A list (in no particular order) of my 500 favorite songs (singles, deep cuts, hits, and more) of all time. Includes a wide array of selections from rock, punk, funk, R&B, soul, classical, jazz, folk, and world music.
There had been definite tinges of Marvin Gaye on Michael "D'Angelo" Archer's debut album, Brown Sugar (1995). But I felt an even stronger kinship between Gaye and D'Angelo on the song "Devil's Pie," which was released as a single in 1998 and eventually appeared on his second album, Voodoo (2000). It wasn't so much D'Angelo's vocal approach, per se, or the sound of the song that made me think of Gaye. In fact, the song was more indebted to hip-hop than the 70s-influenced jazz-soul found on Brown Sugar, courtesy of the brilliant production work of Gang Starr's DJ Premier. (Why brilliant? Just check out the bassline of the track. It's built from a two-second sample from the ballad "And If I Had" by Teddy Pendergrass, which Premier chopped and looped to create the foundation of the whole song.) Rather, it was the inherent human struggle in the song: the challenge of living in the material, physical world tempered with a need for deeper, spiritual fulfillment. That theme pops up throughout Gaye's entire catalog and life story, just as it does D'Angelo's. Think about it: both were the sons of charismatic preachers, both grew up singing/playing in the church, but then both got a taste of fame and its trappings at a fairly young age, and overindulgence in the material world led to negative consequences for them both. All I can say is, thank God D'Angelo is still with us and making music. Anyway, "Devil's Pie" is about trying to maintain perspective in the face of materialism and what can happen when you let the acquisition/consumption of stuff run your life. He acknowledges that things like "bread," "cheddar," and "dough" are everyday necessities; however, they can become the ingredients in the "Devil's Pie" if you let them. Clever little metaphor, I think. Going back to the music/production on the track for a moment, the earthly/spiritual dichotomy is present there, too. The beat and samples have the raw feel of hard-edged hip-hop, yet the choir of D'Angelos intoning the verses and refrains sounds like a congregation at a dirt floors chapel. It reminds me of going to my great aunt's Pentecostal church in rural Western NC and hearing her, pounding away at an out of tune piano, while old women who could barely stand shook tambourines and sang/shouted to the rafters in hopes of catching the Ghost. I hear that sound come through in D'Angelo's layered vocals on "Devil's Pie," particularly toward the end of the track. (My take is that he channels Prince as much as the choir from his dad's old church on every song he sings.) I also go back to Premier's bassline, where the contrast is present, too: the bassline isn't even in the same key as what D'Angelo's singing; but it's tenacious and sincere, just like my great aunt playing her gospel song on that busted upright piano.
It was summer 1995, and I'd come home late from hanging out with friends. We'd been drinking cappuccinos at the local coffeehouse all evening, because that's what you did in the 90s, and I was too wired to go to bed. So I turned on MTV (because that's what you did in the 90s) and sat there mindlessly watching music videos, trying to let the caffeine wear off. Anyway, in the middle of a lineup of hedonistic gangsta rap and gloom-tastic grunge clips, here comes this video set in a smoky jazz club with this young cat crooning something about brown sugar. And damned if he didn't sound like the reincarnation of Marvin Gaye. There were elements of 70s acid jazz and vintage soul—throwback, but not in a ham-fisted way. There also was this swagger and flow that felt a little hip-hop without resorting to money-cash-hoes clichés. It was like he'd figured out the perfect mix of components that groups like The Brand New Heavies and Tony! Toni! Toné! had been toying with for years. And then to find out the dude had written, arranged, and performed the track and 95% of the entire Brown Sugar album himself? Well, that took the cake. I was an instant fan. I can't overstate how much this one song affected my taste in music at the time and thereafter. After hearing "Brown Sugar," I pretty much stopped listening to any mainstream pop music and sought out anything that felt soulful, organic, and slightly off-the-radar. I also started playing keyboards differently, adding in jazzier cluster chords and more blue notes when I'd solo. (Hell, I even convinced the members of my alt-rock band to do a jam built around "Brown Sugar" for a small live show that we played at a friend's music store!) It's one of the few tracks from the 90s that I can still play without a tinge of irony.
I’d heard the track “Water No Get Enemy” years ago on a 2002 compilation called Red Hot + Riot, one of the Red Hot organization’s AIDS benefit albums, and I only recently stumbled upon it again. This version by Afro-beat artist Femi Kuti, backed by (check out this lineup) D’Angelo, Macy Gray, James Poyser, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, Nile Rodgers, and Roy Hargrove, is one of the funkiest things that has been put to tape in the new millennium. But what I love about this groove is that it gives you something for your feet and your brain. The song originally was written/performed by Kuti’s father, groundbreaking Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti, who invented the Afro-beat genre by blending his affection for the funk of James Brown with African and Latin rhythms. Fela was a controversial, charismatic figure and a hero to the disenfranchised, especially in Nigeria. He vehemently and frequently spoke out about social injustices and government corruption through his music, which made him a target. The album on which “Water No Get Enemy” first appeared was irreverently titled Expensive Shit—an allusion to a 1975 incident where police attempted to arrest Kuti and plant a joint on him. Thing was, Kuti immediately knew what was transpiring and promptly ate the marijuana to destroy the evidence. Refusing defeat, the police decided to let him stay in jail and wait until the evidence was (eh-hem) “processed.” A couple of days later, police found no trace of the weed in the stool sample they'd collected, so they had to drop the charges and let Kuti go. Thing is, they only thought they had Kuti’s sample; it actually was his cellmate’s poop. (They pulled a “dookie switcharoo,” you might say.) Anyway, after the fact, Kuti found the bungled attempt to silence him hilarious; the image of the Nigerian police spending their time rummaging through some random inmate's crap instead of protecting and serving inspired the album’s title. But, back to the song at hand. "Water No Get Enemy" is—in the literal sense—a plea for potable water for Nigeria’s people. The lyrics point out that, on a basic, molecular level, everyone needs and deserves clean water: to wash in, to make food, to cool oneself, etc. But there’s a more political statement underneath, as is often the case with Afro-beat and Kuti’s music. It's a pointed message to the Nigerian government. Water is a symbol representing the Nigerian people. Kuti is asking: if you make an enemy of your own people, then what power do you really have? Anyway, Fela’s 1975 version is classic. But I have a soft spot for this 2002 Femi + Soultronics collaboration. The rippling, percussion-driven groove starts from moment one and does not slacken for a solid six minutes, with the voices of Kuti, D'Angelo, and Gray effortlessly blending with the horns. It's like cool water for the soul.
It was late January 2000, and Chapel Hill, NC, had just experienced one of its biggest blizzards in years. Classes were canceled, and public transportation wasn't running. But a number of stores along Franklin Street had stayed open, including a couple of record stores. I trudged across campus through a foot of snow to pick up a copy of D'Angelo's Voodoo at 90s relic, Wherehouse Music, on the day of the album's release, and then trudged back to my dorm and listened to the album, five times in a row. "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" definitely stood out as a key track. It's a brilliant, soulful workout in 6/8 time featuring bass and rhythm guitar by the underrated Raphael Saadiq, scorching lead guitar by the late C. Edward Alford, and all other instruments/vocals by D'Angelo himself. (Although Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson from The Roots plays on most other tracks on Voodoo, it's D'Angelo on drums on "Untitled.") The song twists, turns, builds, ebbs, and ultimately explodes, with D'Angelo howling the refrain in a Prince-like falsetto. Then around the seven minute mark, the song just abruptly stops in mid-chorus: How does it fee... It's as if he gets interrupted in the middle of a daydream. In fact, I've always thought that was the point. The sexy, love-man persona is just something D'Angelo is trying on for size, checking out how it feels to be Prince for seven or so minutes. That's why the song is simultaneously an homage to and parody of Prince; its risqué lyrics are just so frank and so blunt that they come off being tongue-in-cheek. Even the song's title (or lack thereof) is a clever acknowledgment that it's a pastiche of Prince's early catalog. Which brings us to the song's infamous video—that single, uninterrupted shot of a (presumably) nude D'Angelo, singing seductively to the camera. As Questlove has told interviewers for a number of years, D'Angelo never thought of himself as a sex symbol in any way, shape, or form. The video was him clowning. But the rest of the world didn't take it that way. Suddenly, he became recognized worldwide as "that naked guy with the abs" and not as an artist. And that took its toll: reclusiveness, alcohol and substance abuse, a followup album that still hasn't seen the light of day 14 years later (and counting). So while I love this song, I've gone from being ambivalent about its video to absolutely hating it. That one snippet of film essentially robbed the world of new music from this brilliant talent.
