African lives have already greatly improved over the past decade. The next...
D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah”, his first album since 2000’s “Voodoo”, looks back to the funk greats while retaining a modern political edge.
A squiggle of guitars unveils the third coming of D’Angelo, one that has been described as “the black SMiLE”, so long has it been in the making, so surrounded by myth and hearsay and false-starts. Attributed to D’Angelo and the Vanguard, it’s his first album since 2000’s “Voodoo”, the one whose attendant “Untitled” video did so much to inflame the artist’s confusion and torment about his appeal. Was he little more than a ripped torso? Or was he, as his acolytes insisted, the greatest soul man since Marvin? Or some kind of holy union of funky Sly and futuredelic Stevie?