(Photo Credit: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
There are never enough words…there will never be enough words to properly, honestly, memorialize the life, impact and genius of Michael Eugene Archer. That soul-stirring musical magician we all knew as D’Angelo. Being as how the news knocked me for a loop,and there were so many honest words of rememberance put out there, I felt like there would be time enough for me to say something. Shit, I needed that time just to recover from a cold that snuck me with a right cross and put the halt (temporarily) to my birthday celebrations.
A celebration that is now forever linked with someone who was nothing short of an affirmation of soul. However you display it. However you define it.
I had just settled into snagging one of my birthday freebies and was finishing up an article when I saw someone’s text: “YO. D is gone.” It was from someone I would cross paths with here and there at shows, so I thought it was someone close that they knew. But then I saw 9th Wonder’spost on Instagram pop up on my feed, and…you know that feeling when you miss a step on a staircase going down and there’s that moment of dread before the drop you think is coming?Yes, that was what I felt. I wrapped up, and went off to my spa appointment that I booked for some “drop-out” time. Exchanged a couple of texts with my people. And got to chop it up with one of my longtime bros about the incredulous moment we were in.
D’Angelo, gone. Even though it’s nine days later, it still doesn’t feel real typing those words out.
I mean, I still remember having Brown Sugar on repeat in my dorm room freshman year in college. Hearing it all over campus, be it someone’s party, or getting some alone time with someone you were digging. It was, and is, an album that let you experience that absolute soul your folks enjoyed in their day but with your own perspective. Your own style. I know for me and all those in my peer bracket, Brown Sugar was part of us getting GROWN. Voodoo was the elevation of that feeling for us, a grounding in all that we knew to be true sonically and spiritually in the face of things that were quickly becoming artificial and saccharine. And The Black Messiah…whew. There are few albums that can be ahead of their time AND be right on time, at the same time. Pop “Really Love” on right quick, then come back to this sentence and tell me you disagree. I’ll wait.
I do think about his various struggles, particularly chafing against the “Neo-Soul” label on his music. I think about how so many outlets pretty much boiled him down to “the shirtless dude who sang into the camera”, and how one white “comedienne” basically channeled the worst of those plantation days fetishes by a joke on Threads I’m not going to repost here. The addictions. And how he must’ve gone through anguish with the loss of Angie Stone, who he shared a child with amid his own struggle with pancreatic cancer just a few months ago. What I think has struck me most about D’Angelo’s travel to the next world is, the sudden shock of it all. Like Ms. Lauryn Hill put it so eloquently, “I regret having not spent much more time with you.”
And that’s it in a nutshell. The selfish, knee-jerk reaction is to think about how much more music he could’ve shared with us. But it hides the truth - life is supremely fragile, and time isn’t a commodity we control.But man…we were truly blessed to have D’Angelo here. South Richmond’s own. Giving us music that was and is, honestly and truly grown with soul.
Thank you, brother, for every single note and lyric that made the tapestry of our Black lives that much more regal.