Meshell Ndegeocello Announces New Album Synonym

Meshell Ndegeocello will release Synonym on October 2, featuring a jaw-dropping roster of guests reimagining a brilliantly chosen collection of songs. Just look at the track list.

“This project is about classic songs that are known and loved,” Ndegeocello says. “The songs have diverse tones, representing various genres and intentional grooves. But the album is also about joy, selfhood, individual representation, and universal experience.”

A bassist, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer and conceptualist, Ndegeocello has never shown much interest in musical boundaries. On Synonym, she explores desire, care, heartbreak, friendship, disappointment and love in all their forms. The source material stretches from 1960s folk and ’70s soul, country and pop to ’80s R&B and electro-boogie, early-’90s alternative rock and early-2000s hip-hop.

One of the album’s defining ideas is that its songs are performed as duets by artists who identify as the same gender—or, as Ndegeocello puts it, “hover around the same continuum of feeling.”

“Hopefully, that’s what stands out—that everyone is well matched musically and complement each other,” she says. “That said: I’m not defining anything, because the absence of definition is where I feel most free.”

The first single is an arresting reinvention of “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” the 1987 Aretha Franklin and George Michael duet. This time, Ndegeocello shares the song with Cynthia Erivo.

Synonym arrives October 2, 2026, on Blue Note Records.

1. I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me) with Cynthia Erivo
2. Don’t You Want Me with Cat Power
3. Don’t Stop The Music with Nick Hakim, Robert Glasper
4. Islands In The Stream with Chaka Khan
5. It Ain’t Me Babe with Madison Cunningham
6. Always on Time with Laura Lee
7. Be Real Black For Me with Emily King, Lizz Wright
8. Don’t Look Any Further with Lianne La Havas
9. The Closer I Get To You with Destin Conrad, Moses Sumney
10. Golden Ring with Brandi Carlile
11. I Got You Babe with ANOHNI
12. Here We Come (Here He Comes) with Evann McIntosh
13. Guilty with Ink
14. Hunger Strike with WILLOW
15. With God On Our Side with Bill Callahan, Chris Thile