N'Dea Davenport is best known as lead singer of The Brand New Heavies, but before the acid jazz band snatched her up and started making hits in 1990, N'Dea had her eyes on a solo career. After nearly a decade of deferral, her self-titled debut came growling through in 1998. Largely self-produced (with the help of notables like Dallas Austin and J Dilla), N'dea crafted one critically-acclaimed soul-adjacent album. Austin helped put his stamp on the project’s first single “Bring It On”, where Dilla’s signature beats and a guest turn by Yasiin Bey (p/k/a Mos Def) provide a sturdy frame for “Bullshittin”, its take-no-prisoners second. Genre hopping is the name of the game on this record. N'Dea embraces folk rock on a faithful cover of Neil Young’s “Old Man.” Dallas Austin helps her time-travel into a futuristic drum-n-bass style on a suprisingly danceable requiem for the ecology titled “Oh Mother Earth (Embrace)”. She only briefly circles around to the type of rootsy grooves one might find on a record with the Heavies during the album’s openers “Whatever You Want” and “Underneath a Red Moon”. After that, all bets are off once she turns jazz chanteuse Nancy Wilson’s “Save Your Love For Me” into a brassy blues number you can spill your beer and smoke a Newport to. If there is a theme that ties the project together, it’s rococo New Orleans aesthetic. The album is bathed in it from the artsy album cover to the album’s closing number “Getaway” featuring the city’s own Rebirth Brass Band. There are some weighty subjects tackled in the lyrics, from elder abuse (“Real Life”), to prostitution (“When The Night Falls”), to unplanned pregnancy (“Placement For The Baby”). And yet, N'Dea’s confident voice keeps the rollercoaster collection stable from start to finish, like the warm voice of a narrator. If you follow it all the way through, you’ll get to a happy ending.