Issue date: March 12, 2000

In this article:
His roots as son of a minister

BY Jeffrey Zaslow

D'ANGELO HAS heard his music described many ways. Sensual hip-hop. Steamy funk. Smoldering R&B. Smooth neo-soul. What does he call it? "Intense expression."

His new CD, Voodoo, debuted at No. 1, and critics have praised it as a ground-breaking, love-drenched link to the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Marvin Gaye. In his own way, D'Angelo, 26, is singing harder-edged love songs to a tougher generation. "You can sing angrily -- with yearning, longing, pain -- and still it's a love song," he says.

At the same time, he uses well-established R&B imagery -- he's often buffed and shirtless -- to make the roughness of his lyrics more appealing to the masses more used to R. Kelly than N.W.A.

In the suggestive, carefully shot video for his hit single, Untitled (How Does It Feel), the camera moves from his face to below his belly button, creating the distinct feeling he's completely nude. But he insists it's not exactly sensuality he's offering. It's intensity. Pain. Honesty. "The album is raw. It's back to basics. Not having clothes on is a representation of that."

"D'Angelo has this rugged edge that bridges the gap between romance and sex," says Aliya King, associate editor of the hip-hop magazine The Source. "And he'll say things other artists are afraid to say."

He grew up as Michael D'Angelo Archer, the son of a preacher in a strict Pentecostal church in Richmond, Va. "Women had to wear dresses -- no pants, no makeup, no earrings," he says. "People in the church couldn't see movies. All they could do was go bowling." Is he a good bowler? He laughs. "Oh, yeah. I could bowl." Understandably, his mother didn't like his explicit lyrics. "I told her, 'Look, Mom, you don't understand what I'm trying to do.' She said, 'I don't understand, but I'll trust you.' "

The roots of D'Angelo's music go back to Richmond, a city determined to remember its Civil War heroes. Its boulevards are guarded by giant, imposing statues of Confederate generals majestically poised on horseback. To retain his dignity as a black kid in the shadow of these monuments, D'Angelo developed blind spots. "When I see statues of those old white cats," he says, "I look through them. Maybe one of these days, we can go knock them down."

He recalls being angry in school, where he was taught "that Anglo-Saxons invented civilization." He'd argue with history teachers, who'd sputter out explanations that only made him madder. Such memories "show up in my music."

He's still not afraid to stir things up. A lengthy essay in Voodoo's CD booklet rails against hip-hop "peers" who are "more inspired by artists' business tactics than their artistry ... [who] idolize Donald Trump more than Sly Stone ... who don't realize that Jimi Hendrix was a sonic Bill Gates." D'Angelo snaps: "It needs to be said."

He says he admires the legendary love songs of Sam Cooke, and when he's with a woman, that's what he might play. As for his own sensual music, "I listen to it a lot, but not when I'm with a woman. I want to give a woman my full attention, and if my music is on, I can't do that. I'm in a different frame of mind. For me, my music is very deep stuff."

Contributing Editor Jeffrey Zaslow is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The language of love

See how D'Angelo's song titles compare to those of performers he admires and has been likened to.

-- Ricardo A. Gutiérrez

PHOTO CREDIT: James Kegley