Meshell Ndegeocello just keeps evolving through a genre-jumping musical career informed by her perspective as a bisexual woman of color who possesses boundless creative energy. Ndegeocello’s latest album, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, is her 14th studio recording over the last three decades, a conceptually curious effort that, as its title would suggest, celebrates her roots through the contributions of various African-American artists and intellectuals, none more important than Baldwin.
No More Water is her second album for the Blue Note label in two years following 2023’s stellar, Grammy-winning The Omnichord Real Book, a kaleidoscopic musical and narrative journey that delved deeper into jazz than anything in her discography. No More Water is a sister companion of sorts, 17 tracks clocking in at more than 76 minutes, which is even longer than its predecessor. As ever, Ndegeocello’s bass is prominent, but she doesn’t hesitate to revel in the multifarious contributions of collaborators who add sonic nuance and vocal texture.
“No one does anything alone,” Ndegeocello said in a recent New York Times interview about the inclusion of musical collaborators on her projects. “There are artists like Prince and Stevie Wonder who can do that all themselves. I just like (the) band experience. I just think there’s something very African about it. It makes the music feel a certain way.”
“Another Country,” inspired by Baldwin’s novel of the same name, feels like a culmination of Ndegeocello’s recent work, a moving tribute to those who came before with an incessant rhythmic pattern, a spare piano line and hypnotic guitar synthesizer backing Justin Hicks’ penetrating voice, which delivers lyrics envisioning a country more welcoming to those with brown skin.
Even more direct is “Baldwin Manifesto 1,” which features spoken-word artist Staceyann Chin as she delivers the incisive ruminations of the project’s namesake: “The artist’s struggle for integrity is a kind of metaphor for the universal and daily struggle of all human beings on the face of this terrifying globe to get to become human beings.”
The album closes with the atmospheric “Down at the Cross,” another searching meditation on the possibility of a better, more inclusive world than the one Baldwin endured. It’s Ndegeocello’s reminder that we’re not there yet.
Meshell Ndegeocello plays Ludlow Garage at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 24. More info: ludlowgaragecincinnati.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Jan. 8 print edition.
This article appears in Dec 11-24, 2024.