CD review: Meshell Ndegeocello - "Weather"

One can only be ambivalent about Meshell Ndegeocello. On the one hand, the openly bisexual singer-songwriter tweaked conservative America’s nipples with the incendiary soul track Leviticus: Faggot. On the other, she collaborated with arch-yokel John Cougar Mellencamp on his banal cover of Van Morrison’s Wild Night.

Weather, produced by Madonna’s brother-in-law Joe Henry, avoids the extremes of Ndegeocello’s uneven career but fails to make an impression. Her acoustic lullabies go down smooth enough but middle of the road just doesn’t suit the singer, whose previous efforts were – for better or worse – impossible to ignore.

(Naïve)

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