Via NPR WRTI
A few years ago, in a catalog essay for a major exhibition of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, critic Greg Tate cast a sidelong glance at the voguish recent turn for Afrofuturism, a creative mode that took shape on the margins before accruing its cultural and literal currency. Tate, who died in 2021, had in mind a more organic, less calculating ideal for the Afrofuturist impulse — like the one so alluringly drawn on “Virgo,” a coolly aerated funk jam by Meshell Ndegeocello.
“They’re calling me / Back to the stars,” Ndegeocello sings at the top of the track. Then: “Deep outer space.” She plays a synth-bass and chordal vamp, over a head-nod funk beat; her vocals assume both a curvilinear croon and a confiding murmur, hinting at cosmic secrets. The song’s two featured guests — Brandee Younger on harp and Julius Rodriguez on Farfisa organ — deepen the seraphic shimmer, against an evolving cycle of funk and club rhythms. Ndegeocello, who played bass in one of Tate’s early bands, isn’t conforming to anybody else’s idea of the celestial plane. When she sings of supernovas, she sounds like a witness.