Ida Nielsen released her sixth album, "More Sauce, Please!", on the German label Leopard Records on June 16, 2023.

The multi-talented Danish bassist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader Ida Nielsen, a former member of two of Prince’s bands—New Power Generation and 3rd Eye Girl—is set to release her sixth album as a bandleader and her fourth since the passing of her former mentor in April 2016. Playing her four-string Sandberg electric bass with characteristic authority while handling all the vocals and also providing multiple keyboard parts, Nielsen combines hard-hitting funk rhythms, slap bass virtuosity, agile rapping, catchy pop hooks, and tons of attitude on *More Sauce, Please!*‍.

From the hard-hitting opener, “BeenTrying,” which showcases the scratching of Congolese DJ Amazulu Nanga and a fiery alto sax solo by his compatriot Jakob Elvstrøm, to the orchestral pop rap that closes the album, “Give Me A Bit Of…,” More Sauce, Please! is bursting with energy and relies on the breathtaking musicality of its multi-talented frontman. Adding to this powerful mix are Son of Light’s skillful rapping over the slow funk of “Bounce Like a Grandma,” the call-and-response between Ida and Finnish beatboxer FelixZenger on the hard-hitting rock-funk track “Ninja,” the infectious, ’70s-flavored “GloriousDisco,” and the mondo-slap bass and two-handed tapping spectacle, “Slappadibopbop.”

Nielsen showcases her own formidable rapping skills by delivering rapid-fire rhymes on “Kuku Put Some Sauce On It,” and she provides multi-layered vocal harmonies on the spellbinding “More People Like You.” Her meditation on lost love, “It’s Gone,” features a few lines from rapper Victor Danos, while Ida’s exhortation to “draw on empowerment” on “Shake It Off” reads like an optimistic anthem for her fellow sufferers: “If your life sucks, what are you gonna do? (Shake it off!)/If your heart breaks, what are you gonna do? (Shake it off!)/If your stress levels are skyrocketing, what are you gonna do? (Shake it off!).”

Nielsen also pays tribute to Prince on the funk track “Bounce Back,” inspired by Minneapolis, where she sings in a Prince-style falsetto, as in “Kiss” or “Cindy C,” and which also features a wild bass solo in the middle of the song. “I learned so much from Prince that it’s hard to sum it up in a few lines,” she explains, “but what I usually say about that experience is that it was a huge gift, the most magical musical journey imaginable, and a never-ending learning experience that goes beyond anything you could imagine.” Ida, who dedicated her 2016 album TurnItUp to her late mentor, added: “The most important thing Prince taught me is to play with my heart—always!”

It was in August 2010 that the Danish bassist received a call from The Purple One himself at her home in Copenhagen, inviting her to come to Paisley Park to jam with him. It was actually a sort of informal audition, which Ida aced. As she recalls, “Prince’s manager at the time called me and said he’d seen my Myspace profile and would like to jam with me. She then told me she’d call me back. When two weeks went by without a call, I totally thought it was a joke. All my friends knew that playing with Prince was my biggest dream, so I could hardly believe it. But she eventually called me back. And, of course, that whole experience changed my life in so many ways. ” She adds: “I was a versatile bassist before joining Prince in 2010, but my heart has always been in funk. I love it so much. And I think that’s what got me the NPG gig in the first place.”

In addition to Prince, with whom she toured from 2010 until his untimely passing in 2016, Nielsen has cited bassists such as Marcus Miller, Mark King, Larry Graham, Bootsy Collins, and Victor Wooten as her bass role models, a fact that is evident in her thunderous approach on *More Sauce, Please*. “All my albums are bass-driven, old-school funk albums with flavors of hip-hop, reggae, neo-soul, and world music,” she says. “My last album, 02022020, was more lo-fi, dreamier, and more lounge-y because I wanted to do something different, and a lot of my fans were disappointed by the lack of hard-hitting funk.”

Born in the small town of Aarhus, Denmark, Ida began singing in her school choir before taking up the bass guitar at age 16. She spent most of the 1990s studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Music before joining a number of bands both within and outside the academy. She toured Europe with the Belgian pop group Michael Learns To Rock and was subsequently hired as a touring bassist for the Belgian-African group Zap Mama, founded by Marie Daulne, a native of Zaire. Nielsen released her first album as a bandleader, *Marmalade*, in 2008, under the name Bassida. On it, she introduced her signature funky sound, which would later be featured on her second solo album, Sometimes a Girl Needs Some Sugar Too (2011), as well as on TurnItUp (2016), Time 2 Stop Worrying (2019), and 02022020 (2020). ‍

In 2014, Nielsen performed alongside Prince, guitarist Donna Grantis, and drummer Hannah Welton on 3rd Eye Girl’s album *PlectrumElectrum*. The last time she played with Prince was at a New Year’s Eve party hosted by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in Saint Barthélemy on January 1, 2016. As she told MusicRadar: “I realize there are a lot of Prince fans who want to support me. I really appreciate that, and I really appreciate that they still love funk.”

And there’s plenty of funk to enjoy on Ida’s latest album, *More Sauce, Please*!

Ida was voted one of the top 10 bassists in the world.