Features

D’Angelo: An Appreciation

A suit. A tie. An electric guitar. A few bars sung in raspy falsetto. That’s all it took for me to believe the rumors: D’Angelo is back. You can see for yourself in the behind-the-scenes video GQ posted alongside Amy Wallace’s excellent profile of the long-lost singer. In the clip, he moans and croons and makes the guitar ring and growl with casual command. It’s as if he hasn’t been gone for twelve years.

At just over ninety seconds, the clip has the feel of a film trailer, which is fitting considering how often D’Angelo’s life has felt like a biopic unfolding in real-time. As Wallace reports, he is the son of a Pentecostal preacher who taught himself “Boogie Wonderland” on the piano at age four. By eight, he had discovered his Uncle CC’s record collection – Otis Redding, Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield — and, after Marvin Gaye’s death, started having dreams he was shaking the singer’s hand. Just over a decade later, he became his own star: a suave musical perfectionist who played every instrument the on the title track his debut album, “Brown Sugar,” from the buzzing engine bass to the flickering organ to the punching-bag drums. He made a song called “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker” sound heavenly and a gospel-drenched number “Higher” sound x-rated. He sounded vaguely like a few other artists, only better.

Then came his 2000 sophomore album, Voodoo. It begins with sound of a knife hitting a chopping block and muffled voices. Then a thick bass bubbles up slowly, as if crawling out of a swamp; the drums and horns click in for a stuttering funk stomp; and the singer whispers a refrain of “Play on, play on…” If Brown Sugar intrigued fans, Voodoo bewitched us. It was mind-boggling display of technical skill, a showcase for a performer who could slide between hip hop swaggering (“Devils Pie,” “Right and Left”), Latin shuffles (“Spanish Joint”), new-millennium updates of old-school soul (“Feel Like Makin’ Love”) and pure James Brown funk (“Chicken Grease”) without ever seeming like he was trying to impress.

It was generous album, too. The songs pushed past five, six, seven minutes with horns and harmonies drifting through like smoke clouds. They were less symmetrical tunes than the ones on Brown Sugar, often beaking into key changes and counter-rhythmic riffs and jams. They were more raw, too. Nearly half of the songs — “The Line,” “Send it On,” “One Mo’ Gin,” “The Root” – bled into one another, which didn’t make them repetitive so much as remind readers that they were all ladled from the same simmering pot of lust, joy, and anger. The album was brilliant, perfect. The praise it inspired was well-deserved.

But a great album doesn’t necessarily sell. And, for better or worse, D’angelo’s handlers drew up a music video for the ballad “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” featuring the singer alone, naked, sweating, screaming in front of the camera. The stunt worked too well. He became more than just a sex symbol; he was sex, itself. He was “The Naked Guy” for schools of new, lusty fans, even if, for his loyal followers, was just the talented guy who got naked. As Wallace explains, D’angelo’s body went to his head. After women shouted “Take it off!” and tossed dollar bills onto the stage during the Voodoo tour, he told friends he was going to “go in the woods, drink some hooch, grow a beard, and get fat.” He meant it.

Here’s where the biopic film enters its dark, “Is he going to make it?!” section, where Ray Charles writhes on a bed in withdrawal and Johnny Cash goes to jail. For the next decade D’Angelo disappeared, popping up only in a decade’s worth of bad news. He rolled his Hummer off of a Virginia road, got pitched from the car, and broke his ribs. Later, a record company A & R man arrived at his house to find him draining the last drops from liquor bottles before being hauled to rehab. In a flash of irony, the former ladies’ man solicited an undercover officer for sex in New York City and got busted for it. Spin magazine published an infamous mug shot – bloated, scraggly – accompanied by the headline that perfectly captured what we were all thinking: “What The Hell Happened?”