Sunday Music: D'Angelo And The George Nelson Interview

The great writer and historian George Nelson somehow, someway, got D’Angelo to record a conversation (presumably a few years ago) that he just posted to YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, scroll down for the original piece. I’m going to do my best to carve out a few of my favorite ideas.

Nelson opens with a question of how D’Angelo would describe funk. He invokes George Clinton and says,

Rock and roll is like the blues, sped up. It’s like a faster version of the blues. Funk is not as slow as the blues, so it’s in the middle. The whole concept of funk, and what it means to me is, it’s black rock and roll. What George said when he said, “We have returned to reclaim the pyramids,” that’s what that represents to me.

He’s a student. He starts explaining that if you want to learn this stuff, you’d go back and start with James Brown, right before Maceo left, and follow through to when Bootsy and the new JBs happens. Then he throws what might seem like a curve ball. He brings up Sly and the Family Stone, but also, Band of Gypsys. Nelson halts him on that one.

If you don’t know Band of Gypsys, it’s the last Hendrix stuff before Hendrix was gone. Buddy Miles comes in on drums, Billy Cox is on bass, and it’s kind of a revelation. All the annoying rock-jam-band-funk, it usually sounds like a bad version of Band of Gypsys to me. But the actual musical group, and the live album, it’s got an unreal texture. You can see where Hendrix was going (and I’d argue, what was drawing people like Miles Davis to him at that time). I was slow to come around to Band of Gypsys, but if you’ve studied it too you know, it’s magic. Miles’ behind the beat swagger, Cox’s melodies, Hendrix’s surreal tonal textures.

D’Angelo explains Hendrix as a blues man from outer space, as primitive as he could be and as from outer space as he could have been, all at the same time. Which in many ways, is what D’Angelo represents. An extension of how to be primitive and futuristic all at once.

The conversation turns to Prince. To the evolution of funky music, of black rock and roll, over the years. The introduction of synthesizers instead of horns, the connections he started to sense between what DJ Premier was doing and what Buddy Miles was playing.

The conversation turns back to older times. D’Angelo shouts out Otis Redding. How “That s*** was hard driving rhythm and blues. Major chords, sharp angles, really piercing horn lines, and he was such a hard-driving vocalist, that’s just a precursor to the funk.”

And I suddenly get D’Angelo’s music even more. He’s modern era Otis Redding. With all the James, and Jimi, and Prince, and Premier accumulated, giving us the full-range of rhythmically, harmonically, and dynamically explorative black rock and roll for a solid 30 years now. Just like Otis did as he separated himself from what came before and what came after. Informed, but independent.

Just think of the snare drum placements alone from Brown Sugar to Voodoo. The guitar sounds from Voodoo to Black Messiah. It’s evolving and all-encompassing all at once.

When the interview ends, and D’Angelo mentions the importance of carrying the torch. It makes sense. I can feel it. Because the pyramids have been reclaimed, and even if there aren’t enough as many of his records as I would like, the work has been done. All the influence is still there, all the imagination is pointed at the future.

You really do want to watch this,

and yes, I have had a few D’Angelo posts over the years…

If you didn’t get my snare and guitar comments, follow along.

Leaning wayyyy back in’95

the Dilla-informed wobble is here (even if the snare isn’t too pushy)

the guitar sounds and textures

Him putting it all together is fun too - I remember freaking out about this in 2012, my god so funky, so good, so what I need (and so many great shots of people in the audience vibing along):