Dopeness: Shelley Nicole
by Vonetta Booker-Brown

What? You didn’t know? It’s Shelley Nicole, y’all. The Brooklyn songstress has skills for days and things to say. Can’t beat that. 

To get a taste of her flavor, imagine the chords of N’Dea Davenport and Anita Baker combined and blended. Stepping onstage at the Brooklyn Tea Party, she’s bombarded with whoops of approval and shouts of, “Woooooork!” But Shelley’s “fabulous” stage persona is one that folks don’t see everyday. “I’m not just going to go out wearing my sequins—not everyday,” she says later, the face now clean-scrubbed, her eyeglasses giving her a studious look far from her flamboyant alter-ego. “But the stuff that Shelley Nicole is saying, I’d say to you without the gear on, you know?”

Like some speak through the pulpit or from the pen, Nicole lets her messages fly through song. Born Shelley Jefferson and raised in Newton, Mass., she developed her voice while “sanging” in the Myrtle Baptist Church choir. Combine that with the years she sang jazz as well, the Parliament/Chaka Khan thing, her interest in drum ‘n bass, and rock influences such as Prince, Sting, Alanis and Janis, and one can call Shelley a musical Sybil—only that her influences blend into a rich, soulful style that’s probably way ahead of most radio playlists right now.

Although her live set flows seamlessly from the wah-wah guitar of hard rock to the rapid percussion of drum ‘n bass to mellow, folk-tinged R&B joints, Shelley says she doesn’t get flack from those with “there-ain’t-no-rock-guitar-in-R&B” mindsets. 

“I haven’t gotten any of that yet,” she says. “Honestly, I probably won’t get any of it until I try to hit a record deal. Because it’s usually  not the regular, everyday folks that have an issue with what you do; it’s the people that try and sign you. And they feel like they've got to figure out where they want to stick you.”

Many people have observed the seemingly American peculiarity of “cut-and-dry” music genres. As in, “It’s either black or white. Either R&B, alternative, or rock—but nothing in between.” God forbid the genres should mix. Things only now seem to be changing, albeit slowly, but Shelley got a first-hand lesson in that with last year’s release of her single, “Being Me”—a jazzy, energetic house cut that was distributed through Imani Records (an offshoot of label King St.) and released both Stateside and overseas.

 “At least from the outside looking in, yeah—it seems that overseas, Europe’s much more receptive,” Shelley observes. “It’s pretty clear that in the jazz world, many artists can go overseas and do well. Then they come over here, and it’s hard. But, yeah—I think over there, they’re a lot more receptive. It’s not so much about a category; it’s more about, ‘Is it good?’”

What does Shelley Nicole sing about, though? “A little bit of everything,” she answers. “I sing about politics, I sing about hair,” she laughs. Hair? Yes—in the song, “No Lye”—in which her and her backup divas sing about rediscovering the beauty of natural hair, how they’ve got to “be the natural me,” and how “slipping into process” just don’t work anymore. Girlfriend's telling the truth, y’all. And the song “America’s Secret” is no exception. 

The song begins, “America’s got a secret/ that everybody knows.” Shelley goes on mention last year’s biggest issues, which often shed light on this country’s repeated hypocrisy. “When that stuff went down in Kosovo, this country opened up its doors to refugees from there. But when stuff was going down in Haiti, they wouldn’t let people off the boat. Or else they got here, and they were put in camps, you know?” Another line in “America’s Secret” that goes, “Why are you surprised / When your children perpetrate this country’s lies” pulls the file on the “doesn’t-this-kind-of-thing-only-happen-in-the-ghetto?” attitude behind the Columbine High School shootings.

 “Kids shooting kids in high school, and they were white boys,” says Shelley. “And then everybody was so shocked. Like, ‘Why are you shocked?!?’” she asks incredulously. “Because that’s what this country was built on. I don’t know—maybe it’s like, a hundred years later, your karmic retributions come back to you.”

But Shelley Nicole doesn’t plan on shutting up anytime soon. When I ask her where she wants to take her music, she simply replies, “Well...I want to take it everywhere,” as if my question was the world’s dumbest. Right now, her live shows have taken a back seat to the business of recording her debut CD, she who bleeds, scheduled for release in spring 2003. Since she wasn’t satisfied with Imani Records’ decision to release her single “Being Me” (“If it had been up to me, I would have waited a little longer, did a couple of more things with the record…”), she’s now taking full control of this baby, producing it with the help of her talented guitarist, Jerome Jordan. Although she and her manager are currently shopping for the right deal, right now it looks as though self-distribution is in order. And to Nicole, that’s all good, too—because creative control, of course, is the main factor.

“Nowadays, you can make your own CDs,” she says. “It’s not hard, it doesn’t cost a lot, and so you might as well do it that way, if you can, and make all the money for yourself and for whomever you want to share it with.” Naw, the girl ain’t stupid—but you already knew that. Let her break it down even further: “I write these songs so that you can be aware of what’s going on around you. Keep an eye open. Just keep an eye open, and an ear to the ground.”