D'Angelo

100 Best Albums

Essential Albums

  • Black Messiah
    Black Messiah
    Black Messiah

    A whirlwind of success left D’Angelo feeling sold for parts. Following his seminal album, 2000’s Voodoo, the neo-soul staple slipped into the shadows, disillusioned by his subsequent objectification, and burdened by personal struggles. Thus began one of music’s most memorable vanishing acts, only to resolve 14 years later, with the release of the multi-instrumentalist’s aptly titled third album, Black Messiah. R&B had gone through a series of evolutions during D’Angelo’s absence: There’d been the turn-of-the-century futurism of groups like Destiny’s Child and TLC, and the rise of Drake-inspired rapper-singers. But unlike several legacy acts who bent to the next big sound, D’Angelo remained firm in what felt true to him. Though he initially wanted to perform all of the album’s instrumentation himself—an idea inspired by his idol, Prince—D’Angelo’s love of collaboration prevailed, and he eventually called on fellow members of the Soulquarians, the legendary collective he’d worked with on Voodoo. He also recruited singer-songwriter Kendra Foster, who co-wrote more than half of Black Messiah’s 12 songs. This would be an album produced in an atmosphere of controlled chaos—one that would capture the same experimental spirit that had made Voodoo a neo-soul masterpiece. Recorded, processed and mixed using analogue equipment, Black Messiah captures the vintage funk and soul sounds of its predecessor, intertwined with a sociopolitically rich message. "It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen,” D’Angelo writes in the album notes. “It’s not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them.” It’s an urgent album—and a timely one. Originally slated for release in 2015, Black Messiah arrived in late 2014, due to verdicts in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner killings. Songs like “1000 Deaths” and “The Charade” centre on the Black experience, while the Grammy-winning “Really Love” centres on a message of love, coexisting with the singer’s past hits.

  • Voodoo
    Voodoo
    Voodoo

    100 Best Albums Released in early 2000, D’Angelo’s landmark Voodoo was the result of years’ worth of scholarship and soul-searching. In the late 1990s, the R&B prodigy began spending time at Jimi Hendrix’s famed Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Working with a collective of innovative jazz, hip-hop and soul musicians known as the Soulquarians, the singer spent hours studying Black music’s past, while simultaneously paving its future. Numerous friends and guests would drop in along the way, including founding Soulquarians members Questlove, James Poyser and J Dilla, as well as such artists as Erykah Badu and Bilal. During that time, D’Angelo studied episodes of Soul Train, dug into old performances from legends like Marvin Gaye and James Brown, and—most crucially—created more than 120 hours of music. All of that effort would eventually be whittled down into D’Angelo’s sophomore masterpiece, Voodoo—an album that was far more experimental and free-flowing than his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, and that felt like a wholesale rejection of “modern” R&B. Tracks like “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” proved that, while flashy R&B tracks were thriving commercially, a slow-burning, seven-minute-long single could possess the power to capture the mainstream for generations to come. It was the standout track on an album that was as daring lyrically as it was sonically, with songs about fatherhood, love, spirituality and sex. That last topic would, at times, threaten to overshadow Voodoo’s brilliance. The album’s marketing materials, including the music video for “Untitled”—which featured a shirtless, possibly naked D’Angelo—were hyper-consumed by the media, and by fans. The emphasis on D’Angelo’s sex appeal led to his subsequent objectification, disillusionment and hiatus—in that order (he wouldn’t release another album until 2014’s Black Messiah . Nevertheless, Voodoo remains the apex of the neo-soul movement, cementing the timelessness of one of the genre’s most talent-filled jam sessions in history.

  • Brown Sugar
    Brown Sugar
    Brown Sugar

    1995

Albums

Artist Playlists

Singles & EPs

Live Albums

Appears On

More To Hear

About D'Angelo

With an unmistakable voice and an apparently innate ability to modernise the rich Black musical traditions that preceded him, D'Angelo birthed the neo-soul movement and became one of the definitive musicians of the '90s and 2000s. Michael Eugene Archer (born in 1974) grew up in Virginia as the son of a Pentecostal minister, sprouting musical roots from playing piano as a child and winning three consecutive talent shows at Harlem's Apollo Theater as a teen. His demo tape and an impromptu piano recital for an exec earned him a deal at EMI, under which he released his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar. The album—a mesh of earthy, vinyl-crackling soul evoking Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson and the edgy swagger of golden-era hip-hop—was the foundation for neo-soul, a subgenre that would continue to blossom with acts like Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Maxwell. Writer's block crippled D'Angelo's musical output in the following years, so he sparsely released cover songs until finding inspiration in his first child's birth. The result was 2000's Voodoo, a vulnerable meditation on love, fatherhood, sexuality and spirituality, co-produced by the Soulquarians crew of musicians, known for crafting Black diasporic grooves that eschewed structure without sacrificing focus. The album heightened D’Angelo’s stardom, but at a cost: fan reception of the steamy video for "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" and the album’s accompanying tour made him feel over-sexualised, and alcoholism and depression led to a hiatus of nearly 15 years. He returned in 2014 with Black Messiah, a stirring collection of soulful analogue grooves and sociopolitical lyrics that reflected the then-budding Black Lives Matter movement. D'Angelo doesn't create on the usual industry timeline, but working on his own schedule has been more than enough to make history.

FROM
Richmond, VA, United States
BORN
11 February 1974
GENRE
R&B/Soul

Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada
  翻译：