Meshell Ndegeocello - The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams(Decca, 2007)9 out of 10The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams is the finest recording of R&B/jazz musician Meshell Ndegeocello's career. Previewed on an EP called
The Article 3 from 2006, her seventh and latest LP delivers on every promise of that release.Ndegeocello's first two records can be defined by a contemporary mid-'90s sound with a hip hop spirit and a defiant edge, anchored by her sultry alto and always-solid bass playing. She then spent the next decade exploring different facets of her sound. There are aspects worthwhile to all of these recordings (particularly 1996's
Peace Beyond Passion, her sophomore album and until now her defining work), but something has always been missing: a consistency and coherence that would enable one to call her more than "intriguing." On
The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams, she is now officially and thoroughly spellbinding. Her most eclectic and risky work has paradoxically resulted in her most consistent and coherent album. Though the production is heavily adorned with stellar studio tactics, her voice and bass still take the reins.Ndegeocello does more than refuse to compromise the boldness of her approach to music and the text she sets to it; she invites you in with warmth and a kind of sweetness. Exemplary to the approach is the surprising manner in which the record's two most dynamic songs manage long, twisting, verbose and true
hooks out of their enigmatic choruses - hooks longer than just a several-note motif or a well-placed "love you, baby." Opening song "The Sloganeer: Paradise" hurtles forward with a rock beat that bests Nine Inch Nails' "Perfect Drug," plunging into the uncanny valley - too robotic to be human, too human to be robotic - while Ndegeocello sings over 12 bars, "Get a bang out of life/ Suicide, straight to paradise/ If you're the chosen, why don't you just/ Kill yourself now, kill yourself now?"Even better, album centerpiece "Elliptical," the first song on the record I fell head-over-heels for, floats in the slow-jam cosmos with this unlikely refrain: "I received a message from God/ In the form of a rainbow/ Instructions from Captain Girard, it said:/ 'See how they respond when they make love'/ And you look into their eyes..." Part-crooned by R&B-soprano guest vocalist Sy Smith, part-sung-spoken-intoned-vocodered by Ndegeocello, "Elliptical" is one of the most uniquely compelling slow jams this reviewer has ever had the pleasure of encountering. I would even kill for a full LP's worth of "Elliptical"-styled tracks (though it would be something like a fresh take on her own
Comfort Woman from 2003), but Ndegeocello would prefer to offer her own path, and I offer no complaints in reply."Lovely Lovely" is a spoonful of sumptuous reggae-funk with a left-field Latin jam bridge. "Solomon" ups the dub ante with a wet melodica lead over its effect-soaked 'scape. Cousin to "The Sloganeer" with its brain-skipping beat concepts and three-chord funk-rock structure, "Article 3" (featuring, like "Solomon," a tasteful appearance by the often-not-so Pat Metheny, on his trademark synth-guitar leads) would be the hardest track on
The World if it weren't for the pounding album-climax "Relief: A Stripper Classic," in its first half a near-metal sludge, but in its second half a ballad in which the pounding beat remains while jazz piano transplants the guitars. The U.S. gets a bonus track called "Soul Spaceship," which strips away any loftiness and gets down to the gritty in the best way that the idea of "ridin' in my soul spaceship" can.In a sense, I have short-shrifted the record by discussing only its arrangement concepts and structural elements. The latest album in a career very strongly defined in one sense by the artist's political and spiritual beliefs,
The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams seems to be as much of a personal statement from Meshell Ndegeocello as she's ever crafted, and the character of Meshell is as worthy of study as her musical techniques. What moves
me more than content nine times out of ten, however, is the series of sounds that the music
is, and for that series to be this moving, no matter how sincerely and intelligently she has always delivered her persona, is what makes
The World her major achievement thus far. My breath is bated with anticipation for her next move.-Spencer Owen
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