Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meshell's impresses with Cookie, June 4, 2002
NdegéOcello's fourth album Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape is a mesmerizing affair. It's triptych in quality: A blazing sociopolitical critique one minute, a soulful slow burner the next, the album then turns right around and becomes a conversation piece breathing with the sensibilities of Miles Davis. The multi-layered quality of this record is amazingly assembled. She returns true to form on her long awaited follow-up to 1999's Bitter.Created almost a year before its forthcoming release date Cookie serves as a fine wine. It's lyrical virtues and musical possibilities are inimitable and only get better with age. The incendiary "Hot Night" serves as the perfect backdrop to a long, troubling summer with a blistering rap by Talib Kweli and sound bites by Angela Davis. Ironically, Me'Shell makes prophecies for the year to come with lines like "Suffer in the World Trade paradise with me now" - the album being created nearly four months before the attacks on America. "God.Fear.Money" is a piece that demystifies the perception of celebrity ("I was way down for the revolution, until I found it was contingent upon some corporate sponsorship / And if Jesus was alive today, he'd be incarcerated with the rest of the brothas / Devil'll have a great apartment on the Upper East Side, be a guest VJ on Total Request Live'). The lyrics on Cookie are intelligent, witty and direct. Cookie isn't all trouble funk though, laced within is a bouquet of sensual arrangements. "I ain't gon' pay your rent, all I got is love and time to spend, can I hang with you" is the plea to true love. "Berry Farms" is a no-holds-barred narrative on a past same-sex relationship with a girl who couldn't love her openly without shame and fear ("She had the kind of kisses that made you sad) and sports one of the most surprising lyrical bridges in years. She explores the gamut of elated ecstasy. "Trust" is among the sexiest songs of her career. Temperate yet mild, it simmers with anticipatory nectar ("Put your tongue in my mouth, make me wet, run your hands down my back, grab my [rear]). "Earth" is truly transcending, it floats above one's consciousness with the ubiquity of Roy Ayers. It also marks a return to the bass playing ferocity that made her first two records Plantation Lullabies and Peace Beyond Passion instant classics and influential sample-templates (just ask Brian McKnight). "Pleasure is the motivation," comments NdeGéOcello on "Better By The Pound" and indeed, the album is just that. With backing by such luminaries as Gil Scott Heron, Lalah Hathaway and Caron Wheeler, it's a sure thing. It is an album that will stay with you long after everything that currently sits on Billboard fades; Cookie only ripens and glows with time. All embracing, all encompassing, Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape is NdegéOcello in her element. Easily garnering cult status, she taps into the life of a moment and in turn crafts one of the strongest, most emotive and complex albums of a generation.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
LIBERATING AND UNAPOLOGETIC, June 11, 2002
By A Customer
While all of the other reviews have covered the content of the album pretty accurately and thoroughly, I have to say how much respect I have for Meshell for unabashadly embracing her sexual identity. Her lyrics and songs about racism and political thought (I LOVE her cut with Talib Kweli) are to be expected but I did find some of her more political strongs with the soundbites from various black poets a bit forced and uneven (Countee Cullen just didn't quite "fit" with Gil Scott Heron, June Jordan or Etheridge Knight). A couple of her cuts also sounded like some of the joints on her other albums. But her erotic songs and lyrics about love and sexuality whether it be homosexuality, bisexuality or heterosexuality are extremely powerful and unapologetic. She lets us know that whether she loves women or men or both, her wants, needs and desires are strong, deep and passionate. Listening to her talk about her erotic experiences with Lalah Hathaway and Caron Wheeler singing backup both together AND individually is truly a sensual listening experience. Meshell makes you realize that we ALL have deep seated needs, wants and passions that exist whether we CHOOSE to repress or acknowledge them. She truly claims HER SPACE as a conscientious lover of black people, of both MEN and WOMEN, in her eternal struggle for acceptance, identity and justice in this crazy racist, sexist and homophobic world we live in. YOU GO GIRL.... Buy this CD, you won't be disappointed.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ladies and Gentlemen, I Think We Have the Album of 2002, June 29, 2002
In a year of processed pop and dumbed-down r&b, the fourth and best album from Meshell Ndegeocello is a breath of fresh, revitalizing air. Here is an album that pulls no punches, makes no compromises, and is lyrically blunt as anything you'll listen to this year. A potent fuse of funk, soul, and jazz, "Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape" has our heroine breaking down the myths of fame, religion, and sexuality on these tracks which sample spoken words by Gil Scott Heron, Dick Gregory, and Angela Davis. Standouts include the potent "Dead Nigga Blvd (Pt 1)" and the sensual slow jam "Trust." The disc also has a slammin remix of "Pocketbook" which has guest appearances by Tweet and Redman. This CD stands a very good chance of appearing on many people's Top Ten Lists of 2002, and if there are no better records after it, "Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape" will be my album of the year. It's self-reflective without being self-interested. It's insightful without being preachy. And it's hip without ever cowering to popular trends. A marvelous, towering achievement.
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~ Me'Shell NdegeOcello
~ Me'Shell NdegeOcello
~ Me'Shell NdegeOcello
~ Me'Shell NdegeOcello
by Me'Shell NdegéOcello 
