In his music, Michael Eugene Archer — D’Angelo, who died on Tuesday at 51 — was supremely assured. He crooned with Olympian ease over unhurried grooves that were full of musicianly details: thick chords, cagey syncopations, call-and-response vocal harmonies. All the musicianship often came from D’Angelo himself, singing and playing and producing.
He could be a one-man studio band in the mold of Prince and Stevie Wonder, overdubbing nearly all the instruments. He had a silken falsetto to rival Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield and Al Green. He could also multitrack himself to simulate the collective yowl and cackle of Funkadelic or Sly & the Family Stone. He had voices to convey richly seductive physical pleasures, unwavering devotion and gritty political resistance.
His ear was omnivorous. Funk, gospel, jazz, rock, electronics, hip-hop and every generation of soul and R&B informed songs that crystallized the 1990s movement known as neo-soul. D’Angelo was one focal point in a constellation of musicians and occasional collaborators — Angie Stone, Erykah Badu, Raphael Saadiq, Questlove, J Dilla — who each strove to reconcile organic vintage soul and digital-forward hip-hop. Still, every one of his songs flaunted D’Angelo’s visionary individuality.
D’Angelo’s sonic choices constantly pushed against ease or convention. His mixes turned R&B inside-out; they sounded like deeply clandestine jam sessions, not parties or concerts. His arrangements courted polytonality as they stacked up abstruse chords and phantom vocal harmonies. D’Angelo also ramped up distortion with each of his albums, especially his last one, “Black Messiah,” which arrived 14 years after its predecessor, “Voodoo.”
D’Angelo’s prodigious gifts came with personal troubles: drinking, drugs, self-doubt, vast unfulfilled ambitions. Over a three-decade career, D’Angelo only released three studio albums and a handful of collaborations. That makes each of his completed songs more precious; we can only wonder about how much work he held back.
Each of D’Angelo’s albums is worth hearing as a complete statement. Side by side, his songs wrangle constantly with one another. They address desire, pain, ambition, pressure, addiction, romance, temptation, doubts, pride, racism, spirituality, societal tensions and more. Grouped into albums, his tracks present a crowd of inner voices that can embody both conflicts and communal spirit, from an artist who refused to contain his contradictions.
For a brief sampling of D’Angelo’s extraordinary musical scope, here are 14 essential songs.
‘Brown Sugar’ (1995)
The title (and opening) track of D’Angelo’s 1995 debut album is sensual and insinuating, with a catchy request — “I want some of your brown sugar” — repeated over a leisurely bass line and a dawdling backbeat (devised by Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest). It might be about lust, marijuana or both. Low-volume conversation gives the production a subtly informal ambience, even as D’Angelo’s musicianship teases at the edges: in a harmonically ambiguous intro and a jazzy organ obbligato. The vocals may seem casual, but the a cappella version added to the “Brown Sugar (Deluxe Edition)” album reveals how elaborate they actually are.
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‘Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine’ (1995)
D’Angelo could have devoted his whole career to writing straightforward R&B seduction songs like this one; he went further. This track pays tribute to “the cherry in my chocolate-covered dreams,” a faraway woman who’s “the finest little thing that my eyes ever saw.” His solo falsetto duets with a tenor choir — all D’Angelo’s voice — while organ chords lend a gospel undercurrent to his yearning.
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‘Jonz in My Bones’ (1995)
Written with Angie Stone, “Jonz in My Bones” depicts an all-consuming need. It could be love, but it could also be an addiction. “This feeling that I got won’t leave me ’lone,” D’Angelo sings. That need is strong enough to keep him unmoored, emotionally and harmonically; simmering keyboard chords, a wandering bass line and D’Angelo’s layered vocals keep everything in limbo.
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‘Devil’s Pie’ (1998)
D’Angelo recognized and confronted the temptations of fame and wealth in “Devil’s Pie”: “I myself feel the high from all that I despise,” he admitted. A lumpy backbeat, a skulking bass line, vocal harmonies that gather and dissolve at whim, and a whistling, skittering sample make the song simultaneously jaunty and sinister, a self-indictment that he struggles to escape.
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‘Untitled (How Does It Feel)’ (2000)
“If you’ll have me, I can provide / everything that you desire,” D’Angelo promised in “Untitled.” This slow-motion come-on works up to multiple peaks, easing back and building again, ending with ecstatic falsetto cries. It established D’Angelo as a sex symbol with a video that lingered over his naked, toned body. But the unwanted aftermath of the video — tour audiences shouting “Take it off!” — pushed him toward years of reclusiveness.
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‘Spanish Joint’ (2000)
The upbeat syncopation of “Spanish Joint” carries thoughts about a breakup and a battle against depression: “Gotta get out of here / I’m in the dark and the light looks sincere.” With nimble guitar licks from Charlie Hunter, a knotty brass arrangement by Roy Hargrove and conga drumming from Giovanni Hidalgo, a Latin-jazz mainstay, the music breezes past the acrimony.
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‘Africa’ (2000)
D’Angelo sang to his first son about ancestral pride and fatherly protection in “Africa.” The track wafts in with bell-toned keyboards and wordless vocals and floats through a six-minute benediction with an otherworldly glow.
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Raphael Saadiq featuring D’Angelo, ‘Be Here’ (2002)
During the long years between albums, D’Angelo made sporadic appearances with trusted collaborators like Raphael Saadiq. D’Angelo shares songwriting credit on “Be Here” and multiplies vocal harmonies on the second verse, urging, “You should see the tricks that I got.”
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‘Ain’t That Easy’ (2014)
When D’Angelo re-emerged with “Black Messiah,” his music had grown denser, more openly political, more bruised and more uncompromising. “Ain’t That Easy” opened the album with a song of desperate love: “You can’t leave me,” he moans. “It ain’t that easy.” The track coalesces out of noise and siren-like sounds to turn into a lurching, chugging rocker, with group vocals that give way to solo outbursts: “You won’t believe all the things you have to sacrifice just to get peace of mind,” he sings, sounding far from peaceful.
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‘The Charade’ (2014)
“All we wanted was a chance to talk / ’Stead we only got outlined in chalk,” D’Angelo sings in “The Charade,” a bitter song about injustice, lies, systemic racism, stubborn faith and unyielding determination. With D’Angelo overdubbing enough vocals to sound like a crowd, there’s a marching feel to the beat, while a sitar hook flies above the mix like a banner.
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‘Really Love’ (2014)
D’Angelo was fond of long intros, and “Really Love” begins with more than a minute of sustained orchestral strings behind a monologue in Spanish from Gina Figueroa, saying she can’t bear her man’s jealousy and domination. But then it gets jazzy and friendly, with D’Angelo deploying his most endearing falsetto to insist on his purest affection. Without the intro, it would be one of his most easygoing love songs.
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‘Betray My Heart’ (2014)
On an album that often exults in weight and murk, “Betray My Heart” is the opposite: crisp, transparent, airborne. It’s a promise of devoted love: “Just as long as there is time / I will never leave your side.” And it swings: with a lean, ticking drumbeat, an uncluttered blend of electric piano and guitar, and vocals and horns tossing around some counterpoint — one more reminder of D’Angelo’s sheer musical ingenuity.
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‘Unshaken’ (2019)
This minor-key rock dirge, written with Daniel Lanois and Rocco DeLuca, showed up in the video game “Red Dead Redemption 2.” It vows, “May I stand unshaken / Amid, amidst the crash of the world,” over mournful guitar picking and tidings of increasing desolation: “I once was standing tall / Now I feel my back’s against the wall.”
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‘I Want You Forever’ (2024)
D’Angelo collaborated with Jay-Z and the filmmaker and composer Jeymes Samuel on this nine-minute song for the soundtrack of “The Book of Clarence.” It’s an inexorably building declaration of love, a processional march with a tangle of vocals and a rap from Jay-Z; after it reaches an orchestral peak, it wends its way into the far distance.
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Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.
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