Mar 4, 2018 - Meshell Ndegeocello is an American singer-songwriter, rapper. REM GENRE Soul REM DATE 2002 REM DISCID 2510B713 REM COMMENT.

Comet, Come to Me Label: Naive US Release Date: 2014-06-03 UK Release Date: 2014-06-03 If you don't know who Meshell Ndegeocello is by now, you're missing out. Following this spectacularly talented woman's career now for just more than 20 years has been nothing short of fascinating as she's managed to weave various musical cultural influences in and out of her albums, overlaying them with lyrics that run the gamut of post-feminist discourse, socioeconomic race relations, and good 'ole fashioned love and sex. Her voice is sensual and soothing, and though she doesn't sing so much as speak in most of her songs, you still become enveloped in the baritone nature of her libidinous vocals. She's an experience to behold, and although her latest effort Comet, Come to Me isn't the best example of her abilities, it still contains some of her best work.

Comet begins with a newly arranged opening guitar riff for Ndegeocello's cover version of Whodini's track 'Friends' (transcribed from the synth line that plays throughout the original). Her update is a welcome change, doing away with the now dated ‘80s style rap that is wrapped all over the original version. Urok v 9 klasse pushkin besi 2. But if you think you're in for an album reminiscent of Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape or even her fantastic debut Plantation Lullabies where Meshell rapped throughout, you'll be disappointed.

“Friends' is the only track on Comet where Meshell raps, making its placement on the album a bit misleading. It’s also the only track that is characteristically and sonically different than anything Meshell has done within the last 10 years. 'Friends' is followed by 'Tom', the first original song on the record, and while it's a strong track, it's nothing that we haven't heard before, either musically or lyrically. Meshell has always had an uncanny and heartbreaking knack for conveying through her poignant lyrics the drifting of love or dissolution of relationships in such a way as to suggest she’s thought intensely about this ending.

“Tom” is another example of that. “Good Day Bad” a fairly nice rendering of past pain rearing its ugly head in present day, follows, before the first track in the second thematic style that makes up Comet. Rukovodstvo dlya oficera po ohrane sudna. “Forget My Name” is the more reggae inspired piece that is mimicked in the far superior title track and the similarly paced “Modern Time”.

The album is thusly comprised of two musical themes, the first being the R&B/rock/soul style that has become a mainstay for Meshell since 2009’s Devil’s Halo, and the other is the stripped down minimalist reggae style that was done to better effect on the glorious 2003 record Comfort Woman. Ndegeocello has mentioned recently that she’s always been drawn to a style of patterned and layered music – reminiscent of old style dancehall reggae where synths and guitars and baselines and backing vocals would be layered on top of each other in a repetitious manner to drive its point home. And while she’s indicated that this type of styling is quite complex, that sonic adoption in Comet doesn’t come across as something that is intricately layered or really that involved –at least not in the way that she probably intended. This could probably be due to the overly minimalist feel of the record where the listener is left to wonder what could have been if more patterns were layered on top of these existing patterns.

While Comet, Come to Me has some brilliant pieces to it that would do nicely alongside some of her best work (tracks like “Comet, Come to Me”, “Conviction”, or “Tom”), it may be the first time in her fascinating career where an album of original material fails to resonate in any sonic reinvention. I’m not entirely sure why this may be, it hasn’t been for lack of want to connect to this record, however, with 12 similarly produced tracks (excluding the album opener “Friends”) there is little to distinguish this record from her most recent post-Maverick records: Devil’s Halo or the magnificent Weather. This pseudo let down may have something to do with the impossibly fantastic lead single “Conviction”, a song so heart wrenchingly moving, simply delivered and poignantly conveyed that the rest of the album has an impossibly high barometer of excellence to reach. “Conviction” is a double-metaphored track of tough love and sitting back while you watch someone you care for begin to self-destruct. In it, she sings: “I think I’m always right / You love to tell me that / You chose delusion so you can take him back / Turns out you were right and I was wrong / For me your life is just a sad song,” a chorus that stings in its brutality of realism.