Rhymes Of Passion

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

ME'SHELL NDEGEOCELLO IS A gay, black, single mother with a shaved head and a nearly unpronounceable name (actually, it's Me-shell Nuh-day-gay-O-chel-lo). Not the usual stuff of rock stardom. Female rockers have a better shot, convention holds, if they are boy toys with cute, catchy names like . . . Madonna. NdegeOcello spent two years trying to interest record companies in her iconoclastic music, a shotgun marriage of funk, jazz, hip-hop and angry poetry that she calls "brokenhearted revolutionary love songs." Finally, in despair and ready to enroll in barber school, she got a phone call, and a record deal, rom the head of Maverick, who happens to be . . . Madonna.

Now, NdegeOcello (whose name means "free like a bird" in Swahili) and her career are starting to take wing with the release of her debut album, Plantation Lullabies. "A plantation can be your job, your marriage, anyplace where you don't feel free," she says, explaining the title. "Lullabies are songs that soothe little children to sleep, but they can also be empowering." She has a new video on MTV (she is bald in the arty black and white clip; she has since let her hair grow out a bit), and a Rolling Stone critics' poll chose NdegeOcello, 25, as "the brightest hope for 1994." The praise is well deserved. On her album she is almost a one-person band, playing drums, keyboards, guitar and bass in addition to singing. Plantation Lullabies also has some impressive guest performers, including Joshua Redman, a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard who is the young jazz saxophonist-of-the-moment.

The songs on Plantation Lullabies feature whiplash bass grooves and down- for-the-struggle lyrics. This is literate, smart music about black life, like a Terry McMillan book set to a beat. NdegeOcello's voice flows easily from singing to speaking, brashly loitering in the space in between. "Konks and fade creams, sad passion deferred dreams," she sing-speaks on Soul on Ice, a swipe at buppies who refuse to date black women. "You want blond- haired, blue-eyed soul;/ Snow-white passion without the hot comb." Other songs deal with everything from love on the subway to what she sees as the unbearable whiteness of pop culture: "Livin' in a world where my TV shouts,/ 'Forget where you come from!' "

In her most controversial song, If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night), she sings of cheerfully taking away a friend's mate. Feminists have deplored the unsisterly politics, while gays have accused her of trying to mask her sexuality. NdegeOcello -- a U.S. Army brat who was born in Berlin but raised in Washington -- calls herself gay but says she has also been attracted to men; she has a four-year-old son, Askia. "How can I dislike or distance myself from men," she says, "when I have to raise a man?"

NdegeOcello, as a protege of Madonna, is a product of the growing phenomenon of rock stars as music moguls. Artist-owned labels (AOLS) date back to the Beatles, but within the past few years they have become a major trend. Some performers seek their own labels as perks. In the case of rap and alternative rock -- genres that guys in suits often have trouble grasping -- some record companies have set up AOLS so that established performers can take the lead in discovering talent. Singer Babyface's label is the home for Toni Braxton, R& B's hottest new diva. Rapper Dr. Dre is co-head of Death Row Records, which released Snoop Doggy Dogg's debut CD.

Other AOLS are cultivating promising but offbeat acts. Grand Royal Records, run by the Beastie Boys, puts out Luscious Jackson, a quartet of white female rappers. David Byrne's Luaka Bop label is behind Djur Djura, an Algerian band whose songs celebrate women's rights. "A lot of the music that's making money now is street-level, underground stuff," says Jane Gulick, who manages Luscious Jackson. "Who better to know what's cool than an artist?"

In theory, perhaps, but it doesn't always work out that way. Since its founding in April 1992, Madonna's Maverick -- which has record, film, TV and book divisions (and is jointly owned by Time Warner) -- has, in the view of many industry insiders, done little more than hemorrhage money and feed Madonna's ego. The company's reputation is so poor that it has reportedly had trouble filling a number of top staff positions.

NdegeOcello, however, has broken the company's losing streak. "For me Maverick was perfect," she says. "They've been real great and supportive in allowing me to do my own thing." She is already working on her next album ("I'm writing the whole album as poetry first"), but her long-term aspirations are, as one might expect, more idiosyncratic. "What I really want is to be on Sesame Street," she says. "That's when I'll know I've really made it." Madonna herself couldn't have said it better.

With reporting by Lisa Mclaughlin/New York