA PODLES, RUSSIAN ARIAS (DELOS) The world of Russian opera, on stage as much as off, revels in crisis, melancholy and the sheer largesse of a dramatic gesture. Thus, a recording devoted to its most famous arias holds plenty of promise for a gripping musical experience that no one would call easy listening.
The unique narrative demands of this music on a singer exclude small, lyric voices. Few singers in our time have both the surplus of vocal resources and the Slavic sensibility to bring these works to life.
The remarkable Polish-born singer Ewa Podles does just that, and with the kind of compelling urgency and vocal opulence that linger in the memory long after the last strains of the music have vanished. For its luxuriousness as much as for its precision, Podles' earnest contralto brings to mind both Kathleen Ferrier and Marilyn Horne. Even so, she is not one to rely on the beauty of her instrument, demonstrating just how shrewd an interpreter she is as she moves deftly into every compositional cranny.
From the opening notes of Borodin's affecting Konchakovna's Cavatina, the dark-hued mezzo centerpiece of his exotic Prince Igor, it's obvious Podles inhabits the text. Witness her penetrating manipulation, on a single breath, of the serpentine melisma that forms around the words "mili moi, chas nastal" ("the hour draws near, my dear one"). Her inflective vocabulary is so varied and compelling that she irradiates the text with meaning. Even a non-Russian speaker will understand the chilling vow with which, as Joan of Arc in Tchaikovsky's Maid of Orleans, she abandons her friends with a promise never to return.
In Rodion Schedrin's decadent Limericks and Dance from Not for Love Alone, Podles is charged with portraying the chairman of an agricultural collective. A more flirtatious or alluring characterization than Podles' would be hard to imagine.
But not even Vishnevskaya can match her extraordinary reading of Mussorgsky's vivid, emotionally graphic Songs and Dances of Death. Her haunting evocation of the Grim Reaper is unsettling, just as it should be.
The Philharmonia of Russia, elegantly led by Constantine Orbelian, is equally lush but also supportive, an ideal complement to Podles' sultry singing and dramatic flair. A-plus.
-- JOHN BELL YOUNG, Times correspondent