Meshell Ndegeocello isn't sweating expectations

Her new album is mesmerizing. Her live show is a meditation on restraint.

Meshell Ndegeocello, taking the far view. (Charlie Gross)

A dozen years ago almost to the week, I saw Meshell Ndegeocello perform the music of Prince at the Highline Ballroom in New York. Drawing from a deep affinity, she redrew songs like “Sign o’ the Times” and “Lady Cab Driver” in her own shadowy line. I want to say she also finessed “All the Critics Love U in New York” — but did she? I didn’t mention that song in my concert review, and it doesn’t show up in set lists from elsewhere on that tour. I remember it, though. Am I misremembering?

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Ndegeocello did perform the song. Here is Prince’s original version from 1999, helpfully in the same vocal register as Meshell. Let’s picture her reciting the opening verse, phrasing tersely over a New Wave pulse:

You can dance if you want to
All the critics love you in New York
You don’t have to keep the beat
They’ll still think it's neat
In New York
You can wear what you want to, it doesn’t matter
In New York
You could cut off all your hair
I don’t think they’d care
In New York

I’m thinking about Prince’s wryly ambivalent, highly self-conscious song as I reflect on the Meshell Ndegeocello show I caught last night at Ardmore Music Hall — and, more broadly, on the reception to her new album, The Omnichord Real Book.

Meshell Ndegeocello and band, Ardmore Music Hall, June 20, 2023. (Nate Chinen)

I won’t restate my own assessment of the album, which I reviewed for NPR Music. The tl;dr version is that I think Meshell’s latest is a flat-out marvel of a particular sort: inward-seeking, outward-gazing, cryptic yet unsparing in its emotional surrender.