Meshell Ndegeocello
“Don’t Look Any Further” (feat. Lianne La Havas)
Blue Note Records
A piece of 1980s Motown history that was once sampled for one of 2Pac’s most infamous songs is getting a jazzy, balearic refresh courtesy of bass wunderkind Meshell Ndegeocello.
“Don’t Look Any Further” is the latest single from Ndegeocello’s upcoming Synonym album (her third for Blue Note Records), due October 2. It’s a covers album that features a long list of collaborators including Brandi Carlile, Cat Power, Chaka Khan, Moses Sumney, and many more, but there’s nothing straightforward about these covers. The Cat Power collab alone was a dubbed out version of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.”
“This project is about classic songs that are known and loved,” Ndegeocello says in a release on the label’s website. “The songs have diverse tones, representing various genres and intentional grooves. But the album is also about joy, selfhood, individual representation, and universal experience.”
This time, Ndegeocello is mining 1984, covering former Temptations singer Dennis Edwards and Siedah Garrett’s hit “Don’t Look Any Further,” which spawned one of the most coked-out music videos of all time (the jaw really does say it all).
Ndegeocello’s version feels like the hangover cure for whatever Dennis Edwards was getting up to, keeping the essence of the song — the insane earworm bassline that both 2Pac and Eric B. & Rakim used for some of their best songs. Ndegeocello tapped Lianne La Havas for the vocal here, but this isn’t her belting out her soul. It’s a much more velvety smooth entry that feels like grown-ass contemporary R&B without the cheesiness. It’s ripe for a remix, too, with a rolling balearic drum at the end that could go on forever as an all-time patio roller for any aspiring DJ.
It’s a cover so good, you simply don’t want it to end. I wouldn’t say it completely eclipses the original, but that’s not the point here. Ndegeocello is pushing it into an entirely different direction and making something new out of an old-school Motown hit.
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