"Devil's Pie" (D'Angelo)

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.

"Untitled (How Does It Feel)" (D'Angelo)

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.