Clearly Meshell Ndegeocello is not going to let the artistic grass grow under her feet. No sooner had she garnered huge acclaim for her Blue Note Records debut The Omnichord Real Book (2023), than she was back curating and leading a tribute to Sun Ra as the latest installment of the Red Hot album series.
That rich creative seam looks set to continue as she announces her new album, inspired by the life and works of the iconic James Baldwin. No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin is due to be released on August 2nd—the centenary of Baldwin’s birth—and features an array of collaborators from the recent, aforementioned projects.
But the seeds of the forthcoming release go back almost a decade to 2016 and Ndegeocello’s performance at The Harlem Stage Gatehouse as part of their annual showcase honoring Baldwin. Taking inspiration from Baldwin’s seminal essay The Fire Next Time, Ndegeocello developed a deep affinity with the text, using it as a form of spiritual guide, before embarking on her musical interpretation of the wisdom she found within.
‘No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin’ will arrive August 2nd.
The two songs released to mark the announcement of the album offer an intriguing glimpse into the full project. The opening track of the forthcoming album is “Travel” that features the familiar vocals of Justin Hicks. Here, he crawls inside the mind of a man with suicidal thoughts—a familiar theme of Baldwin’s work—and offers lines that become burned onto the memory of the listener, such as “I’ll stay away / with all the work to be done / I’ll be bleeding as you bake in the sun.”
“Raise The Roof” marks this announcement in the form of a searing spoken word piece by Staceyann Chin that rages at the grim realities of a white supremacist state that tramples on Black lives with reckless abandon, free from the consequences of their inhumane actions. Both hit home in the same way that Baldwin’s work does and trail an album well worth waiting for.
Roll on August and the latest chapter in Ndegeocello’s increasingly vital discography.
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