Run, don't walk, to buy Meshell's new CD Cookie.

If Aretha Franklin is the queen of soul and Mary J Blige the queen of hip hop, then Meshell Ndegeocello should be crowned the queen of musical truth. She's one of the few artists who has the courage to think critically, progressively and subversively about life, love, money, culture, identity, politics, religion, and sexuality. Cookie is a classic example.

This is an amazing CD. It cannot be fully appreciated in one or two listenings. I've listened to it at least a dozen times and each time I hear something I didn't notice before that blows me away. I loved every track on the CD except the Rockwilder and Missy Elliot remix of "Pocketbook," but I still found a few highlights, listed below.

The very first words of the first song of the CD set the tone: "You sell your soul like you sell a piece of ass," she says. Right from the beginning, she puts you on notice that the music to follow is a critique of the bling bling culture of modern urban materialism where wealth and fame transcend values and ideas. Many of us have been willingly ensnared in the culture of success that Meshell says is "reinforced by your TV shows, exotic and beautiful videos."

Meshell understands the imprint of racism and white supremacy, but she doesn't make it easy for black people to blame the proverbial "Man" for all our woes. "Somebody said our greatest destiny is to become white," she says, "but white is not pure and hate is not pride." Thus, while she challenges the racist culture of assimilation she simultaneously challenges the notion that people of color can hate their way to freedom. "No longer do I blame others for the way that we be. Niggas need to redefine what it means to be free," she says.

In the same song, she questions our collective and individual priorities in the black community. "You campaign for every dead nigga boulevard," she says, "so y'all young motherfuckers can drive down in your fancy cars." After spending 15 minutes in traffic Sunday to travel 4 blocks on 125th Street (aka Martin Luther King Boulevard), I was really feeling that line. How could anyone miss the contrast between the showcase of every new Mercedes, Lexus and BMW in the catalog and the bombed-out, burned-down ghetto through which they drove? And we complain that there aren't enough resources devoted to our community.

When self-interested materialism becomes a community expectation, the consequences are profound. "You try to hold on to some Africa of the past," Meshell says, but "one must remember that other Africans helped enslave your ass. Everybody's just trying to make that dollar." In other words, don't think they won't sell you into slavery again, or haven't already.

The song ends with an audio sample of Dick Gregory warning young people of the perils of placing property rights ahead of human rights. On the CD notes, Meshell writes, "Let us look at the system and let us look at ourselves." Goodness knows, there's plenty of responsibility to be shared.

The lesson doesn't end with Dick Gregory. The next words we hear are from Angela Davis, from a 1999 speech in which she proudly professes her communist past and socialist present. Meshell interjects, "Let's talk."

"Hot Night" mixes rap, R&B, and jazz into a multi-layered musical tour de force. Her rap is meaningful, measured, and lyrical. The jazz horns punctuate the chorus without overpowering the song. The Angela Davis voiceover spills perfectly from the foreground to the background and into the foreground again. The lyrics are vintage Meshell, engaged in "the fight of a revolutionary soul singer." Even when the ideas are pedestrian, as when she complains about niggas fighting for $100 Jordan sneakers, her timing and delivery are so exceptional that the words sound fresh and new.

Again, Meshell's CD notes help drive the point. She writes, "When will we revolt against the money culture that tells us we are never good enough, that we will never have enough, that we are never beautiful enough, that we can never be whole unless we buy product x? The powers of manipulation (advertisement) play our true selves against our fears and insecurities -- and we let them."

"Priorities" starts off like a musical version of Meshell's autobiography, from her Washington, D.C. roots to her rejection of the modern "pimp and thug mentality." But she turns it into a love song as she sings to a particular individual. "I just wanna talk and get to know you," she says. If that's not clear, she adds, "I ain't gonna pay your rent. All I got is love and time to spend."

I saw Meshell perform "Pocketbook" at Tonic in New York and listening to it on the CD gave me a much better understanding of Meshell's message. This radio-friendly tune seems to celebrate the joy of partying, but also balances it with some level of social consciousness or personal awareness. The catchy chorus refrain communicates both messages. "You like to have money in your pocketbook, and that's all right. You got a lot of sense running through your bones, and that's all right." Here Meshell sings to a woman who likes money and partying but who also travels, doesn't watch TV, and knows what she makes "after taxes." And that's all right.

I've seen Meshell perform "Barry Farms" twice in the past year and I have to say, it's my new favorite Meshell tune. Although I'm not a fan of go-go music, this song slowly pulls you into it with the music and then wraps you up with the story.

Meshell recounts a high school experience with a 17-year-old female friend (Shorty) who one night "wanted to see just how far it could go." When word of their relationship got around town, Shorty stopped calling Meshell and disappeared. One day they ran into each other. What happened next can best be described by Meshell's own lyrics from the song. You have to hear it yourself to appreciate it. But the chorus gives you a hint. "She couldn't love me without shame. She only wanted me for one thing."

"Trust" is a love song, and the slow-paced music is so beautiful and erotic, you may never hear the words. After a minute and 20 seconds of instrumental introduction, she sings, "Put your tongue in my mouth." Then, "grab my ass...lay me down...spread my legs," she says, finally asking, "tell me, what's it like inside me?" In her CD notes, she asks can we "handle what we'd see if we let go of what the world tells us this space should be?"

Akel Dama is so multi-layered that I can't say that I fully understand it after more than a dozen plays, but it's layers are beautifully interwoven. The threads of jazz piano, bass, poetry, song, and rap interspersed between the fabric produce a beautiful tapestry of peacefulness. The pulsating, sometimes irregular, throb of a heart beat figuratively breathes life into the song. "I believe in things you cannot see. To some, God is the light that leads them to believe that they see and know everything." But Meshell challenges this notion. To be born again truly, you'd have to gouge out your eyes and cut out your tongue and grieve, she says, and "cry like a baby that's been snatched away."

Countee Cullen sings the virtues of poetry, Gil Scott Heron rhymes about Harlem, and Etheridge Knight remembers his ancestry from the walls of a prison cell. With the poets' words in the foreground, the haunting beat of the heart fades away as soft melodies flow from the keys of the piano to fill the emptiness. The heart beats again and the song ends.

"Earth" is a radio-friendly love song, but in Meshell's sensuous voice the song takes on an ethereal quality. Not since Erykah Badu's "Orange Moon" has a soul artist captured the experience of love so elegantly through the metaphor of the planets. "Let me be the sun that you adore," she sings, "you're my earth."

"Better By the Pound" is a remake of the 1975 George Clinton classic. "There's a tidal wave of mysticism surging through our space age generation." Whatever that means, it's said a lot in the song. Apparently it's a critique of our modern pharmaceutical culture. Meshell changes the song a little from Clinton's version, substituting the vague and ambiguous pronoun "they," for example, where Clinton referred to Satan. She also writes in her CD notes, "prozac and ritalin ain't our friends."

The idea of this song is pretty simple. "God, fear, and money make the world go round and round." "If Jesus was alive today he'd be incarcerated with the rest of the brothers while the devil would have a great apartment on the upper east side, be a guest v.j. on total request live," she says. "The devil's work is never done," she sings, the melody changes, and the song ends chillingly with two shots fired. Although it's not clear who's supposed to be shot, you can bet it's not the devil.

This rock/soul tune might very well be the most controversial on the CD. Meshell imagines herself martyred and crucified, calling out to Gabriel in vain. She asks for God's forgiveness and then offers her own forgiveness to God for failing her. "I was blind, now I see that your world's so fucked that there are no more angels left to comfort me."

In part 2 of "Dead Nigga Blvd.," Meshell paraphrases the famous question from the Bible. What is a man profited if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul? The song features a stirring guitar solo by Kid Funkadelic and a voiceover from a Washington, D.C. prisoner, who Meshell reminds us is "one of two million human beings being incarcerated in America." The unnamed prisoner describes the step-by-step process by which he and other ordinary people wind up in prison.

This Interlude provides another space for poets. This time Claude McKay recites his famous poem, "If We Must Die." He's followed by June Jordan and Etheridge Knight, while Meshell's voice sings "in my weariness" over and over again in a slow cadence.

I could have done without this song, but it's likely to be the biggest hit on the CD, if only because it features so many big names in hip hop. It's a good song, but it just doesn't seem to flow with the feel of the rest of the CD. Lyrically, it's very similar to the original "Pocketbook," but musically, it seems to have "a lot going on." It's one of those tunes that people will overplay today and then won't play it five years from now. In contrast, the rest of the music on the CD is timeless in word and sound.

"Freedom" isn't a title of a song on the CD. It's the idea behind the CD. "Niggas need to redefine what it means to be free," she says on the first track. On the notes for her CD, Meshell explains, "No longer do I search for a Messiah." Salvation is not to be found in an individual, she says. "Freedom is not given or taken, it is realized."

Imagine how powerful we will be when we don't try to get our freedom from someone else but realize we are already free, if we allow ourselves to be.

© Copyright 2002 by Keith Boykin.