Editor’s Note: From Albumism’s inception back in 2016, we’ve remained unabashedly and unequivocally passionate about our mission of celebrating the world's love affairs with albums past, present and future.
But while our devotion to the album as an art form has remained steadfast, as evidenced by our deepening repository of individual album tributes and reviews, we’ve admittedly seldom taken the opportunity to explicitly articulate our reverence for the virtues of artists’ complete album repertoires as a whole.
Hence why we’ve decided to showcase what we believe to be the most dynamic discographies of all time in this recurring series. In doing so, we hope to better understand the broader creative context within which our most beloved individual albums exist, while acknowledging the full breadth of their creators’ artistry, career arcs, and overall contributions to the ever-evolving musical landscape.
We hope you enjoy this series and be sure to check here periodically for the latest installments.
MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO
Studio Albums: Plantation Lullabies (1993) | Peace Beyond Passion (1996) | Bitter (1999) | Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape (2002) | Comfort Woman (2003) | The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel (2005) | The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams (2007) | Devil's Halo (2009) | Weather (2011) | Pour une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone (2012) | Comet, Come to Me (2014) | Ventriloquism (2018) | The Omnichord Real Book (2023) | No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin (2024) | Readers’ Poll Results
Meshell Ndegeocello can lay partial claim to the rebirth of organic soul music (or neo-soul to give it its most accepted name) with her 1993 debut Plantation Lullabies and follow-up Peace Beyond Passion from 1996. Signed to Madonna’s Maverick label, she appeared to live up to that label’s name. With fierce desires for love and equality for herself and others, she blazed a trail that others would follow.
Though she mellowed with age, the quality rarely dropped. From her flawlessly beautiful Bitter to her most recent album Ventriloquism (a set of astonishing covers), she has covered a huge array of genres. Each record bears her unmistakable artistry but with unique textures and ideas brought together from funk, soul, rock, jazz and almost any other genre you might care to imagine.
Alongside her seemingly effortless grooves and sense of melody are her majestic bass playing (as well as other instruments) and a voice that is capable of hectoring bigots in one breath and whispering sensual sweet nothings the next—there is nothing she cannot do.
It was entirely fitting for her, a shape-shifting artist, to record a record devoted to covers of Nina Simone songs. Just as the impeccable Simone couldn’t be pigeonholed, so Ndegeocello emulates her by rarely repeating ground she has already covered. Sometimes the songwriting can be oblique and more difficult to digest, sometimes it's a stone-cold groove that thrills immediately, but it is all imbued with the sense of her restless spirituality.
Patrick’s 3 Favorite Meshell Ndegeocello Albums of All Time:
1. Bitter (1999)
2. Peace Beyond Passion (1996)
3. Comfort Woman (2003)
LISTEN & WATCH: