How Does It Feel? It Feels Horrible

I don’t have a lot of firm firm firm favorites in my life. My favorite rapper will alternate between maybe two or three answers. Favorite prose writer. . .I’m not even certain I have a roster. Favorite musical artist? There’s a handful. But D’Angelo’s “Voodoo” is always the favorite album. Always. It came out my freshman year of college. I was already deep into the world of Questlove, neo-soul, et cetera. But I don’t think I thought D’Angelo was all that at the time. Of course I loved “Brown Sugar.” Of course I loved singing along with “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker” cause I was a young kid. But I didn’t know that D’Angelo was about to recalibrate my life.

He made me take music much more seriously, and metronomes much less seriously. I would look at D’Angelo holding that rooster in what looks like a voodoo ceremony and I would understand that this music I was falling in love with was much deeper than what I had understood it to be. I think Jimi Hendrix had a lot of it, but the generational difference made it less salient. Voodoo helped me treat Black music with reverence. There was a deep level of mysticism, eroticism, revolution, telepathy and more floating all over songs I had listened to before, but never with that lens. In songs like “Chicken Grease” and “Untitled (How Does it Feel)” I heard these very bluesy chords I thought of as the domain of old blues tunes and I heard them popping up inside of these songs. Suddenly they weren’t just chords that belonged to my Dad’s music. The thing is those chords always belongs to Black music at the vanguard of culture but I was deep into the minor, skeletal sounds of the Roots, Wu-Tang, Mobb Deep and more. To hear those full chords floating over Jeep-approved rhythm tracks was a revelation.

I’m telling you this cause he’s gone. I’m telling you this because for everything that record did for me, seeing him live at the Orpheum in the summer of 2000 maybe did more. It is the best show I’ve ever seen. It’s not even that close and I’ve seen some great shows. I’m sure they were giving it all they had for Minneapolis. That cadre of musicians loved Minneapolis in ways I didn’t understand. I didn’t care about Prince yet. I knew he was great but his music hadn’t hit me deeply yet. But when D’Angelo was up on the Rhodes for almost the first time in the show as he was mainly just singing and he said “how does it feel Minneapolis?” I knew I was seeing something special. The whole day had been a nightmare. I had invited a girl I was on the record as having a crush on to crash at my house on her roadtrip across America on the same night I had also bought tickets for me and my girlfriend to see D’Angelo. Just absolute 18-year old bullshit. Wildly amateur. Oh, and I also bought a ticket for my friend Kevin! It was like I asked an AI how I could take my girl to D’Angelo but be certain to not get laid. So me and Anna had been fighting the whole day, didn’t talk the whole show and Kevin is just spinning that third wheel. And when “Untitled” came on of course me and Anna had to sway, we had to touch. It was unavoidable. D’Angelo’s keyboard brought me back into Anna’s good graces that night. Thank you D.

A couple years later when me and Anna were breaking up I was walking around the West Bank of the U of M crying the most I ever have in public. The soundtrack was the under-appreciated masterpiece “Break Ups 2 Makeups.” That day D’Angelo’s voice kept me out of Anna’s good graces and that’s exactly where I was supposed to be. Thank you D.

I saw D’Angelo and Questlove again for that celebrated duo show at First Ave. I then skipped the Vanguard show cause it was only a couple months later. That was a mistake. I don’t know how many more times I would’ve gotten to see D’Angelo. It’s him and Questlove as the ultimate heroes. But Questlove is so accessible. I’ve watched Questlove DJ to 75 people at the Skyway Theater. I’ve shaken Questlove’s hand. I love Questlove, but there’s no mystery. There is admiration, there is profound respect. But there’s something different with D’Angelo. I just think there’s no real ability to explain this in prose. D’Angelo had a soul so deep it deepened mine. Questlove taught me things. D’Angelo just imparted. His existence taught me.

I don’t know if another one will hurt like this one. Eddie Vedder will hurt. Erykah will hurt. She might hurt the most. Her soul is deep like D’Angelo but there’s so many records to spend time with and I’ve seen her live so many times. I wish long, healthy lives for all these beautiful artists who have made this music that means so much to me.

This weekend Big Trouble will play “Untitled (How Does it Feel).” My brother jumped right into action after D’Angelo’s passing and charted it out and passed it around the band. After getting our hands around it at rehearsal I spent a little bit of the day today really digging into Raphael Saadiq’s bass part. It is just a stunning song, production, video, everything. It felt wrong to play it. The music is so sacred, and I know we aren’t adding something significant to the conversation. But today, as I was running the bass part, finding the parts I wanted to cop, I just felt so connected to these notes to these sounds. He’s gone. He died younger than Prince. He gave us some amazing albums, some amazing tours. He was very selective on what he released, but he only released masterpieces. I’ve got Black Messiah on now and it is amazing. It didn’t hit me like Voodoo did, but that’s about me, not about the record.

D’Angelo, thank you. I would not be in the universe I’m in without you. You connected me deeper to the root of Black music. You connected me deeper to the root of humanity, of love, of lust, of life. I hope your spirit is comfortable, I hope your family is comfortable. Thank you.