Meshell Ndegeocello: Synonym review – vivid all-star reinventions of everyone from Bob Dylan to J-Lo
(Blue Note)In the jazz-soul singer’s ‘expression of queer liberation’, stars from Chaka Khan to Bill Callahan to Cynthia Erivo duet on equally varied songs from Cher to the Human League and beyondIt’s fair to say that Meshell Ndegeocello has made a career out of declining to stay in one place too long. Since helping spark the neo soul genre with her 1993 debut album, Plantation Lullabies, she has variously worked in the fields of jazz, R&B, alternative rock, reggae, fusion and gospel. Her last album, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, seemed intent on defying any kind of classification, leaping from Afrobeat funk to electronic abstraction to a closing track that sounded not unlike the xx: it won a Grammy for best alternative jazz album, which slightly smacked of the awards’ organisers throwing up their hands in defeat after a lengthy and fruitless attempt to decide in which cate
Alexis PetridisMusicPop and rock