Meshell Ndegeocello found fame in the early ’90s, with a few radio hits, including the witty, strident track “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night).” The video was indelible: Ndegeocello, head shaved to zero, in a stark white tank top and suspenders, alternately reprimanding and caressing her bass like a beloved but disobedient child. 

Her bass playing over her twenty-year career has maintained a decidedly sui generis rhythm, giving her music—and her covers of songs by musicians like Prince and Nina Simone—a dazzling bounce and an emphatic pop that’s so precise you can almost hear the air between the note and the string.

Her most recent album, Comet, Come to Me, is her eleventh release. It finds her pushing the boundaries of the bass as a musical protagonist. It ruminates on love and human relationships, but is delivered in a kaleidoscopic package, kicking off with a cover of Whodini’s early rap classic “Friends,” then fracturing out with funk-, R&B-, and dub-reggae-inspired tracks.

Ndegeocello toggles effortlessly between being a musical hero and a rhythmic anchor. Her fluid proficiency has put her in high demand as a studio player, leading to stints with artists like Madonna, Alanis Morissette, Robert Glasper, and the Indigo Girls, and landing her music in a number of films, including Batman and Robin, The Hurricane, and Love and Basketball.

Ndegeocello lives part-time in Hudson, New York, a tranquil town with decent coffee and easy access to New York City. The town has become a hideaway for a subset of artists and musicians who work in the spotlight but prefer to live out their not-quite-suburban dreams in the shadow of the city.

When she answers the phone, she seems to have forgotten about our interview. But Ndegeocello is immediately game and charismatic—the type of pro who can turn it on as easily as she can walk into, say, the Rolling Stones’ recording studio with her instrument and deliver a technically perfect bass line, unfazed by the rock royalty in the room with her.

—Melissa Locker

THE BELIEVER: Where does your story begin?

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO: My origins are just a complicated childhood: born to a father in the military, a mother with an eighth-grade education who was a domestic, then add in all the American issues of racism and American schooling and you have me. But my dad’s a musician, so that was always around me.

BLVR: What album did you listen to as a kid that drove your parents crazy?

MN: Prince’s Dirty Mind album. They thought the spirit had gotten me! My mother’s very religious, too, so they didn’t like that record. And I just played...