Me'Shell NdegeOcello
b. Me'Shell Ndegé Ocello, Berlin, West Germany. Introduced by her PR machine as a female equivalent to Prince, Me'Shell has embarked on a solo career which embraces both the hip-hop and R&B markets. Like Prince, she is a multi-instrumentalist, and writes, produces and plays on all her songs. Her given name was Swahili, indicating Free Like A Bird. After a nomadic life as the child of a US forces man, her first love was art rather than the jazz skills of her father and brother. She was, however, inexorably drawn to music as she grew, and much of her youth was spent in Washington's ‘go-go’ scene, where at one point she was actually shot at whilst on stage with Little Bennie and the Masters, at the Cherry Atlantic Skating Rink. Her interest in music had blossomed when her brother played guitar in a local band, whose bass player left his instrument lying around after rehearsal. She was a quick convert. At the age of 19, she uprooted for New York ‘with my baby and my bass’. There she joined Living Colour's Black Rock Coalition, and recorded sessions for artists of the calibre of Caron Wheeler and Steve Coleman. She was the musical director for Arrested Development's Saturday Night Live show, though her own demos were receiving little response. Until, that is, Madonna stepped in, inviting her to become one of the first artists signed to her Maverick empire. A palpable maturity was at work on her debut, with a combination of acid jazz and R&B rhythms backing her beat poetry. She scored a breakthrough hit with If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night), a provocative post-feminist statement. Despite the sexual overtones of her packaging, she was not averse to strong political statements; material like Step Into The Projects retaining a cutting edge. Or the line ‘The white man shall forever sleep with one eye open’ (from Shoot'n Up And Gett'n High), which had an almost Public Enemy-like ring to it. The album was produced by A Tribe Called Quest's Bob Power, alongside guests including DJ Premier ( Gang Starr) and Geri Allen ( Blue Note). Though she attracted some criticism for espousing the corporate rebellion angle, her connections with Maverick hardly passing unobserved, there was substance and fire in the best of her work.