D’Angelo And The Vanguard – Black Messiah (RCA) – For the past 14 years, D’Angelo has been the music industry equivalent of Howard Hughes. The man came in with a flash of creative brilliance in the ‘90s, took the world by storm and vanished into a self-imposed exile after two albums. In the near decade and a half since his 2000 sophomore bow Voodoo, the man born Michael Eugene Archer was the subject of reported sightings and rumors. Periodically, he’d pop up working with Common, J. Dilla, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Femi Kuti on separate occasions. And just as quickly as D’Angelo dropped out, he’s popped in again with a dozen songs that find him deconstructing rhythm and blues and funk. Black Messiah carries the same, heavy-lidded ambiance that Sly Stone was noodling around with on 1972’s There’s a Riot Going On and Prince did when he dropped the 1987 double-album Sign o’ the Times. And for D’Angelo, this most certainly winds up being his Riot, particularly given the tone of the written forward in the CD booklet that says, “Black Messiah is a hell of a name for an album..For me, the title is about all of us…It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make changes happen.”
But that doesn’t mean the message is as going to be as clearly as articulated as when Marvin Gaye was doing it back in 1971 with What’s Going On. No sir. With help from a crew that includes lyrical collaborators Kendra Foster and Q-Tip along with drummers Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and James Gadson, trumpeter Roy Hargrove and even former Time guitarist Jesse Johnson, D’Angelo does his best to muddy the sonic waters. Right out of the gate, the approach drifts in and out of clouds of unintelligibility whether it’s “1000 Deaths,” which had been leaked some years back and opens with a diatribe about a black Jesus sampled from the film The Murder of Fred Hampton. It gives way to a muted vocal as a quaking beat and popped basslines frame D’Angelo muttering “I been a witness to this game for ages/And if I stare death in face, no time to waste.” Or how the lazy, swirling riffs of “The Charade” have D’Angelo sounding like Prince on a codeine bender while he achingly declares, “All we wanted was a chance to talk/’Stead we only got outlined in chalk.”
But it’s not all political as D’Angelo does delve deep into matters of the heart as he lays down a falsetto scat and sings, “I will never leave your side/And if ever that you feel/That my love is not sincere” over a jazzy bed of walking bass, muted trumpet and skittish guitar riffs that gooses along “Betray My Heart.” Elsewhere, D’Angelo uses whistling accompaniment and some stripped-down acoustic guitar over a loping beat to give a pretty light kiss-off on “The Door” which has a “Whistle While You Work” vibe to it if that Disney classic had been recorded at a blues joint. Black Messiah is by no means an easy record to lose yourself in, but repeated plays find its innovation sinking deeper into your brainpan with a most George Clinton-ish deviance and brilliance.
D’Angelo & the Vanguard will be appearing on March 11 at Best Buy Theater, 1515 Broadway, NYC. For more information, please call 212-930-1950 or visit www.BestBuyTheater.com.
