Happy 5th Anniversary to D’Angelo And The Vanguard’s Black Messiah, originally released December 15, 2014.
When an artist takes time away from the spotlight, there’s always the risk that their audience will forget them. Any extended time away means the next project isn’t just a new release, it’s a comeback. Questions will arise. Are they still making music? Are they still any good? Are they still relevant? Will their music still resonate? Or has the musical landscape shifted in their absence?
For D’Angelo, an artist who captured the world’s attention with his stellar debut Brown Sugar in 1995 and then took five years to follow it up with the neo-soul defining Voodoo (2000), time between ventures wasn’t uncommon. But it took fourteen years for his third release to see the light of day, the ambitious and genius filled Black Messiah.
Fourteen years. That’s several lifetimes in today’s music scene. Time for audiences to move on. Time for rumors to build. Time for fear to set in. Time for self-doubt to rear its head and strike at the heart of the artist.
But in that extended hiatus, D’Angelo was still musically active, releasing cover versions of artists that had influenced him and guesting as a featured artist on many spots. But this just drove the desire to hear new original material.
And writing was taking place. Sessions with Questlove proved fruitful. Time locked away in a studio writing, composing, performing and producing in a similar vein to Prince delivered a bounty of tracks. But it wasn’t until D’Angelo was joined in the studio with a bevy of top-notch musicians that the stars aligned and work started to come into focus.
Tracks from the early 2010s were fine-tuned, revamped and reinvented and new material was written. And whilst D’Angelo is credited with vocals, guitar, piano, organ, keyboards, synthesizers, bass, electric sitar, drum programming, and percussion on the album, musicians such as Pino Palladino, Jesse Johnson, and vocalist and writing partner Kendra Foster all contributed in no small part. But still, this involved a 4-year process of working on one song for a month or two and then taking a month’s break. A slow and steady approach that built excitement as well as concern that it was busy work without any real deadline in sight (none that would be met anyway).
But then, spurred on by the racial inequality he was seeing amplified by the controversy surrounding both the Michael Brown Jr. and Eric Garner trials, D’Angelo pushed the release up by several months and on December 15, 2014 the world finally got to hear what D’Angelo had so painstakingly been brewing.
Steeped in funk, the album is strongly zeroed in on issues of race relations, the ongoing struggle for equality, and the value of human life, while still reserving time for a handful of tracks about good loving.
Of those in the latter category, they range from the epically beautiful “Really Love” that plays like a black and white motion picture with the way it eases in slowly and takes its time to seduce, to the erotically charged “Sugah Daddy” with its head-bopping beat and teasing horns that wastes no time getting down to it. Elsewhere, the sweaty funk of “Ain’t That Easy” and playful whistling stroll of revenge in “The Door” deal with strained relationships.
Then there’s the jazzy “Betray My Heart” playing like a simple sonnet that enraptures the listener as it promises a heart that will be true and always there for the giving. But the finest moment on the record (at least in the D’Angelo as lover mode) is the trippy elegance of “Another Life,” which builds on a blissed-out chord rise and details a love that is star-crossed in this existence, but will find its fulfilment in the next. Packed with soul, the song is perfection with every element striking the right note.
Of course, the album was highly acclaimed for its socio-political content and boy was it politically charged, summoning the power of Sly And The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On (1971) and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971).
Whilst the album opens in a cacophony of swirling guitars echoing the ongoing chaos of modern times, it’s not until track two that the social commentary becomes pointed. “1000 Deaths” opens with a thumbing beat accompanied by a spoken word sample taken from a rousing speech by New Black Panther Party Chairman Khalid Abdul Muhammad as he highlights the disparity between the Bible’s description of Jesus and the more popular Western European artistic representations. This is backed with another spoken word sample from Black activist Fred Hampton as he discusses the need to rise up and fight for peace.
Lyrically powerful, and sadly obscured by a fuzztone distorted delivery, D’Angelo refashions the idiom first raised in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that a coward dies 1000 lives whilst a soldier (in a righteous fight) dies but once. It’s less of a call-to-arms and more of a call-to-action. For society to rise up and fight the wrongs it sees, and to do so with conviction and unity.
Similarly, the dreamy melody of “Till It’s Done (Tutu)” floats through a narrative addressing the ecological and existential crises with quote worthy poetics. The spiritual, aptly titled “Prayer” lays the cross we all bear on hopeful soldiers against a skittish beat that underscores the missteps taken in all lives. Here, D’Angelo’s vocals are clear and unfiltered, making the message of hope and salvation abundantly clear.
Clarity isn’t always the case on this album, however. Not one for over-annunciation, quite often the beauty in the lyrics are hidden by a muddled or distorted delivery that can feel quite opaque at times. But in a way, and in spite of this, it forces you to pay closer attention to the lyrics and their message, as you try to decipher what is being conveyed.
Case in point is the powerful “The Charade,” which captures the struggle of Black Americans against personal, structural and systematic racism. This fight for equality is so eloquently summed up by the double-power punch of the chorus lines, “All we wanted was a chance to talk / ‘Stead we only got outlined in chalk.” Read (and listen to) that again.
In these two lines, D’Angelo sums up the Civil Rights movement, the right to equality and the fight for a seat at the table, and the gut punch reality that too many black lives have been lost, murdered and reduced to chalk outlines within a system that is meant to protect and value them.
Now as a white guy from Australia, it might seem strange that this song struck a chord with me. But that is the point of music, to reach beyond the preached-to choir and enroll others in understanding and enlightenment. To connect through empathy. And why “The Charade” and many of the songs on Black Messiah remain sadly powerful and relevant no matter when they were written or when they are heard.
It’s been said that part of the reason for the extended hiatus was as a push back by D’Angelo against his public image of being a sex symbol that overshadowed his actual prowess as a musician and songwriter. As he sings in “Back To The Future (Part I)” with a tongue decidedly in his cheek, “So if you're wondering about the shape I'm in / I hope it ain't my abdomen that you're referring to / This what I want you to listen to,” not only is he casting off the sex symbol imagery conjured up by his previous outing, he’s also putting the focus on where it should have always been, and where it always belongs: on his art itself.
With Black Messiah, the focus is back where it belongs. It’s a beautiful, broody, murky mix of funk and soul that carries you from opening track to the final note. It’s not only an encapsulation of D’Angelo’s influence, but also a reminder of why it’s so important that his next release doesn’t take another fourteen years to surface. Though if it does, you can be sure it will be worth the wait.
LISTEN: