Of course, Voodoo was D'Angelo's sophomore CD; his first was Brown Sugar, a laid-back head-nodding ode to love, full of hip-hop swagger and R&B vulnerability. But Voodoo was such a leap forward, with many songs edging beyond the traditional 4 minutes. D'Angelo, influenced by Prince and many others, cooked up a musical concoction of funk, blues, R&B, jazz and rock. The sound was grittier and looser, yet still highly structured. The album was slightly out-of-control passion, contained just at the moment it was bound to burst free.
The first time I heard Voodoo, I was mesmerized. The CD had a hypnotic power tied to an irresistible groove, one that ebbed and flowed. It wasn't an easy groove. D'Angelo and Questlove, of The Roots fame, had crafted a CD that was off-kilter. The beats didn't land exactly where you thought they would land.
Two of my favorite songs on that CD were "Greadayndamorning/Booty" and "Africa." The first was a gritty ditty about perserverence in the face of the daily grind that dovetailed smoothly at the end into a funky jam full of joy at the sight of a dawn promising new beginnings. And the latter, fueled by soft African drumming, is a powerful song in which D'Angelo sings about the importance of honoring his African ancestry and ensuring that history is passed down to his son.
Continued listenings only confirmed for me how much of a classic Voodoo was and remains. And in the 14 years since Voodoo came out, I had vague hopes that D'Angelo would record another CD of equal power.
Doubt built upon doubt as I read of his legal troubles and his drug problems. Rumors came and went that he was working on a new CD called "James River," named aptly after the body of water near our native Richmond, Va. But nothing came. Music came out in snippets and videos of concerts he did over in Europe. And still nothing.
Until mid-December, when Black Messiah dropped Beyonce-like on iTunes. That Sunday night, I downloaded the album and put on my headphones. I found myself transfixed, lost in music I immediately loved but couldn't quite grasp.
Most CDs these days are nothing but radio-friendly singles bound together into one pre-packaged commodity ready for mass consumption. Black Messiah wasn't that.
It was a religious experience, one that washed over me in waves. His voice was blues-tinged that every now and then rose into Prince-like falsettos. As always, you struggled to understand him, the lyrics drowned in D'Angelo's melodic mumbles. "1,000 Deaths" is particularly emblematic of this problem.
Other times, he is clearer. And sometimes, it just doesn't matter. It's as if D'Angelo finds an eloquence in speaking in the tongues of his Pentacostal youth. In the song, "The Charade," he sings that "all we wanted was a chance to talk, 'stead we got outlined in chalk." The chorus, likely written way before the protests that sprung up around the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, feels precient, the voice of those too long silenced screaming to be heard.
D'Angelo said in the liner notes that Black Messiah doesn't refer to him; he's no God. But we can all be the Messiahs for the world we live in, tapping into our own power to effect the kind of change we want to see. And the greatest power we have, I think D'Angelo is saying, is love.
Love infuses every song here in all kinds of forms -- sensual and romantic love, love for community, love for the wider world in which we all live, love for the divine.
It's all there in the grooves of the songs, just as loose as on Voodoo. But the songs are shorter, not as jammy, and it feels a bit more cohesive.
I can't decide yet whether Black Messiah is better than Voodoo or just in the same vein. I think it is.
The CD is a reminder for me that art doesn't mean much if it comes easy. Art is greatest when you labor on it, put the time in, make sure all the ingredients are there and thoroughly cooked. Art means you risk the people not loving it because at the end of the day you have to write the story you need to write, push out the truth of what you want to say in as naked a way as possible. Because your aim is not to be popular, not to be what's in, but to be the next thing, the thing that no one had ever thought to be until you put you into the world.
And that's why I love Black Messiah, for this moment in time. D'Angelo went through whatever he went through for 14 years and came back out on the other end to create something beautiful out of the joy and the pain, the dreams and the nightmares, the light and the dark, of his eternal soul.
This is resurrection music, revolution embodied in the notion that no one ever really dies, because resurrection happens all the time.
