Culture
The Gravity of D’Angelo: How a Backpacker Opened Their Heart to R&B
It’s the spring of 1995 and I hate R&B. Not hate per se, more like indifference. I was the Grinch, with a shriveled up heart for R&B, with no sign of it opening any tine soon. I am what is commonly referred to as a backpacker. I love hip-hop, and only hip-hop. I love A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Snoop, Dre, Outkast and Boot Camp. I mean Sade is cool, but that’s a different thing. Hell, even thugs love Sade. In my 15-year-old mind, R&B was one of two things. It was either Babyface or Jodeci.
Babyface was respectable, stand up. Babyface wore a suit and tie and carried a briefcase, his sound could be played on the office radio and not upset anyone. It was muted drums, no bass, and was heavy on ballads. It was Buppie, briefcase bops. Babyface was Boyz II Men, After 7, Luther Vandross, Mariah Carey. Babyface was for my parents, and as a teenager who likes their parents’ music?
Jodeci was the exact opposite. Jodeci was loud and kind of raunchy. In my mind, Jodeci was H-Town, R. Kelly, and Troop et al. They were sweaty and wore Timbs and leather and aggressively harmonized at you. Jodeci didn’t just sing, they sang. It was all body rolls and baby oil, as they explicitly told you where, how and for how long they were going to Love You Down. That wasn’t it for me.
So, there I was, minding my business and avoiding homework while watching videos and I see him. A guy with some straight backs and leather jacket steps off an elevator and glides to a Wurlitzer. There’s a jazz trio on stage, and he sits in, ready to play. He fingers a few chords, bellows out a perfectly backlit plume of smoke and the band kicks in. Even on the floor model TV, I could tell the bass was thumping. I was nodding my head to the kick and snare before I heard the lyrics and when I did, I was even more intrigued. Wait, was this man singing a love song, to weed?! What? Is that allowed? Hey, is that Ali Shaheed Muhammed from Tribe? What is going on here? Is that Guru? Did that girl go down on another girl? What is happening? What was going on was, I was witnessing the birth of something new. What was happening was, my heat was unshriveling.
I got a copy of Brown Sugar that summer and wore it out. I let my tape rock until my tape popped so to speak. The cassette lived in my Aiwa Walkman – the one with the Bass Boost feature. The credits and song titles were long wore off and it didn’t matter. I had memorized the exact rewind speed to get to my favorite songs. I cut grass all summer that tape and in the fall I wanted more. I needed more music that sounded like Brown Sugar, but unfortunately, there wasn’t any. Nothing sounded like Brown Sugar. No one sounded like D’Angelo, not yet.
A new musical solar system was forming and at its’ center was D’Angelo and Brown Sugar. He took his influences and loves and melded them together through fusion. He took the particles of funk, soul, and hip-hop and made a new element all his own. He sprinkled in some Prince and George and Sly and James, filtered through his hip-hop sensibilities and made something that was uniquely him. This wasn’t Babyface and it absolutely wasn’t Jodeci even if you squinted to see the comparison. This was something else, this was “neo-soul”.
Eventually, after some time, planets formed from this new star. Badiuzm, Urban Hang Suite, Embrya and eventually The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill all spawned from the Brown Sugar. These were my shit and I had D to thank for it. Not only these new additions, but Brown Sugar made me go back and understand their roots and influences. I was becoming a convert. D’Angelo changed the shape of Black music around him. Live instruments, mixed like a hip-hop album, sometimes by Bob Power himself, gave a new sound to something that felt old. It was a sound being rediscovered for a new generation.
After a few years away, D’Angelo returned to warp reality again. Voodoo wasn’t just a long awaited follow-up for me, it was like the New Testament dropping after Malachi. A New Covenant to reshape musical space time. Voodoo was again the center of solar system with Electric Lady Land Studios reopened her doors. The entire studio became the home base for a new movement that became the Soulquarians. Voodoo was as much traditional blues and soul with “Send It On” and “One Mo Gin” as boom bap rap with “Left and Right” and “Playa Playa.”
These sessions brought forth more stellar objects as before including Mama’s Gun, Things Fall Apart, Like Water for Chocolate, Black Star, Black on Both Sides and Reflections Eternal. The true next movement. The Soulquarian sound was my musical tribe. Hip-hop was always my gateway drug to explore soundscapes and the Soulquarians were my trip sitters. Stable and solid enough to hold my hand as the terrain got weird. They were rooted in a tradition that was familiar and steady while allowing me to roam and explore. UK grime, dub and electronica was rooted in hip hop breaks and soul melodies.
Because of Voodoo, my heart was full, the Grinch no longer hated Christmas and the world spun on. The landscape evolved around D’Angelo as the Left of Center or progressive wing marshalled us into the new millennium. Musiq Soulchild, Bilal, John Legend, Floetry, Raheem DaVaughn, Tank, Tyrese and countless others all owe a debt to D’Angelo. Their careers softened D’Angelo’s hiatus as they filed the vacuum of his absence.
Then one random Sunday morning a new object to bend the fabric again. On December 15, 2015, three years into the Black Lives Matter movement, D’Angelo returned with Black Messiah. Much like Voodoo, the sound was a departure from his previous work. More distorted in sound, yet crystal clear in vision. This wasn’t the guy with straight backs sitting at the Wurlitzer, and I wasn’t the close-minded kid avoiding his homework. I’d matured in my musical affectations and D was responsible for it. Brown Sugar fed me what I didn’t know I was missing. Voodoo challenged me to grow further and by the time Black Messiah came I was ready.
Much like last time, planets formed in the gravity well of Black Messiah. The most important hip-hop album of the 21st Century would drop a year later and would owe its energy and vibe to Black Messiah. Terrace Martin, one of the producers of the Kendrick Lamar project, would go on to say that they played Black Messiah in the studio while crafting To Pimp A Butterfly, trying to capture the energy and urgency of the record.
Planets orbit a star due to its immense gravitational forces, but also, they feed on the star. The planets comprise the same matter as their star. They use the sun’s energy to form life of their own. Thus is the weight of a D’Angelo.
I’ve struggled trying to encapsulate the life of an artist that has meant so much to me. He opened my eyes, and my heart, to a universe of music and art that I was once unwilling to see. He kept me tethered to a solid foundation, because it was his foundation. That allowed me to excavate my history, contextualize influences and bring it back home no matter how far I roamed. What can be said to such a gift other than Thank You.
To Michael Eugene Archer, Thank you. Rest well sir.
photo credit: Thierry Le Gouès
