In Loving Memory of D'Angelo

D’Angelo was my Prince. Transformative musician, singer-songwriter, genius, prodigy, hit-maker. Just as virtuosic in musical prowess, but with a smoother edge. He introduced me to ‘90s soul, which is to say that he introduced me to my own. Watching BET’s late-night Video Soul and seeing D’Angelo seated at a piano in a jazz club singing Brown Sugar was the moment I was attuned to a frequency that I was always meant to be on. He was always the vanguard. And now I/we are left in the wake of his passing.

During hip-hop’s prolific mid-90s to 2000s endeavor to market a new generation of Blackness in relentless pursuit of the mainstream, D’Angelo’s manager manufactured the “neo-soul” moniker for ease of commercialization. D’Angelo rejected the term, instead clarifying again and again that his only endeavor was to make Black music. He articulated this fidelity to cultural veneration through sonic ethics in a 2014 conversation with Nelson George in Brooklyn - “When I was going to church, they used to say, ‘Don’t go up there for no form or fashion.’ So, I guess what that means is, you know, ‘Listen, we up here singin’ for the Lord. So, don’t be up here tryna be cute. Because we don’t care about all that. We just want to feel what the Spirit is moving through you.’” There was no need to set himself apart by claiming novel categories. He was partaking in the tradition of what had always already been.

Still, that he chose to let the Spirit move through him by way of some of the most distinctly sensual love songs of all time can’t be left unsaid. Through the form and fashion of the sensual song, he intimately figured Blackness as a singular object of desire. “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” is his yearning proposition for a woman to be with him. The music video famously and meticulously focuses on his body, but the lyrics incessantly focus on her decision:

Girl, it’s only you
Have it your way
And if you want, you can decide
And if you’ll have me
I can provide everything that you desire

….

How does it feel?
How does it feel?
Did it ever cross your mind?
How does it feel?

The song asks how she feels, but it’s really asking what she thinks in recognition that the body follows the mind. This is a love song that isn’t really about love. Or loss. But being suspended between the potential for harmony, and the reality of dissonance. It isn’t sentimental. It’s a euphoric, rapturous, intensely emotional performance of romantic suffering. Longing for a liberation that’s clearly elusive, but also right in front of you. It’s a Black song. And the Blackness of the song was mirrored in how people reacted to it - its richness was subordinated to the general incapacity to see him as a sapient being. By the time he went on the Voodoo tour, the idea of him as a sex symbol had eclipsed him as an artist, and the music became secondary to the image of him as a fantasy. He found that he could not perform a song about desire without himself being reduced to desire. “Untitled” ultimately drove him to leave the industry for 14 years.

When he returned with what would be his final album, Black Messiah, the lead single “Really Love,” was a different kind of offering. This time, he found himself assuring a woman of the sincerity of his love in the midst of her concerns with what she perceived as his intention to not just be with her, but possess her. The song’s opening monologue (which is in Spanish, but translated below) provides the insight into the woman’s mind that we never got in “Untitled:”

Yeah, you love me? I love you very much. All the time we spent together. What I wanted to say is that…you’re screwing my life. *Laughs* I did not want to fight you. I only wanted to love you. But you are very jealous. You wanted to be my owner. But I am free. You want to be my king? Me, your queen? I do not know if I trust you. But I love you very much.

In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t just meant to be a message from the woman to D’Angelo. Maybe it doubles as a message from D’Angelo to the world.

***

We’ve lost so many greats lately. We all have that one artist whose work hit the core of who we are and helped us find our roots. For a lot of folks, D’Angelo was their one. He was mine too.