Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape is the fourth studio album by American soul singer and rapper Meshell Ndegeocello, released on June 4, 2002, by Maverick Records. Following the commercial underperformance of her third studio album, Bitter, her label encouraged her to return to her earlier sound and record an album that sounded more "black". Ndegeocello collaborated with a number of prominent Black musicians, including Talib Kweli, Missy Elliott, and Tweet, as well as her backing band, the Conscientious Objectors, and recorded the album during the summer of 2001. The record, which Ndegeocello modeled on the mixtapes of her childhood, adopted a hip-hop and R&B-influenced sound and political lyrics similar to that of her debut album, Plantation Lullabies, focusing on themes such as consumerism, revolution, religion, and same-sex attraction. Throughout the album, Ndegeocello also features samples of recorded speeches by Black activists, poets, and musicians, such as Angela Davis, Gil Scott-Heron, Countee Cullen, and Etheridge Knight. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie:...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)