Trevor Nelson - 01/07/2009

Trevor's Album Of The Week is Me'Shell Ndegéocello Plantation Lullabies. Me'Shell's debut album twists and turns through so many genres -- R&B, pop, jazz, hip-hop -- that it's hard to put a finger on just where she wants to take its 13 songs. That she also spins conventional racial and sexual identity here makes Plantation Lullabies an occasionally overwhelming - as well as a vibrantly sophisticated - listen. Ndegéocello defies labels throughout, tagging her slinking and crawling songs with a rubbery flow that's just as rooted in 70s funky soul as it is in 90s hip-hop culture. It can be a bit derivative (for all of Ndegéocello's genre-crossing, she always seems to go back to the same musical blueprint) but most of the time it's just about as boundary-busting and as affecting as 90s R&B gets.