Summary: N’dambi’s purposeful songwriting offers the listener detailed lyrical snapshots largely created from observations, rather than her own life. “Sometimes I write from my experience, but mostly I use my imagination to express myself through story telling,” she explains. “I think of the place, the time, the setting of a story, and invent a situation that shines a light on a particular issue or theme. They are rarely from my own life. More often, they’re someone else’s story.” The striking singer’s storytelling skills are at peak form on Pink Elephant with tunes like the Rod Temperton, ‘80’s hip-hop flavored “Nobody Jones,” the story of a girl with big dreams who won’t let her humble beginnings stop her, and the delicious “L.I.E.,” a tale of a man living a double life along New York’s Long Island Expressway. Delusions of love spring up in the old school, love-gone-wrong melodic funk of “Daisy Chain”; “Ooo Baby,” is the smooth-grooving tale of reconnection with a former lover; while the blues-inflected “Imitator,” finds a young woman suffering over the collapse of her lover’s promises. “You’re not the man I used to know, you’re an imitator,” she sings on this mid-tempo urban gem. The hope of true love cries out in “The One,” a disarming jazz-tinged ballad kissed with a touch of classic Stax. The album’s lead single “Can’t Hardly Wait,” is a biting chunk of scorching sarcasm delivered in the commanding singer’s rich tone. Her opening complaint, “I don’t know why I keep f***in’ wit you,”
