Celebrating Meshell Ndegeocello for Black History Month

Meshell Ndegeocello — born Michelle Lynn Johnson in 1968 — is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter with more than three decades of work behind her. Her records pull from soul, funk, jazz, hip-hop, reggae, and rock, and in the 1990s that mix helped define what we now call neo-soul.

She came up in Washington, D.C., deep in the go-go scene, and her debut album "Plantation Lullabies" earned a Grammy nomination. From that first record she sounded like herself and no one else — the hardest thing in music to do, and the reason the industry took notice fast.

The list of people she's worked with reads like a record shop's wall: John Mellencamp, Madonna, Chaka Khan, The Rolling Stones, Prince. Her duet with Mellencamp on Van Morrison's "Wild Night" rode high on the Billboard charts, and across her career she has collected ten Grammy Award nominations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7db2X9RA2Y

Her influence runs past the music. Ndegeocello is openly bisexual and has spent her career advocating for gay rights through her art, living her commitments in public rather than performing them for press. In a business that long asked queer artists to stay quiet, she never did.

The recent work hasn't softened. Her 2018 album "Ventriloquism" reworks classics until they belong to her, and 2023's "The Omnichord Real Book" digs into her jazz roots while sounding like nothing else in her catalog.

That's the case for celebrating her this Black History Month: thirty-plus years of records that refuse category, and a public life that made room for the Black queer musicians coming after her. She keeps changing what the music can be. The industry keeps catching up.