That Ndegeocello, 32, would collaborate with such trendy artists may strike her longtime fans as a sellout move—and she claims that’s exactly why she did it. In much the same way that 1999’s BITTER was a sardonic retort to critics who encouraged her to sing more love songs rather than address sociopolitical issues in her lyrics, Ndegeocello says “Pocketbook” is an attempt to call contemporary radio programmers on their bluff. “In order to get on the radio,” she says, “you gotta follow the cookie-cutter formula: Get the flavor of the month, keep that structure and get a hot beat. Need a hook? Get Ja Rule. The only reason my song is on the radio is because I got a famous producer and famous rap artists on it.”

    Ndegeocello, certainly proves her point with the star-studded remix of “Pocketbook,” but the track does not quite fit with COOKIE’s lush, bass-heavy, funky and erotic compositions, which she has described as “Master P meets Bitches Brew.” She continues, “It’s improvisational hip-hop rhythm & blues with a little bit of booty bounce under it. I want brothers to be able to intellectualize and have a conversation while listening to it. I want sisters to feel the love. And I want it to be something that, every now and then, you could hear at a strip club.”

    That may sound contradictory, but the Maryland native’s career has always been about contrasts. She’s pursued a highly idiosyncratic solo career while working as an in-demand session bassist for artists as diverse as Prince, the Indigo Girls, Herbie Hancock and the Rolling Stones (and she’s best known to many for her 1994 duet with John Mellencamp, “Wild Night”). She’s a bisexual single mom who lives in California and has been dating author Alice Walker’s Brooklyn-based daughter, Rebecca, for the past five years. It’s no wonder that the socially relevant themes she explores in her music are equally complex. For instance, her self-explanatory small-scale hit “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night),” from her 1993 debut, PLANTATION LULLABIES, scored points with heterosexual bad girls—yet those very same chicks may turn up their noses when they hear “Barry Farms,” a new track on COOKIE about discarding an infatuated bi-curious female lover. In it, Ndegeocello shrewdly laments, “She couldn’t love me without shame/ She only wanted me for one thing/ But you should teach your boy to do that.”

    Ironically, Ndegeocello says that “gay is dead as far as being a cultural phenomenon,” but she hopes to capture the uninhibited, joyous essence of gay club culture with her summer tour. “I want to get back to where you have to experience new music live and interact with muthafuckas,” she says. “Come have a good time with yourself, throw your hands up, close your eyes, be free—and make sure you bring somebody to rub up on.”

— Margeaux Watson