Quote

You make a choice to make music or be an actor, and people automatically think they can have access to your life.

Meshell Ndegeocello

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Meshell Ndegeocello
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: August 29
Bassist
Composer
Guitarist
Jazz Musician
Rapper
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Berlin
Germany
Michelle Lynn Johnson
Meshell Suhaila Bashir-Shakur
Me'Shell Ndegéocello
Choices
Actors
Music
Make
Think
Automatically
Thinking
Access
Life
Choice
People
Actor

More quotes by Meshell Ndegeocello

Image
I dabble in the jazz world, which is male-­dominated. If you had two women playing together, it became a shtick. It becomes a girl group, and it has to be something cutesy. That's hard to contend with.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Sometimes people ask what it was like when I got to meet Mick Jagger, and I must admit that you just try and chill out and be your best self around anyone that you meet.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Definitely dub is in my body forever. I think I hear everything through a dub filter. Even when I play rock music, I play through a dub filter.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Music is like a lover that I can't commit to, but I seem to always find myself in bed with.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
The blowing thing is something that you either have a predilection for or not. And I don't have that thing. It was just unsanitary. I couldn't do it. I am a complete germaphobe.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Any ideas of “other” are complicated, and otherness is relative to personal ideas of “normal.”
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Your yes means nothing if you can't say no.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Your government has problems...my government has problems. I can't be a judge. All I can do is be an ambassador of love. I'm a musician, not a soldier, and if I'm invited to a place in order to play and bring love, I'll always accept the invitation.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
I'm pushing ahead on my own - you no longer need a large record company to make you a star.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
I'm becoming more and more apolitical - I think the most revolutionary thing you can do is just live your life and have a good time. Before they scoop you up on the street or you die.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Music is my only guide. I don't care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn't give a hoot about what the purists said.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
God looks out for fools and babies.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Our leaders and Osama Bin Laden all claim to do the right thing in the name of God. I question that. I wonder if that God is worth the life of another human-being.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
Yes, violence begets more violence, but historically this has been the way of the world.
Meshell Ndegeocello
Image
I joke that a person of color would never make a movie like “Midnight in Paris.” Nostalgia isn’t so enticing.
Meshell Ndegeocello