<p>With a boost from Madonna, Me'Shell NdegeOcello is soaring with
her "broken-hearted revolutionary love songs"
</p>
<p>By Christopher John Farley--Reported by Lisa McLaughlin/New York
</p>
<p> Me'shell Ndegeocello is a gay, black, single mother with a
shaved head and a nearly unpronounceable name (actually, it's
Me-shell Nuh-day-gay-O-chel-lo). Not the usual stuff of rock
stardom. Female rockers have a better shot, convention holds,
if they are boy toys with cute, catchy names like...Madonna.
NdegeOcello spent two years trying to interest record companies
in her iconoclastic music, a shotgun marriage of funk, jazz,
hip-hop and angry poetry that she calls "brokenhearted revolutionary
love songs." Finally, in despair and ready to enroll in barber
school, she got a phone call, and a record deal, rom the head
of Maverick, who happens to be...Madonna.
</p>
<p> Now, NdegeOcello (whose name means "free like a bird" in Swahili)
and her career are starting to take wing with the release of
her debut album, Plantation Lullabies. "A plantation can be
your job, your marriage, anyplace where you don't feel free,"
she says, explaining the title. "Lullabies are songs that soothe
little children to sleep, but they can also be empowering."
She has a new video on MTV (she is bald in the arty black and
white clip; she has since let her hair grow out a bit), and
a Rolling Stone critics' poll chose NdegeOcello, 25, as "the
brightest hope for 1994." The praise is well deserved. On her
album she is almost a one-person band, playing drums, keyboards,
guitar and bass in addition to singing. Plantation Lullabies
also has some impressive guest performers, including Joshua
Redman, a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard who is the young
jazz saxophonist-of-the-moment.
</p>
<p> The songs on Plantation Lullabies feature whiplash bass grooves
and down-for-the-struggle lyrics. This is literate, smart music
about black life, like a Terry McMillan book set to a beat.
NdegeOcello's voice flows easily from singing to speaking, brashly
loitering in the space in between. "Konks and fade creams, sad
passion deferred dreams," she sing-speaks on Soul on Ice, a
swipe at buppies who refuse to date black women. "You want blond-haired,
blue-eyed soul;/ Snow-white passion without the hot comb." Other
songs deal with everything from love on the subway to what she
sees as the unbearable whiteness of pop culture: "Livin' in
a world where my TV shouts,/ `Forget where you come from!'"
</p>
<p> In her most controversial song, If That's Your Boyfriend (He
Wasn't Last Night), she sings of cheerfully taking away a friend's
mate. Feminists have deplored the unsisterly politics, while
gays have accused her of trying to mask her sexuality. NdegeOcello--a U.S. Army brat who was born in Berlin but raised in Washington--calls herself gay but says she has also been attracted to
men; she has a four-year-old son, Askia. "How can I dislike
or distance myself from men," she says, "when I have to raise
a man?"
</p>
<p> NdegeOcello, as a protege of Madonna, is a product of the growing
phenomenon of rock stars as music moguls. Artist-owned labels
(AOLS) date back to the Beatles, but within the past few years
they have become a major trend. Some performers seek their own
labels as perks. In the case of rap and alternative rock--genres that guys in suits often have trouble grasping--some
record companies have set up AOLS so that established performers
can take the lead in discovering talent. Singer Babyface's label
is the home for Toni Braxton, R&B's hottest new diva. Rapper
Dr. Dre is co-head of Death Row Records, which released Snoop
Doggy Dogg's debut CD.
</p>
<p> Other AOLS are cultivating promising but offbeat acts. Grand
Royal Records, run by the Beastie Boys, puts out Luscious Jackson,
a quartet of white female rappers. David Byrne's Luaka Bop label
is behind Djur Djura, an Algerian band whose songs celebrate
women's rights. "A lot of the music that's making money now
is street-level, underground stuff," says Jane Gulick, who manages
Luscious Jackson. "Who better to know what's cool than an artist?"
</p>
<p> In theory, perhaps, but it doesn't always work out that way.
Since its founding in April 1992, Madonna's Maverick--which
has record, film, TV and book divisions (and is jointly owned
by Time Warner)--has, in the view of many industry insiders,
done little more than hemorrhage money and feed Madonna's ego.
The company's reputation is so poor that it has reportedly had
trouble filling a number of top staff positions.
</p>
<p> NdegeOcello, however, has broken the company's losing streak.
"For me Maverick was perfect," she says. "They've been real
great and supportive in allowing me to do my own thing." She
is already working on her next album ("I'm writing the whole
album as poetry first"), but her long-term aspirations are,
as one might expect, more idiosyncratic. "What I really want
is to be on Sesame Street," she says. "That's when I'll know
I've really made it." Madonna herself couldn't have said it
