60 Songs That Explain the '90s - D’Angelo—“Untitled (How Does It Feel)”

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Today, Rob breaks down one of the many impossible expectations we have for our musical stars—the memorial performance. After years of staying out of the public eye, D’Angelo paid tribute to the artist he grew up imitating, Prince, not because he was expected to but because he had something to share. The bulk of D’Angelo’s career was spent defying our expectations, from taking his time between each of his three studio albums to refusing to become a one-dimensional sex symbol after the release of his “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” music video. Rob speaks to author and poet Hanif Abdurraqib about how we misinterpreted this music video and how we should all be grateful we were born at a time when we could listen to D’Angelo. Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Justin Sayles and Olivia Crerie Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler Guest: Hanif Abdurraqib Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People often ask me, they say, Rob, what was it really like being a rock critic back in the late 2000s? And what I always say is, I once live blogged Michael Jackson's funeral. This is a moment that I wished that I didn't live to see come. No one has ever asked me what it was really like being a rock critic in the late 2000s. But if anyone ever did ask me, that's what I would say. On Tuesday, July 7th, 2009, I helped live blog Michael Jackson's funeral. Live blogging anything is a fundamentally perverse and debasing activity, much like taxidermy or pickleball. Live blogging a funeral is sicko behavior.

Objectively, what is wrong with me? Stevie Wonder is on stage, sitting somberly at a piano with a palpable, unbearable grief and shock and heaviness in his voice. And meanwhile, I'm watching on my computer at my desk at the village voice doofily typing away. Like do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-do-d-d-d-d- I do know that as much as we may feel and we do, that we need Michael here with us. God must have needed him far more. To paraphrase Grandpa Simpson, live blogging was the style at the time. I don't know what to tell you. Twitter roundups and live blogs.

The Coins of the Realm. This is MJ's public funeral, of course, his absurdly star-studded public memorial service held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The next two people on stage after Stevie Wonder are Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. Meanwhile, in this hot live blog I got going, I remember Usher was performing. Usher sang Gone Too Soon. And at one point, Usher is walking toward the casket. Michael Jackson's casket is on stage, his literally gold-plated casket.

And I remember writing like, Usher, you step away from that casket this instant. Do not throw yourself on that casket, sir. This is not a soap opera. Usher did not do that, obviously. Generally, though, we all tried our best to match the incomprehensible and possibly unprecedented gravity of this moment. Michael Jackson had a state funeral, basically. His Staples Center Memorial Service aired live on 18 different American TV channels, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc., where it was watched by 31 million people in the United States alone.

Plus it aired live in 88 movie theaters nationwide. Now add the internet. Roughly 59.5 million additional people in America streamed Michael Jackson's funeral. Now add the whole rest of the world. I've seen estimates on the internet that a billion people worldwide watched this live. I've seen estimates that 2.5 to 3 billion people worldwide watched this live. out of the roughly 6.8 billion people then living on earth total. That's preposterous.

And also, that's possible. Because as I sat there at my desk listening to Stevie Wonder, saying his 1971 Ballad never dreamed you'd leave in summer to Michael Jackson, who'd left us in summer. Among all the other stuff I thought and felt and blogged, I thought, every single person on earth is watching this. And I know I'm wrong that everyone on Earth was watching this, but it doesn't feel wrong.

And isn't it just the feeling that matters, really? I never dreamed this person would leave at all. I never dreamed he could leave. In say 1985, there were approximately 4.8 billion people on Earth total, and they all owned a copy of Thriller, setting aside all the weirdness, all the darkness, all the harrowing allegations swirling around Michael Jackson.

This is a person so thoroughly woven into the fabric of daily life that when he leaves us, even if you don't actively mourn him, you at least subconsciously mourn the bygone version of the world with him in it. You mourn your own childhood, perhaps. Just hypothetically. I cannot fathom life on earth without this person. It's like I'm watching a funeral for the moon. And so it falls to Stevie Wonder, and not for the last time, to help us make sense of this,

to help us make peace with this, to help us process this, grieve through this, survive this. And I know I'm lapsing into the royal wee, and I'm getting all florid and melodramatic. Now I'm acting like Usher walking toward the casket, but I don't know how else to react when Stevie Wonder escalates. here. When he says Michael's name, when he sings the line, Michael, why didn't you stay? And he stretches out the word stay for like 10 seconds. Stevie's voice bends, but it does not break. And in this terrible collective moment, that gives the rest of us permission to break if that is what we feel like doing. That is a hard moment. Stevie Wonders singing that word for that long. for that reason.

And then he sings another song. Stevie sings another song of his from 1974 called They Won't Go When I Go. And this is a personal favorite of mine that is also much darker and angrier, especially on this particular occasion. You know who did a great version of this song, George Michael. George Michael did a really fantastic cover of They Won't Go when I go. I wrote an obituary for George Michael at my parents' house on Christmas night 2016.

I got the news that George Michael died, and then I played Skipbo, the card game. I played Skipbo with my family for an hour or so while we listened to George's greatest hits. And then I wrote his obituary. That's what it was like being a rock critic in the mid-2010s. So Stevie bends but does not break on this particular occasion. never seen this, but a few months after this, in October 2009, Stevie's back on stage at Madison Square Garden in New York City for a ludicrously star-studded two-day celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Stevie's on stage with John Legend, singing Michael Jackson's

The Way You Make Me Feel. And here, now, Stevie breaks down. The Ecstatic, Jaunty. of this particular Michael Jackson song, the peppy horns and whatnot, as Stevie pulls back and fights back tears, that contrast. That's a hard moment. He sings the word love and he yanks his head back. The word love hits him with visible physical force. The Madison Square Garden crowd audibly rising up at the end there, cheering Stevie on, trying to lift Stevie up. That's truly lovely. Even if it makes this moment harder. Stevie Wonder is also, of course, a titanic figure from my childhood, and even more so now. He is beloved by all roughly 8.2 billion people currently alive on Earth.

And Stevie is all the more titanic and beloved now, because he is always here for us in these hard and terrible in-memorium-type moments. He is universally beloved for the comfort he provides us, for his resilience. I'm getting florid again, but, like, it is an extra-legged. lovely moment on the chorus to the way you make me feel to watch as Stevie fights his way through his grief, the way his strength returns and his swagger grows with every individual line. The way Stevie eventually tears into the line, you knock me off of my feet now, baby. That's why he's the best. Because unfortunately, this is part of the gig when you're an enduring pop star.

Part of the job is helping us say goodbye when we lose another. enduring pop star. This might in fact be the hardest part of a pop star's job, the funeral performance, the tribute, the in-memorium performance. I'm overwhelmed even at the thought of it. I'm overwhelmed by Jennifer Hudson's huge sigh right at the beginning here, and her little shrug almost for a split second she raises her hands and surrender, as if she's saying, I apologize in advance, but I'm going to do the best I can. And then, Jennifer does the best anybody could have done. We lost Whitney Houston on Saturday, February 11th, 2012.

One day later, on Sunday night, oh great, it's the Grammys. And so there's Jennifer Hudson, on stage at the Grammys, singing, I Will Always Love You. Notably, a song Jennifer Hudson had sung before in a high-profile, high-intensity situation. She sang it at the BET Honors Ceremony in 2010 on. honoring Whitney Houston. Jennifer's saying, I will always love you pretty much directly to Whitney Houston, who is beaming up at Jennifer from the front row. Now, here, Whitney has left us, and Jennifer is alone. And I am fascinated by the genuinely stricken look on Jennifer Hudson's face all through this. It's this searing, singular mixture of total helplessness and total command. As great as Jennifer Hudson is,

at singing anything anywhere, this moment is as frightened as I have ever been in my life for a singer on television. Jennifer Hudson singing, I will always love you, like 10 seconds after we found out Whitney Houston died.

This is as much sympathy, as much psychic emotional support as I have ever tried to remotely transmit to a singer on television. But of course, Jennifer Hudson nails it. And then she says,

Whitney's name. Oof. That is a terrifying and unimaginably difficult and very lovely moment. Jennifer Hudson nails it, though, in part because, like Stevie Wonder, she's on the tribute performance circuit a lot. So that's the 2012 Grammys, right? Here's what Jennifer's up to just one year earlier at the 2011 Grammys. Yeah, so in February 2011, I mean, widespread reports that Aretha Franklin was battling severe health problems, the 2011 Grammys kicked off with a delightfully chaotic and nearly frantic five diva Aretha Franklin tribute medley shootout. In order of appearance just now, that was Yolanda Adams, Martina McBride,

Christina Aguilera, our friend Jennifer Hudson, and Florence Welch, all valiantly wailing their asses off during a climactic version of sisters are doing it for themselves. This medley, all five singers got one song pretty much to themselves, and now this is the big wampin finish. Yolanda, Martina, Christina, Jennifer, and Florence are leaving no napkins unused, if you'll forgive the phrase. I remember in the moment being quite charmed by the outright panic radiating off this particular Grammys. tribute. This whole medley is just 12 solid minutes of,

ah, there's just a relatable, humanizing, tangible vibe of, oh, shit happening here. Not Aretha. Not now. Not ever. Plus, you know, the acknowledgement that a remotely sufficient Aretha Franklin tribute takes a village. It takes an army. It requires at least five people, five world-famous, accomplished singers, minimum. All of these women are individually phenomenal, obviously, and it turns out they're also fantastic, collectively, but we are throwing a great deal of spaghetti at the wall here in hopes that

enough of it will stick. Just picking up the whole giant bowl of spaghetti, like, this is awfully dark humor, and I apologize in advance, but two friends and colleagues of mine, who will remain nameless. They were live blogging, the 2011 Grammys, as you do. And during this giant panicked Aretha Medley, one of the guys says, wait, did Aretha Franklin die? And the other guy goes, no, but the Grammys are full of surprises. And that is one of the wildest sentences I've laid eyes on in my 25-year professional career. Yo, I just about passed out. Arita did indeed recover and prosper. for a great while thereafter. She stayed with us for years.

But when she did pass away, on August 16, 2018, there's me, scrambling to write Aretha Franklin's obituary and do her justice, and then a few weeks later, on August 31st, here comes Aretha's ludicrously star-studded funeral, streamed live from the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit, and featuring every blockbuster singer and preacher and orator you'd care to name. Here we have Shaka Khan performing the gospel standard Going Up Yonder. Here we have Shaka Khan really getting after it.

Tremendous stuff happening at Aretha Franklin's Public Memorial, which by the way was 10 hours long. That is not an exaggeration. Also, if you watch this whole song, the lyrics to Going Up Yonder are very obviously hidden on the backside of Shaka Khan's giant church fan. As she sings, she consults her fan periodically, a savvy veteran move from Shaka Khan. Who are we going to get to close out this blockbuster 10-hour Aretha Franklin funeral? Anyway. Of course, it's Stevie Wonder, singing As with a giant Aretha Franklin Memorial Choir. Jennifer Hudson was there, too.

Of course, she sang Amazing Grace. Listen, we may blog our cute little live blogs, and we might make our cute little dark jokes about all the wailing and the secret church fan lyrics and whatnot, but the tribute performance, the funeral performance, the in-memorium performance, this is a sacred pantheon. These songs, in these moments, sung by these famous singers to honor, to mourn those other famous singers. To my mind, there's no equivalent in pop music to how psychologically fraught these moments can be, how collectively, emotionally cathartic they can be. And so, it is April 27, 2016, and the unthinkable, the unbearable has happened. And heroically, out of nowhere, out of the mist, DeAngelo reemerges to help us bear it.

Tracy died soon after a long fall, Civil War, just after I wiped away his last year. I'm getting florid again, and I don't care. Prince died on April 21st, 2016. I was at a baseball game, a Cleveland Indians day game with my whole family, and the organist started playing a Prince song, Let's Go Crazy, I think. And I thought, oh, that's nice.

the organist played a few more print songs, and I thought, oh, no. I've said that before. I say that a lot. I think about that moment a lot. Less than a week later, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, here is DeAngelo singing the Prince ballad. Sometimes it snows in April. Directly to Prince who left us in April. The Tracy in these lyrics is Prince. Tracy is Prince's character in Under the Cherry Moon. a 1986 prince movie that is less famous than Purple Rain. I'm trying to keep this light, but this moment is very beautiful and indescribably heavy. DeAngelo's drop down into deep bass

on the two-syllable word he right here is very beautiful and indescribably heavy. I guess he's better off than he was before. A whole lot better off than On backing vocals, we got Maya Rudolph and Gretchen Libram, who together are in a Prince cover band called Princess. The stricken, the almost shattered look on Maya Rudolph's face this whole time, it really sticks with me. Maya, of course, being a super famous goofball comic actor, Saturday Night Live and so forth. Maya Rudolph also, notably the daughter of Minnie Ripperton, the famous incredible 70s soul singer,

I forget, I think it's a 12 octave range, just a startling and inimitable voice. Minnie Ripperton died in 1979, at just 31 years old. For most of us, you best honor Minnie Riperton's memory, I think, by not trying to sing like Minnie Riperton. You will hurt yourself and others. Oh, geez, I'm through trying to keep this light. Let's just stay out of his way. That leap, because I want to ship again. But sometimes, sometimes I ain't always doing.

That leap to falsetto there will change the trajectory of your whole day in my experience. I don't want to be weird, but I do want to be honest. This video, I just put it on and I cry all the way through it. It's out of my control. Okay. Chorus. And honestly, the most startling and the most moving element of this DeAngelo performance is simply the presence of DeAngelo.

He's here. He is usually not here. He has been an all-time famous soul singer for 20 plus years by this point. But DeAngelo is historically defined as much by his absence as his. his presence. His first album comes out in 1995. His second album, he takes five years. It's not out until the year 2000. Then his third album, he takes 14 years. It's not out until 2014. There are long, seemingly endless reclusive stretches. There are personal struggles that he keeps mostly private, but not entirely private. To love DeAngelo is to miss DeAngelo. To want more DeAngelo and to generally

not get it. But we need him now, and he knows it. Sometimes I wish. Life was never ending. The things may say ever last. Get a load of the dissonance on the word wish right there. Sometimes I would. That note is mega nasty. Complementary. That is some ugly cry swagger right there. And speaking of ugly crying, it is time for DeAngelo to say Prince's name. I often dream of heaven and I know that Prince is there. He points to heaven and he sings, I often dream of heaven and I know that Prince is there. The next line that DeAngelo tries to sing but does not sing is, is, I know that he has found another friend.

And whether it's Maya or Gretchen, someone gently slips in there, and she sings part of the line for him. And maybe that little backing part was rehearsed, but I'm hoping it wasn't. I like to imagine that as an exceptionally human and compassionate, improvised gesture. That's the sound of all the fools prince left here, leaning on one another for comfort.

Maybe he's found the answer to all the apis snow. Maybe one day I'll see my Tracy again. This is a moment that I wished we didn't live to see come, and this will not be the last moment that we wished we didn't live to see come. But I think we've all earned the right to revisit another sort of stirring audio-visual-type moment. How convenient that this is a video podcast now, eh? Maybe don't watch this at work or on a plane. My name is Rob Harvilla.

This is the 34th episode of 60 Songs that Explain the 90s, Col in the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing Untitled, How Does It Feel, by DeAngelo, from his second album, released in the year 2000, and called Voodoo. That's Untitled, Parenthesis, How Does It Feel, Close Parathesis. If you thought that transition was jarring, here's an ad break. All right, we got to change the vibe around here. We got pretty maudlin back there.

How about some treats? Who's up for some treats? DeAngelo's voodoo is a lore-heavy album. It's got its own elaborate origin story. It's got a whole entire mythos. It's got its own vocabulary. Voodoo is an album built on an unshakable foundation of Yoda's and treats. Yoda's meaning like the Star Wars guy.

Yoda's meaning teachers, mentors, deities. Yoda's meaning like this guy. Are you ready for the night train? So in June 2000, DeAngelo gets a lengthy profile in Rolling Stone, written by the great journalist and author Tore. And at one point, DeAngelo just sits in a hotel room in New Orleans and he watches vintage concert footage of James Brown. We got DeAngelo lounging with his right-hand man, Amir Thompson, aka Questlove, drummer for the Roots, future Oscar-winning filmmaker, future best-selling author, future late night with Jimmy Fallon bandleader, with the roots, current and future Renaissance man. Questlove is a crucial

musical presence on voodoo, and he is even more crucial to the voodoo mythos. So we got DeAngelo and Questlove and Rolling Stone just sitting around. watching James Brown do night train on the Tammy show, the famous 1963 concert film. Tammy is an acronym T-A-M-I, the T-Stands for Teenage. This show is filmed in Santa Monica, California, with a ludicrous blockbuster lineup. The Rolling Stones, the 1963 Rolling Stones went on after James Brown, and Keith Richards would later say that trying to follow James Brown was the biggest mistake of their lives. That's high praise or low praise. Coming from Keith Richards, I seem to recall

the Rolling Stones making several other high profile mistakes. I genuinely don't know if you're ready for the night train. I ain't. Good gravy. So in this Rolling Stone DeAngelo profile, Tore writes, quote, this is what they call a treat, something that gives knowledge of the Yoda figures. mostly videotapes of shows, but also albums and books. A Yoda figure is one of the masters they revere. James, Prince, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, Marvin Gay, Fela Couty, Al Green, Joni Mitchell, Sly, Jimmy, end quote.

Also this article says, quote, they study the treats the way Mike Tyson studied tapes of legendary fighters, enraptured by genius, hungry to learn. end quote. This Yoda's entreats business is transpiring in the late 90s and early 2000s, when, notably, YouTube does not exist yet. We're talking literal videotapes, VHS tapes. We're talking physical media.

Teray writes, quote, In their pursuit of knowledge about the Yoda's, DeAngelo and Questlove have acquired hundreds of treats. We got bootleg concert connects like fiends, got drug dealer connects, Quest says. During voodoo, there was at least 13 people providing us with stuff, end quote. And then DeAngelo's manager, Dominique Trenear, he jumps in and says, quote, anytime I see them, they got at least 30 tapes on them. I could say, I'm bored. You got some old soul trains I haven't seen? They'll be like, yeah, you see the one where Michael Jackson fell?

end quote. I have not seen the Soul Train where Michael Jackson fell. I don't know what they're talking about. I tried to find that, but I can't find that. I apologize. As a consolation prize in terms of Soul Train treats, are you up on the Curtis Mayfield Orange Shirt Guy? Did you see him? Did you see Orange Shirt Guy? This is Curtis Mayfield doing Pursher Man on Soul Tirt Guy. in 1972.

Curtis Mayfield is absolutely a Yoda. This video is four seconds long. I'm concerned that you may have missed orange shirt guy. Do you want to see that again? Sure you do. There he is. Raise your hand if you'd like to party with that guy. The title of this YouTube video, it says,

Man in Orange Shirt, laying it rough. So far, conservatively, I have watched this 85 times. I'm sorry, the video component of this podcast, is optional. I do not wish to alienate our audio-only consumers. If you're not watching this, it's a guy in an orange shirt with his arms way over his head, dancing fantastically and amusingly. One might say even he is dancing cocaineedly. There is some speculation about that in the YouTube comments. I feel so bad for DeAngelo and Questlove back in 2000 trying to amass all these treats without the internet.

So ranking all the yodas in terms of importance is rude and unnecessary, but it's safe to say that Prince is most important. He is the ultimate. He is Apex Yoda. In Rolling Stone, Questlove says flat out that Prince was the dominant influence on DeAngelo's Voodoo album. And in fact, quote, way after Voodoo was finished, D and I sat down and listened to it,

and we both admitted that this was our audition, for Prince. I think this album was made to show him that we're capable of collaborating with him. And I don't know if it's some bold-ass shit to say we know what he needs, but we want to work with him. End quote. That never happens. That's heartbreaking. But in light of his importance here, how about some Prince treats? When Michael Jackson died that night, MTV just ran a ton of old Michael Jackson stuff, videos, live performances, etc. It was awesome. MTV briefly became MTV again. And then when Prince died, MTV did that again with tons of vintage Prince stuff. And so that night I sat and watched, say, Prince doing party up on Saturday Night Live in 1981.

This is how you end a song and leave a stage, people. If you noticed a guy in full medical scrubs on stage with a show, Prince just now and rumbling offstage with Prince just now, you are not hallucinating. Why, that's Dr. Fink, Prince cohort and keyboardist, who often performed in full hospital regalia. Do not attempt to party with Dr. Fink. You will not survive partying up with Dr. Fink. For me, another cherished Prince artifact is, of course, Prince's 1987 concert film, Sign of the times.

Specifically, the song Housequake. Specifically, the part of Housequake, where Prince briefly cedes the spotlight to his backup dancer and singer Cat Glover. And Prince, in fact, briefly wanders off camera and then suddenly he reappears on camera. It's subtle, but see if you can find Prince here. Did you see him?

I laughed so hard the first time I saw Prince reverse worm butt scoot his way back into the frame from right to left. And then he does the splits and majestically rises back to his feet like James Brown. Prince is Apex Yoda. That's a dumb thing to say, but I'm not afraid to say it. For DiAngelo, from the very beginning, Prince was the peak. Okay.

Michael Eugene Archer was born in Richmond, Virginia on February 11, 1974. His stage name, DeAngelo, comes from Michelangelo, the famous Italian artist, the literal Renaissance man. DeAngelo's mother suggested he had the D and make it, DeAngelo. He was apparently a musical genius from birth. In kindergarten, DeAngelo won a talent show so convincingly that they wouldn't let him enter talent shows anymore. As a seven-year-old, DeAngelo taught his older teenage brother, Luther, how to play the Prince song Do Me Baby, which is not appropriate for a seven-year-old. The brothers loved Prince, and they studied each new Prince album obsessively,

but they kind of had to sneak Prince into the house. DeAngelo's mother, Marian E. Cox, was a pastor. His father, Luther Archer Sr., was a Pentecostal preacher. DeAngelo played in his father's church for a while, and then he went to live with his mother, and he played in his grandfather's church in Powhatan, Virginia. DeAngelo told Rolling Stone, quote, that's the real stomped-down Pentecostal Holiness Church,

shouting, speaking in tongues, and just fire. That's where I really grew. That's where I was really playing, end quote. And so, like so many of the Yodas, like Aretha Franklin, like Sam Cook, like Al Green, like Whitney Houston, DeAngelo is musically raised in the church, and the church will never leave him, musically and otherwise, but he is increasingly drawn to secular music as well. He's got his gospel side and his prince side.

Yes? At 16 years old, DeAngelo made it to Harlem and played amateur night at the Apollo. He sang Peebo Bryson's 1977 quiet storm hit, Feel the Fire, and Lost. The next year, DeAngelo came back, and he sang Johnny Gill's New Jack Swing Adjacent 1990 hit, Rub You the Right Way. And this time, DeAngelo won. Those are both excellent songs that I would not recommend playing in church. In this pre-fame era, DeAngelo got a few groups together. He was the front man in an R&B-focused and family-heavy group called Michael Archer and Precise.

Then he was in a more hip-hop-oriented group called IDU, which stands for intelligent, deadly, but unique. I have some thoughts about the band name IDU, but I will keep them to myself. It was inevitable. This guy would go solo. It is inevitable. He would drop out of school and move to New York City.

It is inevitable. He would get a record deal and put out one of the best R&B albums of the 1990s. about this girl, maybe I should, I manner and filth, and the name was brown, should see, we'd be making love constantly, that's why my eyes are all the shade, blood-burking me. In 1995, DeAngelo releases his debut album, called Brown Sugar, which kicks off with the title track,

a fine addition to the canon of timeless R&B anthems that half-heartedly pretend to be about a foxy lady, but really they're about smoking weed. You can tell this song is about smoking weed, because there's a smoke machine quantity of weed smoke blowing in DeAngelo's face as he sings. See, we be making love constantly. That's why my eyes are a shade blood burgundy. That's quite an elegant way to put it.

Mary Jane by Rick James. That's in the Foxy Lady as weed canon as well. Rick James, another Yoda. Brown Sugar's title track is produced by DeAngelo and Ali Shahid Muhammad of a tribe called Quest. What makes this song for me is the subtle DeAngelo chorus running in the background going

do-do-do-do-do-do pretty much the whole time. The way that we kiss is unlike any other way that I be kissing when I'm kissing what I miss and won't you listen brown sugar bag I guess high up your love I don't know how to be in.

I love the way DeAngelo sings that do-d-do-do-do-d-d-d-d- and I love that he sings that part like five. hundred times. In this, our formal introduction to DeAngelo, he's clearly a handsome, swaggering guy, but that's not the point. You don't see much of him. Even his face is half in shadow a lot of the time. Only the band matters. Only the song matters. Half of the Brown Sugar album is produced by Bob Power, who'd worked as the engineer on a tribe called Quest's 1991 album, The Low End Theory. Brown Sugar also has a song called Jones in My Bones, co-written by the soul singer Angie Stone. DeAngelo and Angie Stone

had a son together, Michael Eugene Archer Jr., born in 1998. DeAngelo's collaborators are always crucial. You can somehow always hear them in the room with him, but you can also clearly hear 200 DeAngelo's in the room with him. Per the liner notes, DeAngelo himself plays the vast majority of the instruments and sings all of the vocals on this album. But there's a reticence, a mysteriousness to him, even as he multiplies. And he casts a bigger shadow the farther away he recedes. Brown Sugar is an era-defining song, a 90s R&B defining song. And the Brown Sugar album is fantastic, from front to back. But to my mind, all 10 of these songs melt into one another. They're all masterfully absorbed into a 53-minute-long insinuating, never-ending, absurdly sumptuous vibe.

I put this record on, and regardless of the volume level, regardless of what chaos might be transpiring in my house, it's the subtleties that leap out at me, the grace notes, the slightly distant backing vocals, the blank spaces, the presence as absence, the deep listening headphone details that I can sense even if I'm not listening on headphones. So track two on the Brown Sugar album is called All Right. And it's the baseline that grabs me first, right? I hear do do do do do do do and I think, oh yeah, this one. But the vocal interplay between the plural DeAngelo's here, the casual echo,

that's all right, that's all right. That's just as vital. And so is the half-buried crackling noise throughout the whole song, the classic vinyl dustiness, the luxurious atmosphere. That's all right, but misunderstanding that's old because you're my girl and I'm you manning, that's just fun. Because with DeAngelo, we're dealing with a guy who can show up at the Apollo and sing both Peebo Bryson and Johnny Gill.

He can do the 70s and the 90s. And more specifically, he can do the 90s doing the 70s. He is R&B's future, but he is also manifestly R&B's past. There is a somewhat corny, made-up genre name for this. After the Brown Sugar record blows up, DeAngelo is constantly, exhaustingly described as Neo-Soul. Rock critics do this, right? We invent corny, made-up genres. We build little boxes and cram young artists into those boxes.

But this one was not our fault. DeAngelo's then-manager, Kedar, Master, He coined the term Neo-Soul, and then he presented his two biggest clients, DeAngelo and Erica Badoo, whose era-defining debut album Badoism came out in 1997. Suddenly, they're the ambassadors, the leading lights, the king and queen of Neo-Soul. And DiAngelo and Erica Bado do not like it. Of course they don't. In 2014, during a lecture at the Red Bull Music Academy, DeAngelo's

quote, I never claimed I do Neo-Soul, you know. I used to say, when I first came out, I used to always say, I do black music. I make black music. End quote. And for DiAngelo, sometimes that does involve literally doing the 90s, doing the 70s. He's still an alarmingly handsome man, DeAngelo, but he's also still just another guy on stage, even in sumptuous black and white. As a pure pop music album,

Brown Sugar peaks with the song Cruzen, which is indeed a cover of the 1979 Smokey Robinson Top Five pop hit. The sharpness, the hugueness of that chorus is always super striking to me compared to the rest of DeAngelo's first album, where the pleasures are,

not subtler, exactly, but more deliciously complicated. I hear the song, And again, it's the bass line that first grabs me. Bov, bov, bov, bov, bov, bov. But then you add the backing vocal army of DeAngelo's. Then the quick shots of piano. Then the watery little electric guitar rumbling along.

Lady doesn't have a cruising-style gargantuan pop chorus. What Lady does have is the tangible sense that very much by design, design, the sum of this record's immaculate parts is greater than the whole. I dig D'Angelo's coat here very much, his remarkably large and body covering coat. DeAngelo's casual vocal command, even there, in that 15 seconds or so, he sneaks into the chorus in his lower register, but soon he's reaching for that filthy and god. falsetto. Unbelievable.

Lady is co-written and co-produced with the great Raphael Saddique. He of late 80s and 90s hit makers Tony, Tony, Tony. Also, if you're watching this, if you're watching these early videos, perhaps you've noticed that DiAngelo, of course he's the focal point. He is dapper. He is suave. He is wearing various fantastic coats. And in this video for Lady, okay, he's doing the sexy R&B guy thing where he's

crooning the song directly into a young lady's ear. But he is dressed. Okay? Also, DeAngelo is generally on stage. He's part of the band. He's playing keyboards as he sings. He's leading the band or leading the orchestra. But he's not demanding the spotlight.

He's not all beef-caked up. He's not humping a chair or whatever. He's not trying to impregnate you telepathically. This is not a jodicy situation, is what I'm saying. saying. Whenever I listen to the Brown Sugar album now, I can't decide. Does this especially sound like 1995? How out of place? How timeless? How Neo-Soul does DeAngelo sound exactly? In 1995, in R&B, you got Jodice's third album, R. Kelly's second album, and the first Faith Evans album. You got My Life by Mary J. Blige, another all-timer in terms of the 90s doing

the 70s. But is DeAngelo trying to sound like 1995? Is he trying to sound like 1975? Is he trying to sound like the distant future, like 2045? You get hints in DeAngelo's interviews in the 90s that he is perhaps dissatisfied with a state of modern R&B, with a tone. Talking to Essence magazine in 1999 about the lyrical content of 90s R&B, DeAngelo says, quote, have some class. I don't know how many motherfuckers going to tell me I'm going to lick you up and down.

If I hear that in one more song, dot, dot, dot, dot, end quote. I have no idea what he's talking about. Okay, I might have some idea what he's talking about. That was freak me. A number one pop hit for the Atlanta R&B group Silk in 1992.

The second Silk record came out in 1995 as well. Silk are for sure trying to impregnate you telepathically. And God bless them. Listen, when DiAngelo was seven years old, he was teaching his older brother how to play super horny prince songs. There is an inherent swagger, an inescapable lewdness to DeAngelo, even if he does have quite a bit of class. Anyway, the single most 1995 thing about the Brown Sugar album might be that there's a song called

Shit Damn Motherfucker. This song is a murder ballad, essentially, and it proved that DeAngelo sounds seductive even when he's singing a murder ballad. And then, suddenly, we're going someplace else. Brown Sugar goes platinum. The record sells a million copies within a year, and a lady is a top ten pop hit. This suggests a winning formula, but we're dealing with a guy who moves on quickly. Well, okay, DiAngelo moves on from an old sound quickly, and then he develops a new sound

and a new look very, very, very slowly. Not that we're complaining. deal you with my two-shot control you with my job take him out Braid you with my head impress you with my pride DeAngelo takes nearly five years

to release his second album which comes out in January 2000 and is called voodoo. Voodoo does not sound like the year 2000 or the year 1995 or the year 1975 or the year 2085 or the year 2085. Voodoo is an era and a universe unto itself. This is track one. It is called playa playa, and the words DeAngelo sings are nowhere near as important as how he sings them,

and how many of him sings them. The army of sleepy, slurring, hypnotic Deangelos, summoned here amidst all the entrancing studio noise, the horns, the percussive clatter, the wobbly thunderbolts of funk guitar, the jarring random studio voices, including the one that goes, take them out. This record is overpowering on both a micro and a macro level.

Once again, listening from a distance, I recognize these songs first by their unruly baselines. The baseline to play a player goes, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, but if I'm listening in headphones, my favorite part of this song is the ride symbol, right here. The soft and steady

the whole time here. This would be the micro level. Yes. On drums, indeed, we got Questlove, who is crucial to Voodoo on both a micro and a macro level. By the macro level, I mean the Yoda's, the treats. The very explicit understanding that this album is part of a hallowed soul music lineage that DeAngelo and Questlove and all their friends have been obsessively studying James, Stevie, George, Marvin, Sly, Jimmy, Prince.

In his 2021 book, Music is History, Questlove writes about bonding with DeAngelo very intensely over all this stuff. He says, quote, back in 1997, we were at Electric Lady, and it was all about bouncing off each other. You know this song? I can't believe you know this song. It was like falling in love. end quote. Yes, work on voodoo is already underway in 1997, and they are recording this record very slowly over the course of years in New York City's famed Electric Lady Studio, founded by Jimmy Hendricks. They're imagining voodoo by their own admission as an audition tape to maybe work with Prince. So they sit around playing Prince records all day, and then they try to make their own platonic ideal of, a Prince record all night. Per that 2000 Rolling Stone article,

quote, one night they played Prince's parade until they flowed into a new groove that became the song Africa. End quote. Africa is the last song on voodoo and I'm starting to suspect that it's my favorite. That's an actual sample from Prince's parade album,

a drum loop from the song, I wonder you, though it's the gorgeous descending music box riff that really gets to me. Parade is the album with sometimes it snows in April on it, by the way. Prince Superfans sampling Prince in an attempt to impress Prince. That's the vibe on Voodoo. Now, whether you're a rock critic or not, every album by anybody ever, you talk like this.

You say, oh, it sounds like this. It's like this old famous album. It's like this old famous person. Erica Badu sounds like Billy Holiday, whatever. But with Voodoo, with this constant Yoda talk, The lineage is explicit. DeAngelo's inspirations and his aspirations are explicit. I've read a lot that Voodoo sits at the precise midpoint between what's going on,

the Marvin Gay album from May 1971, and there's a riot going on, the Sly and the Family Stone album from November, 1971. Those being two of the biggest, greatest, most influential, most famous albums of all time, by anybody ever in any genre. What's going on? Soaring, gorgeous, immaculate, searching, is Marvin Gaye's question. There's a riot going on.

Rockus, dirty, chaotic, withholding is Sly Stone's answer. Voodoo is a reverent tribute to them both, and incredibly a worthy successor to them both. Ain't no justice, just us, Asht to ashes, dust and thys Time has come for most of us Choosing which time we trust

This song is called Devil's Pie It is co-produced by DeAngelo And the great DJ Premier Who totally qualifies as a modern Yoda Speaking of which, another Yoda Another massive presence on voodoo Even if he's not credited anywhere Is James Yancey

A.k.a. J.D. A.K. J. Dilla The Detroit rapper and producer who by the year 2000 has more or less reinvented rhythm. His beats are not metronomic. They are not consistent. If this word means anything to you, they are not quantized in the precise technical musical sense. They do not adhere to classic notions of straight time or swing time.

DeAngelo has instead invented Dilla time. Dilla's beats are, let's see here. His beats are off. His beats are wrong. His beats are wobbly, sloppy, drunken, limbing, lazy, dragging, messed up, fucked up. I just picked a bunch of random adjectives from the first chapter of the fantastic book, Dilla Time. Published in 2022 by the rap journalist Dan Charnas. Some of those adjectives, sloppy, wobbly, drunken, they started off as insults, but eventually they became compliments.

Here's a song called Players from Dilla's turn-of-the-century rap group's Slum Village. That's his voice. More importantly, that's his limping, fucked up, and weirdly glorious approach to rhythm. You, yo, y'all, you want to be something And can't play this game You sound the same man to claim to be something You ain't a bon be without SB You need to be smacked open hand

And be by these The kick drum and the handclaps and so forth Just don't quite fall where they're supposed to It's unsettling. It's mesmerizing. And that's the energy DeAngelo wanted for voodoo. Questlove talking to the Red Bull Music Academy in 2014, he talked about how he had to go from playing drums with absolute precision,

playing as straight as 12 o'clock, to playing crookedly. Questlove says, quote, it was like being told to use the force in Star Wars. Like, just trust me, just keep it in the pocket, be sloppy as hell, and it's going to work. End quote. J. Dill is approached. rhythm radicalizes a whole generation of rappers and soul singers.

Here in the late 90s and early 2000s, DeAngelo and Queslov and J. Dilla have started a low-key, Native Tong-style musical collective called the Soul Quarians, along with Erica Badu, Bilal, Mos Def, Talib Kuali, common in a handful of others. Various members of the Soul Choirians will cycle in and out of Electric Lady's studio, making various startling turn of the century rap

and R&B albums. Mama's Gun by Erica Badu, electric circus by common, etc. Dilla does not officially contribute to Voodoo, and yet I hear Dilla everywhere on Voodoo, and maybe especially on Devil's Pie.

Meanwhile, usually, DiAngelo is not a screamer or a belter. And so when he sings with even a tiny bit more force, it feels like an earthquake. It feels like the rapture. Like right there, when he sings the words, I know I was born to die. Also, that's DiAngelo himself on bass there.

Aside from DJ Premier's stuff, that's DeAngelo on every instrument on Devil's Pie. He does that. He does everything a lot. Just like Prince did. Nonetheless, another crucial part of the voodoo mythos is the guest list, all the other monster musicians and so querians who drop by, Pino Palladino on bass, Roy Hargrove on horns, James Poyser on keys,

Charlie Hunter, somehow playing guitar and bass simultaneously, etc. One of my favorite moments on Voodoo is on a song called The Root, which features a Charlie Hunter guitar solo, playing in reverse. That was producer and engineer Russell Lovato's idea. In his own 2014 interview with the Red Bull Music Academy, Russell says they were sitting around listening to old Jimmy Hendricks records and working on this song, The Root, and Jimmy somehow inspired them to flip the tape

and run Charlie Hunter's guitar solo backward. Yodas, every song on Voodoo has that sort of depth, that sort of lineage extending backslip. story. Both Africa and the beautiful extra slow jam send it on are about DeAngelo and Angie Stone's young son. And DeAngelo's cover of

Roberta Flack's feel like making love is a splendid example of the year 2000 doing the 70s. But also all 13 of these songs melt into one another. They're all masterfully absorbed into a 78 minute long insinuating,

never-ending, absurdly sumptuous vibe. really the only way to make any one song on voodoo stand out is to shoot a really shocking video for it holy crap I mean no disrespect to Untitled How Does It Feel the Song Co-written and co-produced by DeAngelo and Raphael Sadiq but Untitled How Does It Feel the song

cannot be separated. It cannot be rescued from Untitled How Does It Feel the Video in which DeAngelo is super jacked and possibly totally naked. You can't tell yet that he's possibly totally naked, but he just did sing the opening line, Girl, it's all on you and then lick his lips, as though trying to telepathically impregnate you. What do you want from me here?

You want me to point out that DeAngelo just sang the line if you get a feeling, feeling that I'm feeling, that's three feelings in nine words. You want me to call out the rad little guitar riff that sneaks in amidst all those feelings. Is anyone listening to me anymore? Is anyone listening to the song anymore? For you audio only, folks, at this point in the untitled video, it is now clear that DeAngelo is possibly totally naked. He is definitely shirtless, and at the very least, functionally, Pants List. This is the chorus, just in case you might be inclined to not even notice.

That's the chorus. Let's focus, people. I refer you now to a February 2000 New York Times article about DeAngelo with the headline, singing in the buff, colon, the pure beefcake video. And this features some fantastic quotes from journalist and magazine editor and author and friend of the show Danielle Smith. says, quote, last week I was at the hair salon, which is always a bustle of activity. People hollering for hair dye. BET and MTV are on all day long with no one paying too much attention. But when that video came on, you could have heard a bobby pin drop. All the women just watched in silence.

And when the video was over, there was a collective sigh of, oh my God, he is beautiful. End quote. That's hilarious. Focus. Yodas, treats, prints. Untitled, how does it feel as extra prints? It's maximum prince. It's in the proud, colossal, ultra-earning tradition of do-me-baby, of nothing compares to you, of a door of the beautiful ones. Here, listen to this part. Dig the rad cacophony of moaning and purring and wailing DeAngelos. Right here.

Ah, geez, you're not listening. You're not listening even if you're only listening. You're thinking about the super close-up of DeAngelo's abs, even if you can't see them, ain't you? The untitled video is co-directed by Paul Hunter and DeAngelo's then-manager, Dominique Treeneer, and it was Dominique, who in 2008 told Spin Magazine, quote,

I'm glad the video did what it did, but DeAngelo and I were both disappointed. because, to this day, in the general populace's memory, he's the naked dude. End quote. The untitled video really screwed DeAngelo up. It paralyzed him. It almost derailed his career. DeAngelo's third and final album, Black Messiah, took basically 15 years.

It did not come out until 2014. And the untitled video is partly why, because the video created the expectation that DeAnsearche that DeAngelo would always look like this, and on stage, he would always, you know, be like this and do this. In that 2008 spin article, Roy Hargrove, the Jazz Great and Voodoo trumpet player, Roy talks about touring with DeAngelo after this video came out. And he says, quote, we couldn't get through one song before women would start to scream for him to take off something. It wasn't about the music. All they wanted him to do was take off his clothes. End quote.

Spin also quotes DeAngelo's voodoo era tour manager, Alan Leeds, who'd previously worked with James Brown and Prince. And Alan says, quote, I didn't realize how vulnerable DeAngelo was and how deep his issues ran. He's cursed now with fretting over how much of his fan base is because of how he looked as opposed to the music. It took away his confidence because he's not convinced

why any given fan is supporting him. End quote. Big finish now. A truly phenomenal prince buildup and climactic prince scream. Right here. A classic prince scream into the pure beefcake void.

I should mention that that 2008 spin article is headlined DeAngelo, colon, what the hell happened? Because by then, DeAngelo had all but disappeared. He had legal issues, health issues, substance abuse issues. I don't want to talk about it, really. I kind of wish the world could hear Untitled How Does It Feel Again for the first time without the video? I wish we could hear Untitled as simply an immaculate throwback, instant classic slow jam that helped an anoint DeAngelo as an Apex Yoda.

I kind of wish we could redo DeAngelo's whole career without the video. Maybe nothing would be different. It's ridiculous and naive to say that without the video, DeAngelo would have been totally healthy and happy and comfortable, and he'd have made a dozen classic albums instead of just, you know, three. But the untitled video happened. The video made DeAngelo super famous but also super vulnerable. And so he retreated.

And so he became defined as much by his absence as his presence. And so any time DiAngelo reappeared, it was like a galactic event. It was like a biblical revelation. Like in 2014, when he put out Black Messiah. Like in 2016, when he eulogized Prince. Or like in 2025, when he appeared in his old buddy Questlove's documentary about Sly Stone. How hard is it to be? vulnerable in front of a world watching it.

It's really hard. It's the hardest thing to do. The hang-ups, baggage, guilt, and the pain and the shame that comes with it, you know? And if you don't know how to handle it, if you don't have your soul centered and people around you that you really trust

and people that really know you, and it's really down for you, yeah, man, it can be unbearable, man. Yeah. It'll turn you into an unwilling participant. And that's equivalent to hell. This is from Questlove's 2025 movie Sly Lives, a.k.a. the burden of black genius.

It's the notes DeAngelo doesn't play here that really hit me hard. The pauses. The quiet, terrible, gravage. in his voice. Ostensibly, DeAngelo is talking about Slystone there, but not really. The phrase, an unwilling participant, really stinks there. DeAngelo died on October 14, 2025, of pancreatic cancer.

He was 51. Most people didn't even know he was sick. His memorial service was a far more private affair. Stevie Wonder sang at it. Also, on October 20, 25th, DeAngelo's old friend and colleague, Erica Badu, she played Royal Albert Hall in London. And she talked about the two times a person dies. The first death involves your physical body.

The old one says second death is it occurs the last time someone says your name. The last time someone sings your song. The last time someone admires your heart. The very last time, that's the seventh death. I didn't intend to start modeling and end modeling, but it's terrible. How many other people in this story are gone now. Sly Stone, Angie Stone, Cat Glover, Roy Hargrove, DeAngelo's mother, Marion, Jay Dilla. We're still mourning them all.

But because this is part of the gig, Erica knows what to do, for DiAngelo, and for all the rest of them. The mere thought of you keeps you without. And we will always say your name. De Angelou! And then Erica Badu sang shit damn motherfucker.

It was awfully profane as eulogies go. And it was perfect. We are so honest. honor to be joined once again by Hanif Abdurakib, bestselling author and poet and MacArthur Genius and mayor of Columbus, in my opinion. His latest book out in paperback now is called There's Always This Year on Basketball and Ascension. Hanif, thank you so much for taking the time. It's such an honor to be here. I always love getting talk with you when I can. Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate it. I feel like DiAngelo is such a mythic figure now. And I wonder if you,

you can remember it all, hearing him for the first time, hearing the brown sugar album, or even hearing voodoo? Like, did you know immediately that this was a mythic and all-time great, who we'd still be talking about 30 years later? Is it more of a slow burn to realize his greatness? Like, what was the experience on first contact with him? Yeah, well, I mean, I was like 12. So I wasn't necessarily thinking about the long-term legacy. But Brown Sugar, the album, came out in July of 1995. The single lady came out, not the single lady, the single, comma, lady. Came out.

Shortly thereafter, I think, you know, Brown Sugar was preceded by a couple singles, but Lady was the single that hit right after the album came out. And so that summer of 1995, Lady was pretty huge. It was played a lot. You know, back then it was a big radio station thing. So I would be tapped in with the radio stations here in Columbus. And Lady was a great transition song from that summer.

You would get these bursts where the radio would play hip-hop, like more contemporary poppy R&B, more electronic R&B. But then it would delve into the quiet storm era of the night, the quiet storm moment. And Lady was such a great bridge song. So you would hear it a lot at around 8.45 p.m. Whenever sunset would start, you know. But I remember first hearing lady, there used to be these block parties that happened in Columbus on the east side.

And sometimes it would spill into OSCE's campus. And my parents would take us to these block parties. And these are big citywide block parties. And it was the only time where I felt like I could kind of wander a bit. You know, my parents didn't have a great eye on me, my brother. And I remember somehow getting on the top of a not very high building around Mount Vernon, somewhere around Mount Vernon Avenue. And someone had a boombox and they were playing Lady very loud. And this was in the middle of the day, which is not normally when it played.

And I remember feeling like I was watching a film. Like I remember feeling like watching all these people kind of fold. It was a very romantic scene, like people who were sweating, dancing, urgent. a moment ago, we're now kind of slow dancing and swaying and to see that kind of command that a single song could have over a people as a 12-year-old who was beginning to understand desire broadly. I loved it. I mean, I knew nothing about the Angelo at that point.

You know, at that age, I knew the song existed, but I did not know who the artist was. And I think that I learned the artist through my siblings. My older siblings were playing that record out a lot. But my earliest memories are of that single. I mean, that's interesting, so interesting to hear about your older siblings and your family. Because I've always wondered, like, does Brown Sugar sound like 1995? Does DiAngelo seem like a contemporary artist? Or does he immediately seem, you know, the whole Neo-Soul thing?

Like, is he a throwback originally or is he like a futuristic artist immediately? Like, how did you sort of fix him in time? Did he feel contemporary to 1995 or 2000? You felt particularly when I think about, if I'm moving forward a couple years and thinking about 1998, 99, 2000, that to me, I know that Neo-Soul had begun to be crowned. I think Kudar Massenberg coined that term. And it was almost in opposition to the sonic experience of contemporary R&B that we were seeing. Right.

Again, like a lot more electronic sounds in contemporary R&B at that time, a very producer-driven commercial approach. Whereas what we were supposed to understand about Neo Soul is that this was stuff where musicians were touching live. instruments in the studio. And there was a more careful approach taken with it. And so you do get this class of not just Silkarians, but also someone like Maxwell being placed in that category. We were to believe it's like these distinctions that get made with a lot of genres, right?

Like there's a level of intention of care being placed into this bucket that is not being placed into that bucket. Now, I'm someone who liked contemporary R&B at that point. And I also love Neosol. And I actually never really brought into this idea that Neosol necessarily meant a turning back towards the past, perhaps in terms of rigor or approach to making. So if we are to believe that Neo Soul is employing techniques and tactics that you would hear, perhaps in Studio A at Motown, you know, or on some of like those old Atlantic records or some of the Philly Soul stuff. Sure. But sonically, it was very updated.

Like, the things that were happening were drawing clear inspirations from funk and past soul. But it's not like, it did not feel like a throwback thing to me. So DiAngelo, to me, felt also the idea of what Neal Soul was had permeated the entire sonic universe of R&B by the late 90s. So in some ways, more poppy producer-driven R&B felt like, the outlier to me, even though I enjoyed a lot of it. That is what felt more like an outlier. And of course, Voodoo, it's all about the Yoda's, right? They're sitting around Electric Ladies' Studio. They're just watching Prince videos, James Brown videos, et cetera, all day. And then they specifically try to make a record that fits into that lineage. Like, did you hear Voodoo as a very

explicit attempt to, like, make that chain backward and also forward? Gosh, you know, in some way, the song, Funky Drummer, can tell the story of everything that came after. It ain't a funky, ain't a punky, ain't a punky, ain't a punkin, ain't a punkin, I want to a dip-ho. Like really, in some realms of rap music, of, you know, there's stories about, like, Jay Dilla listen to Funky Drummer over and over again, and learning, teaching himself, about returning to the one, so to speak, no matter what you do in between movements, you return to the one. And in some ways, Questlove's role, he's not really Clyde Stubblefield to an exact

point, like that's not a one-to-one, because the thing about Falky drummer is that Stubblefield's not really playing the 16th notes with real consistency, which makes for that really great. And Questlove on Voodoo is playing with like a ferocious consistency. But he's doing that because everything else, every other musical element is kind of happening behind the beat, you know? And so the baseline is not where you think the baseline would go. Like you're expecting a baseline to come in and you realize baseline is a little bit behind the drum. And so there's all this back phrasing that's happening. and it's beautiful because it's so loose.

Like the album feels like you're eternally in this pocket that you don't expect to be in. And I think that is paying homage to James Brown to Sly Stone, in many ways to Prince, to Marvin Gay. I mean, there are all these elements. And what I like about voodoo, why I think Voodoo is a great album, is that I love an album that is imperfect in its attempt to pay these homages because when you're pulling it and I say this

and I think Voodoo is I think Voodoo is DeAngelo's best record and I love the other two but that is the one for me I would agree. I think it's the one for me because the swings that he's taking in pursuit of paying homage in what it takes to

get someone to buy in to get a band of talented people like a Pino Paladino, for example, to buy in to this constant approach to backphrasing where everything feels so behind the beat. There's something very human about it. Like, Questlove's drumming feels very alive with a humanness because it is imperfect. It's pulling, like, in a culture where samples were really ruling the day, it was interesting

for me to hear. And I look back to Voodoo now. it's interesting to hear musicians almost building what a sample can do and then placing it on a track. And I think I'll last thing I say, because I know I'm going off about this and I'm sorry. Please, please. What separated Voodoo for me is the track length. Like those songs are very long. And those songs are also way on, if we're talking about like beats per minute, those songs are kind of way below the BPM of.

of what was getting played on the radio, but even what was happening in other neo-soul circles, it's this album that feels like you were just watching smoke slowly rise from a candle that never burns out, you know? And that intrigues me. You know, I think I remember in my younger and foolish days, because I'm saying all this shit now,

but like real talk, I was a high school junior room voodoo, came out. And, you know, we weren't put, we weren't playing that, you know, we were, not because it wasn't bad. You're not because it was bad, but because, you know, we're 16 years old and we were, you know, I'm playing like jagged edge where the party at. Like, I'm playing stuff, you know, we're not playing that at the high school parties. But I remember the minute I got, yeah, we're looking for a higher BPM. But when I got to college, it was like, yo, this is on in the dorm room all the time. You know, we're trying to entice a certain kind of audio.

absolutely yeah no i get you i no i agree with you i just the sense of place in voodoo like the listening on headphones like the studio chatter like hearing questlove's voice you know every once in a while just the way it's clipped together like the perfect imperfections of it just the sense that you're in the room you know with the smoke rising you know i can't think of another record off hands that offers that same sense of place that same sense that you've been sitting in electric lady studios with these people for three to five years. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, I wasn't there in the room, so I can't say. But what comes off in Roodoo is that DeAngelo, I'm intrigued by DeAngelo as a bandleader as someone who seems to have a real sense of control, but is not like a dictator. It doesn't seem like there's a sense of, he's not James Brown, which is interesting because if I'm saying, like, I think funky drummer is the core, to understand what's happening on funky drummer is like unlocking a key to the Sonic universe that so much music exists in.

Funky drummer is really James Brown kind of standing over in kind of, you know, dictating the terms of the sound and the sonic world being built. And Clyde Stubberfield doing his best to be flexible with that. It does not seem like DiAngelo, it seems like DeAngelo had a vision. and then trusted people to execute that vision. It is more like it feels to me. And I, again, like, I don't know what the sessions were like, but it feels more like Brian Wilson making pet sounds,

where he's articulating his vision to a talented group of people and then allowing them. And Brian Wilson making pet sounds, there was a bit of, there was control, but also care and trust. Yes. And it really does feel like voodoo is an album of incredible trust.

There's a real generosity. It's. sounds like to DiAngelo's approach, where he's eager to see where the musicians can take him and not necessarily always where he can force the musicians to go. That's beautiful. I wonder how much DeAngelo's scarcity contributes to how we think about him now. You know, we got three albums across, what was it, 20-something years. You know, if there are 15 DeAngelo albums instead of three, like do we hear Brown Sugar Voodoo and Black

Messiah differently. Do we cherish these albums more because it's all we got? Yeah, I mean, I guess part of the answer to that depends on how bad or good those other albums would be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the short answer is yes. Scarcity is always the, you know, not to, I'm not the artist, the Angelo was. But still, Every time I finish a book, for example, right? Like when there's always this year came out, in the immediate moments before it came out, I was like, I have no idea how the world is going to receive this. This could be the one that everyone hates.

And then when that didn't happen, I felt this immediate sense of relief. And then after that immediate sense of relief, there is a small part of me that's like, maybe I should quit now. Maybe I've, maybe I've. Yeah. I've talked to other artists about this feeling, this sense of, of maybe I should quit while I don't have. But then I think, and I have heard other artists say,

shortly after that feeling of maybe I should quit now, is this feeling of I am ready to rise to the occasion of finding the next thing that I can conquer within myself. And I do think that DiAngelo succeeded at that. At least two times, if we're saying coming off brown sugar and making voodoo and coming out of voodoo and making black Messiah. And to have, and I get it that some artists have done that more than two times.

But to me, to even be able to do that once, particularly, for me specifically, to come off of voodoo and make black Messiah, I don't care how long it took. Like that, to me, is a triumph beyond language because you are particularly coming off voodoo because you're not only competing with the past version of yourself and the expectations. that that past version of yourself created in the consciousness of the consuming public. But you're creating, you're creating not in opposition to, but against a past version of yourself that is so divorced from the current version of yourself that you almost have to sell people on a new relationship, you know, entirely, like an entirely new relationship. And to just put your head down and say, I'm going to do this through the sheer, level of rigor and ability

that I'm putting into the music. I mean, I know I just said Vood. I think Vood was the best record. And I maintain that. In some ways, I think Black Messiah is just the most triumphant, one of the most triumphant records of my lifetime. So yeah, if DeAngelo put out more records,

we would definitely be weighing this career differently because I just don't think, if he's getting into like eight album category, and trust me when I say, I think DiAngelo is one of the most talented people who has ever lived. But so much of his work seemed to revolve around time and patience and building something tactfully and thoughtfully. I don't know if he's like an eight-album artist. I don't know if he's a five-album artist.

Yeah. I would worry about what those albums would sound like. That's valid. First of all, please don't quit. I understand completely. what you're saying about thinking about quitting, but please, please don't quit. Thank you. Thank you in advance for not quitting. Okay, so if we're talking about the image, the new relationship he had to forge with Black Messiah, like we got to talk about the untitled video,

right? Because when DeAngelo passed, like everything written about him and everything written about him since that video is like, that video kind of ruined his career, or at least derailed it, really drastically changed his relationship. with the public, his confidence level, like it froze him, you know, for what turned out to be almost 14 years. Like, what do you think now about the untitled video and maybe sort of the wish that people have that maybe it had never existed? And, you know, maybe DeAngelo's career in discography is very different if the untitled video

never happens. I don't know. I always tread carefully around that because I don't know. I mean, DeAngelo had some real struggles that happened in the aftermath of that video that I don't know if they were entirely tied to that video. And I always want to be careful about conflating, you know, real turmoil, via turmoil with substances. He also suffered real losses. Like, he lost friends. He had close friends die.

these things, I think, sometimes get intertwined into the aftermath of the Untitled video. And I don't know if that's entirely fair. Now, I do think that DeAngelo is someone who did suffer the outsized expectations of the public imagination when it comes to anointing a black. male's sex symbol because within the American imagination that kind of historically the black sex figure and it's not just men but like of course that history definitely affixed itself to black women and has historically as well but for the sake of talking about the

angelo the the black male sex figure is someone who is both lusted after by a wide audience but seen as dangerous and seen as many things beyond what they might have been attempting. Because I think actually the untitled song and video is such a incredible commentary on patience and desire. and in almost this kind of, you know, if we're thinking about like DeAngelo's relationship with a black Pentecostal tradition, kind of this line between, of course, the sacred, secular, but the intersection of that, which is a buildup that says you can, you can have everything, but you have to continually wait for it. And so I think that the video is playing into that kind of, you know, how patient can you.

And trust me, I'm probably not the person to analyze sexy things, I guess. But I will say. Nor I. Yeah. Okay. But, however, but I do think the videos is tied into that kind of commentary of like, what are we doing to visualize this aspect of a desire. that is ever present, but only arrives through devotion and patience.

And so the misreading of the video, perhaps, at least the way I'm presented a video, the misreading of that to just say, look at that sexy man with no shirt on. Of course, that's to be expected in our cultural climate, our visual climate, where it's like read and react. But I also think that fails, it fails. it fails the artist and it fails the full vision of what the artist is trying to articulate. And I do sometimes wonder if that had an impact on him as well. You know, of course, I imagine it had an impact when he's like playing songs,

people are like playing, doing live shows and people are just yelling on and take his shirt off and shit like that. But I will say, I have to say, I saw him play Untitled Live in 2015. Okay. And I was so moved by it because what happens, you know, if you listen to Untitled on any streaming network or on the record, it cuts off abruptly at the end because they did it on analog tape and the tape ran out, right? And what I love actually about them keeping it like that is that you cannot replicate what happens at the end of Untitled because DeAngelo at that point, you know, where he's like screaming essentially, you know, he's channeling all of these. We're talking about Yoda's. He's like channeling James Brown and Marvin Gay and Prince all in one.

And it's almost like a spiritual awakening. Like he is stepping into all three of them and they are stepping into him. And so what you get on tape is what you get. You cannot replicate that. That's the reason why there's not a lot of great covers of Untitled, because if you are trying to do that, you've already failed, that is something that happens to you. That is something that you experience.

It's not something you can find. But I will say, I loved seeing him play Untitled, in 2015 because he found a way on stage to almost replicate that where everything he's playing with a full band and then as a song hits its crescendo point and goes up and up and up each member of the band left the stage like stopped playing him up the stage until all that was left was him on piano and i was like this is also maybe a better manifestation of what the song is trying to articulate than the shirtless video. And so, yeah, I try not to conflate the video with all of his struggles,

but I do think the video, for me, led to a massive misreading of the song's intentions because the urgency of, and I don't know if there's like PG-13 podcast, whatever, but I will say the urgency, the urgency of sex is different than the patience of desire or build up of desire. And the urgency and immediacy of like wanting is different than building up something that you are eager for. And so that is my perhaps not safe for work analysis of. That is so much more beautifully rendered not safe for work analysis than listeners of this show

have grown accustomed to. That is the lovely. The loveliest PG-13 missive I have ever heard in my life, and thank you very much for that. That makes me think, I don't know if you saw the Sly Stone documentary that Questlove did recently in 2025, but DiAngelo's on camera in it, you know, very possibly for the last time. And he's talking about the burden of black genius, you know, about the expectation and the loneliness of it. And the expectation that gets thrown on you, you know, by an untitled, by an untitled video, the way fame and adulation can make you an unwilling participant is the way that he puts it.

Like, do you hear that burden actively in DeAngelo's work, like from the beginning, but then I guess especially on Black Messiah? Do you hear his personal struggles, you know, including with the reaction to voodoo and untitled, you know, in what came after and even in Untitled Live in 2015? Yeah. You know, I brought up DeAngelo's kind of the music existing behind the time or because these kind of disjointed, I'll try to make this a shorter thing. What I love about DeAngelo is what I love about DeAngelos is how frequently he fucked with time. And so it's almost like he built his own metronome, for example.

And not just one, he built several of his own metronomes and then placed things where he wanted them to be. So yes, the bass is back here, but the drumbeat is here. So yes, the guitar is coming in at this angle that you don't expect. And I tend to think that kind of reinvention of time and the placing of sounds sometimes behind the beat or sometimes coming in at different places, that is a bifference. product of, or at least sonically, what I love about that kind of making is that it is a making that is a making that is an artist, is making that is done by an artist who is so far ahead of their ear or their brain is so far ahead of where you may be as a listener that they are trying to do you a favor almost by, by, saying, I'm going to piece these things out and put them in places you don't expect because it will be surprising to you, but it's never surprising to me, you know, because I've imagined it already.

I'm so far ahead. I'm on my own time, and I'm so far ahead that I've imagined every possibility for how the song can go. And to be that far ahead is lonely. Like, that's a lonely place. I don't know what it's like to be that brilliant. But I do think that to operate on your own time to the degree, not just within the musical world, but like to operate on your own time to the degree that DeAngelo did in terms of creation and its creative practice. And all of that has to be lonely.

There's no other. And it doesn't mean that you don't have friends or it doesn't mean that you don't have, but it means that you relate to the world in such a way that. might seem detached from just the language by which most people function. And so what I liked about DeAngelo up until the very end of his life is how he seemed to only share things when he had things to share. We didn't see a ton of interviews with him. He wasn't like selling us stuff. You know, he didn't have like a, he didn't have any.

ulterior motives other than I made something and I wanted you I want you to have it. And yeah, I think, look, I love Black Messiah and I sometimes think that Black Messiah, you know, it is a sibling of a, it is a sibling of like there's a riot going on in a way, which is a record I love. But it has that same kind of, even though. it's a lot more lyrically clear than there's a rag going on. Like, it is a lot more... Most records are, yeah.

Most records are, you know. But it has this unsettled... It's an unsettling record. Like, it has... It is. The intertwining of... It's like this moment of spiritual rebirth where you come out of it and say,

okay, I'm spiritually reborn. But then you look at the world and you're like, holy fuck, you know. Yeah. I picked the bad time to become spiritually reborn because now I am hyper aware of everything and shit is not good, you know? In 2014, right? And I kind of love that.

I love Black Messiah as this beautiful album. And I'm not saying that DeAngelo wasn't, you know, paying attention to the world before, but there is something to be said for being like, man, I have hit this point of spiritual rebirth and I'm alive and my eyes are wide open and then you turn towards a world and you're like fuck this sucks you know and it's hard to balance that it's hard to balance that on an album and I think black messiah is just a masterpiece of holding that uh just a couple quick questions and I'll let you go I you talk about DeAngelo only appearing when he has something to say I de angelo doing sometimes it snows in April after Prince died like there's there's some

something about that that stands alone for me. I don't even know in what category it stands alone, but I put that on and it just affects me like no other piece of music in any context. And I think about like Stevie Wonder at every major memorial, you know, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, whoever, I think about Erica Badoo after DeAngelo passed. You know, she's doing shit damn motherfucker. Like she's talking about like the second time you die is the last time someone says your name. And she says DeAngel's name. Like, do you get? how do you sort of manage the enormous, you know, power of that performance, the in-memorium, you know, tribute, performance, often, you know, days, hours in the case of Whitney Houston, you know, after we lost that person? Yeah. I also think about Mahalia Jackson, who sang at many funerals. And then when she died, people showed up to sing at her funeral. And then Aretha kind of carried that torch of

singing at many funerals and then when Aretha died, I mean, you know, it was like a concert. It was an hours long concert. It's like nine hours. Yeah. There's something beautiful about that immediate aftermath that says through the performance of your song, I am not letting you go. And I also think that if you love someone, if you love someone's music, but in the case of these musicians who are honoring other musicians,

if you genuinely deeply loved someone as a person, you have perhaps prepared for the world, already prepared yourself for the world without the minute, not prepared in an emotional sense, but prepared a part of your brain and heart have maybe already done the work of knowing what must be done, you know, because you can't actually prepare for what it is to grieve someone

or prepare for the world that you have to live in without them. But there is a part, there's a part of my heart in mind that would be able to find some kind of language eventually after someone I loved that. Like the language is already there. How long it would take me to access it? I can't say. But what I love about these performances is that it's just kind of a reiteration

of the reality of saying, I love you and I won't let you fade. I won't let you fade not in this immediate moment, not in the long term. And because, like, when I think about Prince's loss, I not only think about Prince, but I think about that DeAngelo performance. And then I think about how much of DeAngelo

was tied to Prince's making. And then I think about everyone, I think about the large web of Prince and everyone who has perhaps pulled something from him and made something. And so these kind of things, these big moments that come in memoriam only kind of expand the long arc of affection for someone in the way that we can, through our own memories, attach ourselves to that person's living.

And so, yeah, you know, I know Lauren Hill did pay tribute to the Angel at the Grammys. I was like, I don't really watch the Grammys ever, but that was, I watched the clip of that. Good idea. And, yeah, I mean, I was very moved by the Lauren Hill performance. And it also made me... Me too. It was also heartbreaking in a sense because Lauren Hill is another example like DeAngelo of... And there are many, but just these are black artists who had to confront, I think, expectations that, in retrospect,

seemed massively unreal. And these expectations emerged because people believed in their talent or believed in what they produced. But that's just not the end result of those expectations aren't always fair to a life or a career. And so watching that Lauren Hill performance was really moving because it did feel like Lauren Hill, both as a musician and a person, not only had access to DeAngelo as a human being, but had access to the world that he was trying to navigate because it was also a world

that she was trying to navigate. And I don't think either of them failed to navigate it. I think there are many ways that the world failed them. And they are trying to survive in the aftermath of the world's failures and the fact that they did for a while in triumphed every now and then in those attempts at survival, I think, is incredibly impressive. Yeah. So absolutely the last thing. And I wonder if this is related. Like just following you even on Instagram, I've noticed that you celebrate people's birthdays. Very specifically, it seems to me.

Like you post songs, you know, words of appreciation, specifically on someone's birthday, even if they're no longer with us. DeAngelo is February 11th, by the way. Is there a particular reason that you sort of go for the birthday, you know, versus the anniversary of an album coming out or some more, you know, rock critic news, peg is the birthday like a specific special thing to you i tend to think i'm not so i don't like i don't care

about my own birthday ever at all um and i think i have a i have like a fraught relationship with um getting older and i think that my not to get too deep here but i do think my front relationship with getting older is tied to grief and tied to the amount of people i have for example outlived, right, at a relatively young age, although I'm getting older by the day as we all are. But what I will say is that also triggers a thing in me that relies on immense gratitude for having lived in a very specific time. So I think I honor birthdays because it's kind of like I'm distinctly aware of the fact that I could have been born at any point in history, right?

any point. And it's pretty fucking sick that I got to be born in a time where I could hear DeAngelo or Stevie Wonder or Prince or Rita Franklin. You know, there's a world we're in I could have been born

at a point where I heard none of this stuff. And, you know, I don't really believe in a second other life. So my one wild and precious life could have been in an era where I had no access to any of this music. And so I think I honored birthdays because I'm in awe.

This is maybe a small and silly thing to be in awe of, but I'm in awe of the fact that DeAngelo was born in a timeline that allowed for our lives to intersect for a while. And I got to benefit from that. I got to benefit from that greatly. And so, you know, I think that's, as a music fan, And that's one of the most perhaps childlike things, the sense of childlike wonder where I look at a calendar and look at my own life and say, wait a minute, I have a life that is intertwined with all of this other stuff that I love that was made by people who also could have been born at any other point in history, but by the virtue of some miracle, got to intersect with my own life. And so I think the birthday celebration is a good reminder for me to have some gratitude for the passage of time,

but also to have gratitude for being situated in a lifetime line that has afforded me real brilliance that I have access to. Yeah. Yeah. Honey, if this has been absurdly wonderful, I am so grateful to you for your time. As always, I love talking to you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's a pleasure as always.

Thanks so much to our guest this week. Hanif Abdurakib. Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales, Olivia Creary, and Chris Sutton. Additional production by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Callaton, additional art by Matt James, and special thanks to Cole Kushna. And thanks very much to you for listening and or watching.

And now, let's all go listen to Untitled How Does It Feel? by DeAngelo. We'll see you next week.