One of Meshell’s saving graces, believe it or not, is her bass guitar. “It’s the only thing that works, ’cause I kinda suck at all this people shit. When I play the bass, it’s all good. Like a fish into water, it works, I find purpose; it’s my samurai sword.” Even her tattoos—once viewed up close—aren’t as menacing as they initially appeared; across her muscular neck is stenciled “Rebecca,” the name of her longtime significant other, author Rebecca Walker. See? As nice as could be.

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    Perhaps Meshell, 33, stays so calm by venting all her political frustrations in her music. And she’s got the protest-song markets cornered, being a) female; b) black; c) lesbian; and d) a single working mom raising a 12-year-old son. If anyone has the right to sing social commentary, it’s this talented lady. And she does so with fire-and-brimstone fervor on her latest slap ‘n’ pluck funkfest for Madonna’s Maverick label, COOKIE: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL MIXTAPE. Interpolating spoken-word snippets from black activist icons Dick Gregory, Angela Davis, and Gil Scott-Heron, she lists the three-main evils plaguing mankind (“GOD.FEAR.MONEY”); studies the shortcomings of feminist ethics (“Priorities 1-6”); and worries that our oil-obsessed government will obliterate the environment (“Earth”). And, she explains, “Dead Nigga Blvd. (Pts 1 & 2),” was rooted in her “going on travels and seeing Martin Luther King Drive or Malcolm X Street, and it’s always the worst part of the neighborhood. And we campaigned for all that shit, but I dunno... how far have we come? You been to Alabama? It’s Third World down there, and no longer do I blame white folks for the way that we are. I’m more inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man than I am by this ‘We’re doing so much, so you’d better be appreciative.’ I don’t envision being that docile. That’s my parents’ generation.”

    In the Parliament-riffed “Barry Farms,” Meshell time travels back to her teen years in Washington D.C., when a shy kid named Michelle Johnson (she adopted a Swahili surname, which means “free like a bird”) was exploring her budding sexuality with some then-taboo affairs. Namely, with a girl who ditched her for a guy once the relationship started to threaten her reputation. “And Berry Farms is where I grew up, in a total police state,” Meshell growls. “When I lived there, it had the highest murder rate around; it’s a wild place, and I was trying to be a musician there, trying to figure out if I was gay or straight, in subsidized housing named after Marion Barry. It’s a mean place, but as long as you stay funky, you’ll be all right.”

    Folks were glad she stayed funk back in ’93, when her PLANTATION LULLABIES debut turned enough heads to nab three Grammy nominations. Two albums later, the roar had died to a hush—had the industry grown scared of this outspoken performer, once it understood that it couldn’t squelch her? Vigorously, Meshell nods, “Yeah. I mean, c’mon! I’m the only black employee they have at the record label! Basically, me and the security guards. People think it’s Madonna, so there’s a whole aggressive social-political flavor to the label, but actually it’s not like that. I’m on a label with Jude, Alanis Morissette, and Michelle Branch. I’m on a mainstream pop label.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that, she hastily adds. “I can make funk records, I can make jazz records, I made my album BITTER.”

    “And I’m a halfway articulate black person, which is totally counterculture right now. I’m not like, ‘Yo, yo, YOOO!’ and I’m not blonde, I’m not Britney Spears or anything. I pretty much wear what I had on that day onstage, and my hero was always Miles Davis. I just wanna make music—that was my dream. I didn’t dream of being a star. And also, my dream is to be a good musician and a good person—that’s my thing, and you can’t really sell that. So I’m a little frightening, because I’m not too impressed by show business. That means that I have the best life—I have to argue and fight sometimes, but Maverick gives me enough money so that I can make music, and they stay so distant that it allows me to do exactly what I wanna do. I mean, I’m blessed! I get to make music!”

    Meshell spends the rest of the conversation veering off into personal politics, spouting views so radical they capture the ears of the nearby hippies. They notice her Che Guevara T-shirt and nod approvingly, accepting her into the flock. Hopefully, she sighs, they’ll all pick up a copy of COOKIE and go with its spoonful-of-sugar, subtly activist flow. “And I know that I’ve created my own microcosm here,” she admits, before stalking back home again. “And I walk the walk, but I also try to talk the talk. I’m just trying to have a good time, make great music, hang out, smoke weed, be a good person. And the rest? Hey, I’m gonna be 50, and I won’t be able to jump up and down onstage any more, and I wanna be all right with that. I don’t wanna end up some bitter old motherfucker going, ‘I used to be doing this!’”

— Tom Lanham