Black Messiah was a long time coming for fans of D’Angelo’s music, but for the artist himself, it was a product of urgency — at least in the last few months approaching its release. D’Angelo had been working on his third album for years, and after numerous false starts, he and his label RCA Records had planned to release it in the first quarter of 2015. But the real world needed the album more than a label calendar. That July, an unarmed Black man named Eric Garner was killed by white police officer Daniel Pantaleo in New York City; a month later, an unarmed Black teenager named Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, MO by another white officer named Darren Wilson. A grand jury refused to indict Wilson days before Thanksgiving, and according to record executive Kevin Liles, D’Angelo decided then to push the album up. By the time it actually came out, 10 years ago this Sunday, a grand jury had decided not to indict Pantaleo, either.
But before that late 2014 rush to get the album done, there had been a 14-year gap since D’Angelo’s previous album, Voodoo. His 1995 debut Brown Sugar was sexy and soulful in its own right, but it was his 2000 sophomore album that created the musical and physical persona that fans most identify him with. He connected in the studio with musicians from the Soulquarians — a loose musical collective consisting of the Roots drummer Questlove, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, Erykah Badu, and others — for a series of now legendary sessions to craft a collection of hazy, sensual soul and funk, with off-kilter drums distinctive to production luminary J Dilla. And the one-shot music video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” showcased the shirtless, chiseled torso of D’Angelo singing his signature falsetto in front of a black background, leading women to grow obsessed with him. (The video currently has 33 million views on YouTube, and even that number doesn’t fully articulate the mayhem; it was viral before such terminology even existed.) He earned both critical reverence and mainstream sex symbol status: two Grammys, another platinum plaque, the respect of his peers and critics alike, and screaming ladies in the audiences of his shows.
But as he shared in a 2014 interview with GQ, the years that followed were filled with tumult: fans’ hysterical reactions on the Voodoo World Tour left him feeling objectified by his audience, and after returning to his hometown of Richmond, VA at the tour’s conclusion, he lost people who were close to him. He battled substance abuse, and when he was arrested on DUI and drug possession charges, his mugshot — bloated and unkempt, a far cry from his cult classic music video — flooded the ‘net. He failed multiple rehab attempts and barely survived a car crash in which he was ejected from his Hummer. He had a few guest appearances in the 2000s with the likes of Snoop Dogg, Q-Tip, and others, but It took a third rehab stint in Antigua before D’Angelo was back in full swing creatively.
He reunited with Questlove and assembled a new band called the Vanguard, consisting of Funkadelic affiliate Kendra Foster (who cowrote many of the songs with D’Angelo), guitarist Jesse Johnson of Prince’s band the Time, drummer Chris Dave (who has collaborated with Amy Winehouse and Robert Glasper), and other musicians. They reportedly recorded the whole album on tape through analog means, forgoing updated digital technology. It felt like years went by with Questlove constantly hyping up the album in interviews and tweets, leaving fans both excited with anticipation and exhausted from waiting.
After the one-month rush to complete the album after the Michael Brown verdict (or lack thereof), D’Angelo’s third album was surprise-released on Dec. 15, a formula largely precedented by Beyoncé’s self-titled album a year earlier, almost to the date. The album feels like a soundtrack to both the budding Black Lives Matter movement and the recovery that he had earned after years of personal pain and addiction, with sonic nods to the likes of Prince, Sly & The Family Stone, and Jimi Hendrix.
In an interview with Okayplayer, bandmate Kendra Foster said that D’Angelo “wanted to write a song in the way James Baldwin would say it, but through Dorothy Parker’s voice.” That focus is clear on Black Messiah. “All we wanted was a chance to talk, instead our bodies got outlined in chalk,” he sings on “The Charade,” a song that pays homage to civil rights movements and blood shed by ancestors. “A coward dies a thousand times, but a soldier only dies just once,” he declares on “1000 Deaths,” a song that urges listeners to push against oppressive forces then dives into a spiral of psychedelic wails and guitar riffs. “Prayer” seeks spiritual guidance to persevere through strife, but the vocals chop in and out, like a cell phone with shaky reception during a blizzard.
On “Back To The Future (Part 1),” D’Angelo has a particularly sharp lyric: “So if you’re wondering, what about the shape I’m in / I hope it ain’t my abdomen that you’re referrin’ to.” It’s one of my favorite lines on the record, as it pleads for recognition of his humanity in multiple respects: He’s put years into recovering physically and mentally from addiction, he hopes that fans care about his well-being after the rampant oversexualization, and it could also be speaking about the white supremacy that dehumanizes Black people on a regular basis. And the lyrics are backed by a variety of soul, funk, and jazz landscapes that are richly layered and textured. They felt like rallying cries as footage of Black Lives Matter protests were flooding our screens, and it feels equally resonant now, less than a month from the start of a presidency that was won by a campaign of bigotry and xenophobia.
D’Angelo’s lyrics aren’t always clearly decipherable beyond specific choruses or stanzas, and that’d been a consistent element of his music before Black Messiah. “It’s about capturing the spirit, capturing the vibe,” he said in an interview with Nelson George for Red Bull Music Academy earlier that year. “Even if I’m mumbling, I like to keep that first thing that comes out [on the microphone], because that’s the spirit.” But leafing through the lyric booklet — first shared by Questlove on Twitter after fan requests, later released officially — uncovers even more powerful verbiage.
“Till It’s Done (Tutu)” has D’Angelo calling attention to violent wars and environmental crises, references that resonate even more deeply 10 years later during the conflict in Gaza and president elect Trump’s refrains of “drill baby drill.” “Yahweh, Yehushua, he don’t want no coward soldier,” he cries on “1000 Deaths;” it’s an insistence that the pursuit for social justice is spiritual just as much as political. It’s mind-boggling and discouraging to think of just how much has changed in the 10 years since the album was released. At the time, it felt as if the society was on the verge of a substantial social shift. But now, the word “woke” has been reappropriated into a slur instead of its original call to recognize injustice, and last month’s election results seem to have prompted despondence instead of movement.
When Black Messiah was first released, I recognized it as an audible masterpiece and as a protest soundtrack. I was working in Flint, Michigan as a newspaper reporter in my late 20s, and I bought two copies of the album, one digitally and one on CD to play in my car. I was just as moved by the social unrest as anyone else was, and D’Angelo’s lyrics (the ones that I could understand, at least) fueled my day-to-day drives just as much as the full musical arrangements from his band filled my speakers. The band’s extended sessions made me look forward to commutes before and after work, or on trips to visit family.
But surprisingly, 10 years later, some of the songs that resonate the most for me are the love songs. When the album first released, I wasn’t in a committed relationship, co-parenting a child, or battling chronic health issues. I hadn’t yet placed a name to the sporadic depression that I had experienced for so long. In short: I thought I’d been through some things, but I hadn’t seen anything yet. As I live through those things now in my late 30s, during another era of sociopolitical despair, the album has new context. The romance of songs like “Ain’t That Easy” and the seductive Spanish guitars “Really Love” feels like a deliberate decision by D’Angelo to choose love, to retain the romantic side of himself despite all that he had been through personally, and in spite of an oppressive system that pushes him to forget who he is.
I’d heard of music (including Black Messiah itself) described that way before, but the stakes are more pronounced with age. “Another Life” was always my favorite song on the album and one of my highlights of the year, but largely just because it felt sexy: how the Vanguard’s lush, sweeping instrumentation backed D’Angelo’s voice, feeling like it moved from one space to another like an epic. But reading the lyrics now, it feels like a reminder of just how powerful love can be during a time of bleakness. It can provide a sense of purpose, direction, and hope — and lord knows I need that right now, just as many of us do. As he pointedly says on “Till It’s Done (Tutu)”: “Question ain’t do we have resources to rebuild/ Do we have the will?”
After the release of Black Messiah, D’Angelo went on his The Second Coming tour and earned another slate of Grammys, including Best R&B Album for Black Messiah and Best R&B Song for “Really Love,” which also garnered a nomination for Record Of The Year. At the time, it felt like there was a slate of Black music — To Pimp A Butterfly, Anti, Beyoncé, Run The Jewels 2 — that strived to cover sociopolitical ground in one way or another. It felt adventurous and rebellious, if not lyrically then in sound and/or in spirit, in a way that appears to be drastically missing right now. D’Angelo loomed large in that moment.
Since then, he has largely gone back into the shadows, coming out on rare occasions such as a Prince tribute on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon after the fellow singer/multiinstrumentalist died, and on Swizz Beatz and Timbaland’s Verzuz, where he was the only artist on the platform to not have an opponent. As always, D’Angelo has no peers. He’s reportedly working on a new album, and after a 14-year wait before, there’s no telling when this one will arrive. But whether it’s delayed, rushed, or both, time will be on his side.
