R&B musician D’Angelo died on October 15, 2025 at the age of 51. I imagine that when he breathed his last breath, a cacophony of music echoed out like a thunder strike. Sensational trumpets, bass that dominates the soundscapes of a fogged-up bathroom scene, raw, sensual vocals that drip like honey from the mouth of an undeniable virtuoso: all sounds leaving with D’Angelo, binding shut a chapter of music that will never truly be replicated.
For such a fundamental artist and inspiration to contemporary R&B, tragically few teenagers have heard of D’Angelo. The general reaction I have gotten from my peers at my mention of his passing is momentary confusion. A raised eyebrow tells me in seconds that the master was less known than I had hoped. As life carries on, the legacies of all artisans become warped and mythologized. We hold onto the legacies of artists by the skin of our teeth, the fragile nature of human remembrance being the final say on what is kept and what is deserted. D’Angelo will never be forgotten. People like myself will quickly jump to him in the conversation of the best voices in R&B, but an increasing majority of others will continue to be unfamiliar with the man’s greatness. I have a hard time reckoning with that.
In preparation for this article, I listened to every album D’Angelo ever released. This task isn’t difficult. Brown Sugar, Voodoo, and Black Messiah are his only projects to grace the world, but these albums are colossal soundscapes, all different and impactful in their own ways. I knew that this was a necessity if I was to muse on his legacy, but as I listened more and more to his music, I felt as if I was slowly being hypnotized. Somewhere in between the funk that opens “Brown Sugar” and the confidence at the end of “Black Messiah,” I found a new desire. I was no longer the self-appointed record keeper of an artist I felt utterly confident in. I had morphed into a student of seductive tones and rhythm, an addict to the humidity that radiates from D’Angelo’s unrelenting tracks. I quickly realized that D’Angelo was an enigma to me. For a while, I struggled to put anything into words. It is Sisyphysean to chronicle a life you have not lived, to capture the essence of a man who, in every moment, possessed a slightly different moniker. What narcissistic maniac aims to write obituaries as if his pen is graced by God, enough to decide what makes a life? Instead, I entered a labyrinth, charging through snaking pathways until D’Angelo made complete sense to me.
When D’Angelo released “Brown Sugar” in 1995, he was a steward of rhythm and blues. At only twenty years old, fresh on the scene of music making, the work of D’angelo at this time is filled with obvious inspirations. Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Sly Stone are ghosts on tracks like “Jonz In My Bonz” or “Lady,” their deliveries and instrumentation erupting from a new voice like ethereal possession. When D’Angelo’s voice blairs with an unwavering sense of cool, I am reminded that, while one can deny an afterlife, life after death certainly is true for those with a strong enough conviction to make a mark upon the world with their art. As long as there is music to be heard, there are conduits of mastery like D’Angelo listening in their teenage bedrooms to every subtle hint of genius hidden between the layers of production, like a French apprentice copying a master work until his wrist moves in tandem with Botticelli’s.
“Brown Sugar” is unrelentingly raw, brimming with a passion and power that is entirely unrefined. Made in his mother’s house with mostly only a four-track-recorder and a keyboard, D’Angelo created one of the most influential R&B records of the 90’s directly from the mud. Through sheer power of will and obsession he cemented himself a legend. In this, I learned my first lesson from D’Angelo: all innovation is a product of audacity. The essence of greatness is in the audacity to make a masterwork in a bedroom, the audacity to sing with every fiber of your soul, to let your voice reverberate around the world until the world starts singing back to you, the audacity to perform the album’s vocals, guitar, drums, saxophone, bass and keyboard all on your own, and the audacity for the product of this level of unbridled experimentation to shape the scape of R&B for decades.
The success of “Brown Sugar” begs the question: what happens when D’Angelo is unbridled by financial restraints? If he is capable of birthing a monumental career from the bare necessities, then what happens when that same man is given all he could desire? In 2000, the world found out the answer with “Voodoo,” one of the most unique sounds that has ever emerged from R&B. As it turns out, a voice like D’Angelo cannot be confined to the restrictions of his genre. While the influences of Gaye, Brown and Stone are still apparent from time to time, a new master was made evident as the album played in my headphones: D’Angelo himself. Before, the beauty of “Brown Sugar” is that it qualified comparison to the greatest voices of the genre, but now what makes “Voodoo” special is its incompatibility with all forms of comparison. In “Devil’s Pie,” “Chicken Grease” or “Feel Like Makin’ Love” the listener begins to understand that they have found a new threshold of exploration. In Electric Lady Studios, where the album was recorded, R&B changed forever, evolving thanks to the ingenuity and innovation of D’Angelo.
If the success of R&B is typically to clasp on to a listener’s own romanticism, the success of “Voodoo” is to make the listener a spectator to the pantheon of greater romance. In the grooves of the album’s deepest and richest soundscapes, my personal passions are contextualized by the universal law of love. All of the sudden, the women I have loved are no different from Eurydice, or Beatrice or Eve. All of the sudden, all love is divine, and we all want the same thing. In the milky, distant lands of D’Angelo’s “Voodoo,” the title makes sense to me. Love is a black magic on all of our souls. In the uncertainty of life, I find clarity in the beauty. Let not our souls be untimely ripped from the backbone of the world. Let us stay here, in the garden only made visible by D’Angelo’s eclipse of musical perfection. When I first listened to “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” I very nearly wept. If it is not obvious, “Voodoo” is the reason for my musings. It is, to me, the greatest R&B album of all time, and evidence for my second lesson I learned from D’Angelo: timelessness is simply the product of genuineness. All great works since antiquity remain great because of their ability to grasp the throughlines of human emotion. No matter the decade, no matter the place, the crooning angelicism of D’Angelo convinces us that what we feel is not monolithic, and that every life is a link in the chain of a neverending embrace.
After “Voodoo,” D’Angelo disappeared. For fourteen years, the artist faded softly away, dodging the crippling pressures that compounded onto him after his meteoric rise to success. What could have been the beginning of one of the greatest catalogues in musical history became a vanishing point, the last time anyone had heard a track from R&B’s most promising new master. Nonetheless, in 2014, D’Angelo ended his hiatus with “Black Messiah,” his most lyrically dense and unrelenting album to date. From beginning to end, the album routinely comments on social injustice and racial inequality. At its core, “Black Messiah” is an advocate for revolution. In songs like “1000 Deaths,” specific movements or leaders are not promoted, but instead the larger ideas of systematic reformation are called upon, and the music seeks to chronicle these broader concepts. There is something to be said about this album being the one to bring D’Angelo back after so many years. If nothing else, it is proof that for D’Angelo to make music, he must have something important to say. The points made on this album are indeed cutting, the lyricism possibly being the strongest attribute in an album with many vibrant and varied strengths.
D’Angelo was also still in a realm of his own. Most artists would struggle to find their sound again after fourteen years, especially when the genre they belong to has changed so drastically. Voices like Drake and The Weeknd had entirely uprooted the bases of R&B by 2014. It is safe to say that many of D’Angelo’s contemporaries would be lost for words if they were to attempt such a drastic returnal. However, D’Angelo remained true to himself, creating an album separate from many of the conventions of modern R&B. The soulful, crunchy nature of his music remained true to form upon his resurrection, and it was all-the-better for it. In “Black Messiah” the third and final lesson I learned from D’Angelo was revealed: artistry is fundamentally unwavering. In the conviction of his words, and in the staunch originality of the album’s soundscape, “Black Messiah” proves that after fourteen years of vested interest in the lifeforce behind R&B music, the genre’s greatest innovators will never stop innovating.
It has been thirty years since “Brown Sugar.” D’Angelo is now dead, and I am writing an article commemorating his legacy. I stand at the base of a mountain, an unscalable monument to greatness, the largest block of unflawed marble left on Earth, and I feel as if I left my chisel at home. I thought that if I listened tirelessly to D’Angelo’s music, If I sucked in every ounce of his persona, if I took in every remnant of the man that could fit on my phone, then maybe I could begin to understand greatness.
D’Angelo is an idol of mine, not just because he was my favorite R&B artist of all time. Nobody could replicate the boundary-breaking nature of D’Angelo at any stage of his creative pursuits. Whether he was a hungry young man, or a sex symbol, or a renaissance man, or a recluse or an activist, he was truly one of a kind. I long for the strength of D’Angelo. Quietly at night, I will pray to be bestowed his genius in my artistic pursuits, while fully understanding that this goal is unreachable. I am left still yearning for the same thing I did when I began writing this article. I am utterly dumbfounded by D’Angelo’s art, equally as perplexed at the level of greatness he achieved, identically ravaged by his death.
It is ridiculous to try to fully figure out the man. It is a useless endeavor to piece together the shattered fragments of vinyl left in the wake of D’Angelo’s death and form a full picture. It is ceaseless to pursue something so fundamentally out of reach. Instead, I exit the labyrinth tired, torn, and lost for words. My grief knows no bounds, as I am forced to reckon with my hero truly being gone. However, it is clear to me that his artistry will be a beacon of inspiration for years to come, not just for me, but for anyone who listens. Through his audacious nature, D’Angelo refuses to die. In his timelessness, my children and grandchildren will have the opportunity to catch a glimpse into the beauty of the world. By remaining unwavering to his artistic vision the integrity of D’Angelo stands taller than any of his peers.
I won’t try to end this article by alluding to D’Angelo hanging out with Marvin Gaye in heaven. While my diction remains too flowery, and my metaphors fail to be as cryptic as they probably should be, I will not degrade my writing by reaching Hallmark card levels of sappiness. I do have no choice, however, than to glance to my left, where “What’s Going On” and “Voodoo” accompany each other in the vinyl crate in the corner of my room. The two men both contemplatively stare into the ether, each so sure of the paths that led them here. Their faces may be still, but I know that they are smiling.
