Sunday Music: RIP D'Angelo - An Attempt At Context For New Listeners

D’Angelo passed away this week. He was 51. F***ing cancer.

My wife and I had tickets to see him only a few months ago at Roots Picnic in Philly. We were so excited. But, he cancelled at the last second, citing health conditions, and - we understood, but we were both pretty let down. The revised plan to see him was, whenever he announced new dates, to look at wherever he was playing in the world and figure out how to get there.

He’d been on my “I have to see him live” list since the mid-90s. He famously didn’t do much state-side. We were ready to do Europe if necessary for it.

Time is a mother.

I want to spend some time on his music with you. I’ll assume you know of him but maybe haven’t been as… into him (aka obsessed, ok, fine) as I’ve been. I think it matters, because now we’re talking legacy.

D’Angelo is the artist I found/discovered/that found me, or my ears at least, starting in high school and then into my college years, who put a ribbon on everything I was listening to, turning it into a gift, and making me understand artistry in a completely new light.

The old blues. Soul and Motown. Gospel. Funk. Jazz. Hip hop. Even the punk.

I hear people talk about Prince this way, or Sly before him. D’Angelo deserves to be in that conversation.

Read most critics on his passing. They’re not arguing how important his three, albeit very broadly spaced out, major albums were. They all pushed a musical boundary in a direction only he could. The collaborators and influences and influencees - all have nothing but positive things to say.

That’s the mark of a true artist. From all angles, there’s respect.

This post is my attempt to see if I can talk about D’Angelo in the most approachable way. I want to give you context so you can talk about him too. His life deserves it.

The first thing that popped into my head when the texts started coming was the Nelson George hotel room interview from a year ago. I told my wife we had to watch it again immediately. He was so alive in it.*

George got D to put himself into historical context - reverence for the past, momentum toward the future. “Carrying the torch.”

You should watch that whole interview - if nothing else, to see him play Parliament on a Jesse Johnson guitar with a piano player’s approach. RAW.

Let's start with what D'Angelo said about funk.

Imagine the blues. Imagine the part spiritual, part gospel, part somebody just talking to somebody else about life. That’s the reality of it. The world blues exists in, by finding a space to express the weight of it all. Where field songs meet field talk.

Then imagine how rock and roll is just the blues, sped up. Because you can’t be so solemn all of the time. Sometimes you need to dance. The boogie woogie is in you and it’s got to come out.

Blues are slow-cooking. Rock and roll is pan-searing. They’re both great, but they’re both extremes.

Funk is in the middle. It’s like you bring the temp up, throw it in the pan for the sear, and then let it rest for a minute, after, while you stand there salivating. You get the benefits of the internal cooking, and the char, all together.

The funk comes out of Otis Redding. The funk comes out of James Brown. The funk comes out of Sly Stone mashing other contemporary pop-artists on top of what Otis and Brown were teaching him when he was a DJ. The funk comes out of lineup changes. The funk comes out of middle-America and parties in places you don’t think of as musical meccas like Dayton, Ohio.

The sheer space in between blues and rock and roll is infinitely wide. This is the breeding ground for an artist like D’Angelo to emerge from. You start understanding D by understanding what was going on between those poles.

Two of the most profound experiments in this gap: Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On and Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys. They laid the groundwork - mixing socio-cultural textures, rhythmic textures, and sonic textures.

From James Brown to Sly to Jimi alone - you create the genre of hip-hop. You lay the foundation for Prince. You put all the ingredients in the melting pot that (finally) catch us up to D’Angelo.

Born Michael Eugene Archer in 1974, son of a preacher, D'Angelo was a perennial tinkerer on instruments. By 18, he'd started bands, fled Virginia for New York City, and dove straight into (winning!) amateur nights at the Apollo. Record deals and all the record deal drama followed.

Brown Sugar (1995) summoned Sam Cooke and hip hop side by side in a way nobody had quite done before. Out of nowhere there’s a record where - the old people got it, the kids got it, the Grammy people got it, and, s***, d***, m******** - multiple generations agreeing on the same album? That was a really big deal.

The album was successful. A follow-up was hotly anticipated. And then didn't materialize.

He was holed up in Electric Lady studios - Jimi Hendrix's hallowed ground - wrestling with writer's block, but also becoming a gravitational pull. D's inability to crank out a record made everybody he wanted to work with hang around Electric Lady more.

Dilla, Questlove, Pino Palladino, Bilal, Erykah Badu. The Soulquarians, they called it.

Those sessions broke how modern music thought of rhythm. If Brown Sugar bridged generations, Voodoo (2000) would go on to break open how music feels. The collection, which D and Dilla get innovator’s credit for, but Questlove and Pino (and the rest!) get massive execution credit because they pulled off playing it, took old variations of funk rhythm, paired them with a bastardization of quantizing drums (aka Dilla time), and then turned all of it on its head for a totally new, "drunken" sound. Loose but locked in. Drunk but deliberate.

Years go by. Again. And, even more years this time.

Black Messiah doesn't arrive until December 2014. 14 years later. FOUR-TEEN.

If Brown Sugar bridged generations and Voodoo broke rhythm, Black Messiah did something harder: it synthesized everything. Blues and rock. Past and future. The brown, the sugar, the voodoo, the funk - the sheer salvation music offers.

Black Messiah has a lot in common with Prince's Parade - the album D'Angelo called the best funk record ever. Both are post-commercial success, artistically challenging third acts. Both ask: what comes after you've already changed the game twice? For Prince, it was Parade. For D'Angelo, it was this.

There's more Duke Ellington, more Sly, more Robert Johnson, maybe even some Rick James on this album than ever. And yet, none of it sounds like anybody else. A third album, a third distinct D’Angelo sound.

Who does that?

Three albums. Three distinct sounds. Three ways he mattered.

In a divided world that can't seem to see across generational divides, he played modern musical politician on Brown Sugar.

In a messy world that can't get into step with each other, he showed us why we didn't need to and yet still could be mystically aligned on Voodoo.

In a post-truth era, when everything feels lost but all the reminders of what's beautiful come out of repurposing the past on a brand new future, he took us there, hard parts and all, on Black Messiah.

Personally, this is the soundtrack to three eras of my life. High school, college, and inarguable adulthood. I can’t recreate that synchronicity for you.

But I can tell you these are albums I return to, time and time again, and find something new. With every listen. I can tell you that if you haven't started, it's not too late.

All I want is for more people to see him in context. Then, appreciate what great art can do.

Rest in peace, D'Angelo.

Thank you.

*I wrote about the Nelson George interview here. There's also a great Red Bull Music Academy interview between the two of them, but the hotel room one is the essential watch.

PS. While it’s impossible for me to pick one song from each album that represents each album, I think this will give you a proper starting point (if you’re starting from zero):

I’ll never forget watching this live and how excited I was for new music from him. Not ready to think about how that will never happen again, so I’ll just be hanging out here for a while:

What about you?

Favorite songs, favorite albums, more D thoughts? Send ‘em on, to me.