Heaven must be like this: D'Angelo's greatest songs – ranked!

The Guardian

2 days ago

For an artist no one could describe as prolific, D'Angelo has contributed a surprising number of exclusive songs to films. Good songs too, as evidenced by this, from the Space Jam soundtrack: a fine, funky, faintly Stevie Wonder-ish, mid-tempo example of his initial retro-yet-somehow-modern approach to soul.
Questlove compared D'Angelo's third album Black Messiah to the Beach Boys' Smile. More people heard Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On in its murky, moody sound, but Another Life was a relatively bright closer, a lovely hybrid of vintage Chicago and Philadelphia soul, decorated with sitar.
D'Angelo is better known as a songwriter than an interpreter of others' material, but – quite aside from demonstrating his exquisite taste in vintage soul – his version of the Ohio Players' 1974 slow jam is magnificent: live-sounding, respectful, but not too cowed by the original to prevent the singer injecting his own identity.
D'Angelo's debut was the album for which the term neosoul was literally invented (as a marketing tool), but it offered more than merely harking back to a golden era. Alright is resolutely a product of the mid-90s – the harmonies are lush, but they're set against a crackly sampled rhythm and subjected to dub-like echo.
D'Angelo made his love for Prince explicit early on – covering She's Always in My Hair – and his spirit hangs over The Charade, both melodically and in its hybrid rock-influenced style. But the sound is too smeared, distorted and strange to count as homage; its lyrics about the 'systematic maze' of racism are glowering and powerful.
D'Angelo's second album Voodoo took four years to make. Collaborator Questlove described the sessions as a 'left of centre Black music renaissance', but there's a potent note-to-self quality about The Line's lyrics, as if D'Angelo is urging himself to get the album done: 'I'm gonna stick to my guns, I'm gonna put my finger on the trigger, I'm gonna pull it'.
The most recent D'Angelo track – released seven years ago! – was brooding, atmospheric and produced by U2 collaborator Daniel Lanois. It's understated but fabulous, carrying a hint of swampy New Orleans soul in its rhythm. If he can come up with something this good for a video game soundtrack, what might a fourth album sound like?
Inspired by the birth of D'Angelo's son – and co-written with his then-partner, the late Angie Stone – Africa meditates on fatherhood and Black consciousness. It's resolute lyrically but low-key, introspective and somehow fragile musically, its electric piano sounding fractured over the rumbling funk of Questlove's drums. The overall effect is really moving.
The perfect example of what one critic called the 'controlled chaos' of Black Messiah with funk so slippery the constituent elements feel as if they're on the verge of sliding out of sync entirely. D'Angelo laments the state of the world in falsetto: 'Tragedy flows unbound and there's no place to run.'
The loverman side of Voodoo later gave D'Angelo pause – he was deeply uncomfortable with his sex-symbol status – but it's pretty irresistible on this cliche-free slow jam. The vocals are reverb-free and mixed forward, as if he's singing very close to you, the music moves drowsily along, the whole thing sounds like it's dripping with sweat.
From the opening torrent of dextrous jazz guitar to the bumping hip-hop beat (from Chubb Rock's 1992 track The Big Man) via the meandering keyboard lines that suggest a band jamming live and the fine, but unshowy vocal, Smooth defines the new route for R&B laid out on D'Angelo's debut. It's also just a great song.
If Black Messiah is the 21st-century There's a Riot Goin' On, maybe Sugah Daddy is its goofy Spaced Cowboy moment, its Princely lubriciousness undercut by its quirky tap-dancing rhythm, sudden key changes and warped swing-era evoking horns and backing vocals. The main piano and bass groove, meanwhile, is utterly, joyfully contagious.
A collaboration with producer DJ Premier (who originally intended its beat to go to fleetingly famous rapper Canibus), Devil's Pie is also liberally sprinkled with magic by an uncredited J Dilla. Its attack on hip-hop materialism is stripped-back, bass-heavy and strafed with vintage electronics (sampled from Pierre Henry). Idiosyncratic and marvellous.
The great D'Angelo cover. Smokey Robinson's original 1979 quiet-storm-classic is an incredible track but this version might be even better: a touch faster, a little more raw, the lush orchestration set over echoey funk. And D'Angelo's unruffled falsetto may be the best vocal he's ever recorded.
Around Voodoo's release, D'Angelo described modern R&B as 'a joke'. The ensuing album was his alternative, 'the natural progression of soul', a description that fits Send It On perfectly: over the sample loops and elastic bass, the lovely song at its centre could easily have been sung by Otis Redding or Sam Cooke.
When it comes to D'Angelo's biggest hit, take your pick from the original – a slow jam with a killer bassline courtesy of Raphael Saadiq – or the DJ Premier mix which is more hip-hop facing, with a guest verse from Nas-affiliated rapper AZ. Both are superb, carrying a faint undercurrent of darkness alongside declarations of love.
At the heart of Voodoo's sound is incredible, virtuosic live-in-the-studio playing by D'Angelo and his fellow Soulquarians. It never sounds more incredible than the intricate, writhing groove of Spanish Joint: constantly shifting, always funky, the perfect backdrop for D'Angelo's vocals (and the Afrobeat-influenced horns) to glide around.
A slow-burning dream of a song, its gorgeous, cyclical melody stunningly orchestrated and decorated with flamenco guitar: an arrangement so imaginative it makes you realise how unimaginative most pop arrangements are. The mush-mouthed vocal adds an odd sense of intimacy, as if you're hearing D'Angelo singing to himself.
Untitled's video was simple – a naked D'Angelo singing direct to camera – and perhaps too effective. Subsequent attention from female fans disconcerted the singer into derailing his own career. But the song itself is amazing, a rule-breaking Prince-inspired bedroom ballad that slowly builds to an astonishing psychedelic climax.
D'Angelo's catalogue might be slender, but it's rich, so much so that it feels almost unfair to pick his debut single as his best song. Doing so doesn't imply that it was all downhill from there – all of his albums are equally good – but there's no getting around the fact that Brown Sugar is a spectacularly great track. An ode to marijuana disguised as a love song, you could work out the real meaning just from its heady sound – like mid-70s Roy Ayers in a fog of smoke, plus snapping beats, ultra-cool organ, disorientating murmuring voices and a vocal with the rhythm of a rapper's flow.