Listen: Meshell Ndegeocello Previews ‘Red Hot + Ra: The Magic City’ with Two New Singles

Album artwork by Cécile McLorin Salvant

Red Hot has tapped Meshell Ndegeocello to curate The Magic City, an upcoming tribute album to Sun Ra. For this latest offering in the organization’s Red Hot + Ra series, kicked off last May with the 6-track Nuclear War LP, Ndegeocello calls on an ensemble of 21 performers for nine genre-bending sonic portraits of the legendary avant-garde pioneer. To preview the project, Red Hot has released the cosmic first singles, “#9 Venus The Living Myth” and “Departure Guide of the 7 Sisters,” alongside the full tracklist and artist lineup.

Whereas other Red Hot tribute albums have collected more straightforward covers of the honored artists, The Magic City favors original compositions inspired by the Ra, rather than rehearsals of his standards. Suiting the cuts to the cloth, Ndegeocello gives rise to a universe of interpolations, sketches, and chants that properly honor the tireless innovator by adopting his experimental method. This echo resounds on “Departure Guide of the 7 Sisters,” a funking dreamscape that begins with Ra’s direction to “judge a tree by the fruit,” before soaring flutes encircle Ndegeocello’s chorus, “Nothing is, yet, everything is all” –a pair of direct quotes from the artist’s philosophical canon.

“#9 Venus The Living Myth” twists Ra’s 1960 single “Rocket Number Nine” into an auditory journey that waves between bombastic saxophone duels and moments of contemplative stillness. The central voice featured here is the soul-stirring alto saxophone and enlightening electronic wind instrument of 99-year-old Marshall Allen, Ra’s close confidant and current bandleader for the Sun Ra Arkestra. Beyond the talents of Ndegeocello and Allen, the wider personnel of saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, percussionist Kojo Roney, upright bassist Rashaan Carter and vocalists Justin Hicks, Hanna Benn, Nio Levon, Kenita Miller and Dan Bunny prove a perfect fit to express the towering likeness of Ra on this ambitious offering.

Ndegeocello was recently awarded the Grammy award for Best Alternative Jazz Album for her 2023 Blue Note debut The Omnichord Real Book. In a press release, via Rolling Stone, the artist attested to the influence of John Szwed’s biography Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra on the offering and her evolving artistic process. “I haven’t been the same since reading that book,” she shared. “I think it’s what inspired The Omnichord Real Book, in the sense of, ‘what happens when you’re no longer driven by youth?’ Sun Ra’s music is a living organism, and once you immerse yourself in his work, his life, you recognize there’s a fork in the road — that you really have to make choices, because there’s so many other realms and dimensions to explore musically.”

Red Hot & Ra: The Magic City is set to release on April 12 and is available to pre-order and pre-save now. Listen to “#9 Venus The Living Myth” below and visit Red Hot’s Bandcamp page to hear Departure Guide of the 7 Sisters.” Read on for the complete tracklist.

Red Hot + Ra – The Magic City

1. Solipsistic Panacea (Black Antiques)

2. Departure Guide Of The 7 Sisters

3. Bedlam Blues

4. #9 Venus The Living Myth

5. El-Soul The Companion, Traveler

6. LQ1TY – 29 Years

7. Yet Differently Not- Mars Hall

8. Reproductive Manatees – Sunny Said Up!

9. The World Of Shadow