This is the title track to Meshell Ndegeocello's eleventh studio album. She wrote the song with Shara Worden, who also performs on the track. Worden performs under the name My Brightest Diamond. "Her and I had a conversation, and she turned that conversation into a song," Ndegeocello explained. "I told her the title and she just went off on a tangent."
The title uses just five different letters, which intrigued Ndegeocello. There is a random element to the song that leaves it open to interpretation. When Meshell floated the title past some of her friends, they all came up with different ideas as to what it meant.
Meshell gave some insight as to what it means to her in our 2014 interview when she was discussing awareness of her mortality and how she expects her musical gift to one day vanish. "I can see the comet coming to destroy me eventually," she said. "I watch the people that have come before me, and eventually that gift will leave. Eventually, it will leave and not return."
A French phrase that literally translates to "madness has two," "folie a deux" is a condition where two people who are very close share the same mental disorder.
The phrase doesn't show up in the lyric: she chose a French title because she is signed to Naïve Records, an independent label based in France.
In our interview with Meshell Ndegeocello , she said: "That song's about breaking up and how we treat each other. It's two people involved in craziness, and that's how I see love sometimes."
