Meshell Ndegeocello: Like a Real Revolutionary

I made the first record when I was, like, 22. I’m 41 now. My son is 20. I’m just in a different place in my life. My partner is having a baby in a month. I see the world differently. I think the consciousness comes from that, with the artistic choices. I guess the world of the Internet also changes things. I’m no longer subjected to the Top 10 or the Top 100. I get the music from the last 100 years. That influences my filter, my consciousness.

Speaking of the Internet, chime in on the effects of downloading on the indie artist.

Courtesy 60 Cycle Media

“Dub is in my body forever. I definitely hear everything through a dub filter.”

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More About

• Meshell Ndegeocello
• RZA (Rapper)
• Wu-Tang Clan
• David Gamson
• Culture Club (Band)

If you can afford it, please buy it. And just know that when you buy it, it allows that artist to have a chance to make something again for you. But if you can’t afford it but you really like it and you’re sharing it with your friends and spreading the positive sounds, I can’t really knock that. But your buying it allows me to take care of this next child and it allows me, hopefully, to make something else.

Let’s talk more about “White Girl.” A few years ago I interviewed you and you joked that you should do like all black revolutionaries and get yourself a white girl .

[Laughing] Yeah, I want a T-shirt that says that, but people won’t really get it: Like a real revolutionary, I married a white woman.

So you embraced the cliché?

It’s been an interesting thing in my life. I think I’ve always been postrace and I’m hoping that with Obama in office ... well, to bring up the lyrics to another song, the common thread is that we’re all gonna die. So find joy. I’m hoping these [bigoted] ideas we all have will fall apart. It’s very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I’m like, this all fades to black, and it’s gone. It’s dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.

Meshell Ndegeocello performs on Thursday, October 22 at El Rey Theatre.