D’Angelo’s 10 Best Songs: Staff Picks
Our list of the 10 best songs by the neo-soul architect, from Brown Sugar to Black Messiah.
D’Angelo performs live on the main stage during Day Two of the Lovebox festival at Victoria Park on July 20, 2013 in London, England. Simone Joyner/Getty Images
When it comes to the past three decades of R&B, particularly the development of the neo-soul movement, D’Angelo‘s name stands heads and shoulders above the rest. From his culture-shifting Brown Sugar debut album and complicated sex symbol status during his Voodoo years to his Soulquarian contributions and enigmatic late-career moves, D’Angelo wielded his virtuosic songwriting and instrumental abilities to create music that captured life’s warmest, most sensual and most fleeting moments. The Virginia-bred Grammy winner’s influence reverberates across the contemporary R&B scene, as evidenced by both Leon Thomas‘ guitar-shredding charisma and Elmiene‘s sultry timbre.
On Tuesday (Oct. 14), D’Angelo’s family confirmed that the legendary singer passed at 51 years old following a battle with cancer. “We are saddened that he can only leave dear memories with his family, but we are eternally grateful for the legacy of extraordinarily moving music he leaves behind,” they wrote in a statement to Billboard. “We ask that you respect our privacy during this difficult time, but invite you all to join us in mourning his passing while also celebrating the gift of song that he has left for the world.”
Boasting two Billboard 200 top 10 albums — including the 2000 chart-topper Voodoo — and four top 10 hits on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, D’Angelo’s succinct catalog houses some of the most pivotal R&B records of the past quarter-century. Whether he was serving as a duet partner for Ms. Lauryn Hill (1999’s “Nothing Even Matters”) or revolutionizing the music video (2000’s “Untitled”), D’Angelo’s taste for subtlety, thematic boldness and attention to detail made him a singular force in contemporary music.
On the somber day of his passing, here are our staff picks for D’Angelo’s 10 all-time greatest songs.
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“I Found My Smile Again” (Space Jam Soundtrack, 1996)
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Taken from 1996’s Space Jam soundtrack, “I Found My Smile Again” is the kind of feel-good love song they don’t quite make anymore. “And you look at me and my heart just starts to moving/ I haven’t felt like this in a while/ Girl, I wanna thank you for helping me find my smile,” D’Angelo croons in the first verse of the track, employing a few growls and a bit of rasp to add some texture to the smooth, bass-driven track. Less overtly sensual than most of his own hits but just as soulful and enrapturing, “Found My Smile” finds D’Angelo effortlessly excelling outside of his normal wheelhouse, further proving his status as a singular songwriter and storyteller. — KYLE DENIS
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“Ain’t That Easy” (Black Messiah, 2014)
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About 15 years in the making, hitting play on Black Messiah, and this being the first track, was like a fever dream. “Ain’t That Easy” is just so damn funky, and didn’t sound like anything that was out at the time or anything that’s out today. It’s hard to put into words how monumental this album was when it dropped out of nowhere that fateful Sunday night in December of 2014, after a year of unrest in America following the police brutality cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, M.O., and Eric Garner in Staten Island. D’Angelo wanted to uplift his people during a time of struggle, and he did just that. — ANGEL DIAZ
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“Chicken Grease” (Voodoo, 2000)
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This is that real music that our parents try to tell us about. This dude was a genius, moving to the beat of his own drum, literally and figuratively. Voodoo was released in 2000, and no one was jamming out like he was on that album. You can hear actual instruments being played on this, which makes it hard to sit still as he and his band jam out about being hotter than “Chicken Grease” bubbling on the stove. I know this particular track rings off live, especially in the beginning, where D’Angelo’s basically being an MC and telling the people to stop standing around and join in on the jam session. — A.D.
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“Cruisin’” (Brown Sugar, 1995)
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A cover of Smokey Robinson’s 1979 hit of the same name, D’Angelo selected “Crusin’” as the second single from his debut album. Not only did the song reach No. 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, but it also allowed D’Angelo to cement his fluttery falsetto as a key component of his brand. In retrospect, D’Angelo made a genius choice in pulling a ’70s R&B hit to showcase neo-soul’s emphasis on live instrumentation. Contributing his own keys to a lush arrangement of violin, viola, cello, piccolo, and barely-there sleigh bells and shakers, D’Angelo drew an admirable throughline of soul and sensuality across several decades of R&B. And, of course, any song that gets the Moesha stamp is an automatic winner.
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“Devil’s Pie” (Voodoo, 2000)
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I know this is on the Voodoo album, but I associate this song with the Hype Williams cult classic film, Belly, starring DMX and Nas, which was released two years prior in 1998. I was in high school then, trying to make sense of the crazy environment I was trying to navigate, and this song encapsulated my experience in Paterson, N.J. — a little too well now that I think back. We were all trying to get a piece of the devil’s pie back then. It’s wild that DJ Premier’s tweet was the first one I saw regarding D’Angelo’s passing, because the two of them had such great chemistry. — A.D.
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“1,000 Deaths” (Black Messiah, 2014)
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Introduced by two stirring samples — New Black Panther Party chairman Khalid Abdul Muhammad’s words on Afrocentric beauty and Fed Hampton’s reiteration of Malcolm X’s “By Any Means Necessary” speech — “1,000 Deaths” is the kind of expansive, militant pseudo-title track an album like Black Messiah demands. With his vocals sitting just under the mix and pounding drums and wailing guitars grounding the grandiose funk-rock arrangement, “1,000 Deaths” finds D’Angelo paying tribute to the courage of soldiers for racial and social justice. American was on fire in a very specific way in 2014, and when D’Angelo declares, “A coward dies a thousand times/ But a soldier only dies just once,” he’s tapping into the sizzling fury that helped spawn the earliest iterations of the Black Lives Matter movement. As raucous as it is focused, “1,000 Deaths” is late-career D’Angelo at his best. — K.D.
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“Lady” (Brown Sugar, 1995)
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“Lady” was D’Angelo’s highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 hit, peaking at No. 10 on March 30, 1996 — and it’s been a favorite at weddings since. There’s also the DJ Premier version featuring AZ that was a mainstay on DJ mixtapes back in the day when the rap R&B remix was king, where the Brooklyn MC delivers one of his most memorable verses where he raps about some of the same themes D’Angelo would later explore on another Preemo-assisted track “Devil’s Pie.” — A.D.
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“S—t, Damn, Motherf—er” (Brown Sugar, 1995)
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A masterclass in R&B storytelling, D’Angelo’s evocative, expletive-laden “S—t, Damn, Motherf—er” is the unsung jewel of Brown Sugar. From the grief-stricken twang of the verses to the steadily intensifying incredulity in the hook, “S—t,” mounts a romantic Greek tragedy across a Bob Power co-produced mélange of soulful background vocals, steady percussion and restrained guitar. Not only does he catch a man in bed with his wife, D’Angelo murders the pair in a crime of passion: When he hits that third “Why the both of you’s bleeding so much?” with a slight pause in the middle of the phrase, he’s flaunting the same vocal performance chops that made male crooners before him so enrapturing. No one transformed simple lyrics into towering narratives quite like D’Angelo. — K.D.
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“Untitled (How Does It Feel)” (Voodoo, 2000)
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“Untitled,” both the song and music video, has directly influenced more artists than many musicians’ entire catalogs. Co-written and produced by R&B savant Raphael Saadiq, “Untitled” immediately announces itself as a Prince tribute in its fusion of rock, soul, and pop sensibilities. In his mixture of Hendrix-esque guitars, Questlove’s gloriously syncopated drums, and an impassioned vocal performance, D’Angelo accurately sketched the emotional arc of a successful tryst — final climax and all. From his sensitive-to-the-touch opening falsetto to the carnal choir that arises by way of his overdubbed backing vocals, D’Angelo’s is the primary vehicle for the true centerpiece of “Untitled,” which is sex, in all of its simultaneously mortal and supernatural glory.
Reaching No. 25 on the Hot 100, “Untitled” remains D’Angelo’s final entry as a lead artist on Billboard’s marquee singles chart — and what a legacy it has left behind. A Paul Hunter-helmed music video featuring a nearly-nude D’Angelo accompanies the singer’s signature hit, and its provocative imagery challenged both the public’s, and D’Angelo’s, understanding of the male sex symbol. — K.D.
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“Brown Sugar” (Brown Sugar, 1995)
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This was pretty much everyone’s introduction to D’Angelo, and I remember where I was the first time I heard it. I was in my grandmother’s house with the TV on the music video channel The Box, as was the policy whenever me and my cousin Jordan were running around. I had no clue what the song was about, but what I was hearing was nothing short of intoxicating. My cousin and I liked the song so much, he got his mother to buy him his debut album. I also remember our uncle explaining to us that the song wasn’t less about a woman and more about smoking weed or doing dope. We were lucky to grow up with a house filled with music, because of moments like that. “Brown Sugar” remains one of the more influential songs of that era. It shifted everything. — A.D.
Link to the source article – https://www.billboard.com/lists/best-dangelo-songs/
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