D’Angelo Called Me — And The World Changed Forever [Op-Ed]

This isn’t a eulogy for Michael Eugene Archer, known professionally as D’Angelo. There are already plenty of those. While I am a journalist, I have no interest in writing that piece, because we met on the eve of his birth as the star the world now mourns. 

In June of 1995, I was the Rap Editor for a San Francisco-based trade magazine called GAVIN, widely known and respected for its radio research, charts, editorial features and world class music conference, The GAVIN Seminar. I received an advance copy of Brown Sugar by a singer-songwriter named D’Angelo, whose chiseled features and cornrows signaled more rapper than multi-instrumentalist. With New Jack Swing giving way to hip hop soul throughout the early ‘90s, I told my editor, Ben Fong-Torres (yes, that Ben Fong-Torres, from Rolling Stone and portrayed by Terry Chen in the film Almost Famous) that I needed to tell D’s story, even though he wasn’t an MC. The truth was, the way we even got Brown Sugar was a hip hop story, and no one in that building knew hip hop better than I did.

For us, D’Angelo is unforgettable: deep cocoa complexion, sensuality oozing from his pores, a disarming falsetto, capable of carrying the weight of both the sacred and the profane with such ease, that an unexpected trip down to his lower register would turn any listener into a naughty convert. I mean, he turns a joint into an intimate partner on the album’s lead single. “Brown Sugar babe/I get high off your love/I don’t know how to behave”…

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For EMI Records, D’Angelo had been forgotten, like the promising teenagers who turned to hip hop as a way out—or a way through. Signed at 18, his debut album had been shelved, then re-discovered as a result of 1994 Top 10 hit “U Will Know” by Black Men United, his contribution to the Jason’s Lyric Soundtrack.  I couldn’t believe that he’d been waiting for a release date all that time. This young man was a star. He played drums, organ, piano, vibraphone, and guitar—and those were the instruments I knew he could play well. He could write the hell out of a song, and give you chills from his opening note to his signature vamps. D’Angelo was undeniable. 

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I was 23 and had something to prove: that I could cover all Black music, not just rap. I had to interview D’Angelo. He was 21, with something to prove as well. Karen Taylor (now Karen Taylor Bass), his then publicist at EMI, was on board (read: I wouldn’t take no for an answer). All that needed to happen was the phone call. But I couldn’t call him; he was reclusive even then—he had to call me, which left me on standby around the clock. Since artists would be up writing and recording at all hours. I had to answer every unfamiliar number (which I did anyway, as a member of the media).

Days go by. For an editor at a weekly publication, this is a serious problem. I have to interview him, transcribe, write, re-write, get edited, make revisions, and go to print in 36 hours, all while taking 300 radio station calls and faxed playlists to build the rap chart for that week. The issue date is June 9, 1995. It’s my special issue; I can’t push the feature back a week. I didn’t have the luxury of long-lead print time like my consumer-facing friends at Essence and VIBE, where he would also grace the cover solo in 1999 and 2000 respectively. 

Finally, I get a call from an 804 area code. Richmond, Virginia. It’s him! There’s only one small issue: I am at the largest, loudest and most lavish listening party ever: Michael Jackson’s HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is dropping on June 20. There’s only one thing to do. Make like a smooth criminal and slip outta there. Third ring. After what feels like forever, I’m outside. I pick up. To avoid having my name butchered by rappers, I led with it. Force of habit.

”This is Thembisa from Gavin…”

A scoff somewhere between velvet and sandpaper.

”This is D’Angelo…how you feelin’?”

I was trying to mask the panting from running back to the parking lot to get to the relative silence of my car and my notebook. Can’t recall if I had my mini recorder. We talked for quite a while; at least an hour. About influences, process, and outgrowing his hometown scene, as much as he loved home. He recounted learning to play by ear, taking the stage in church on organ as a toddler; traveling to New York City to play piano and sing for Jocelyn Cooper, who signed him to the publishing deal that gives us “U Will Know.” Needless to say, I missed the King of Pop’s listening party, but R&B and Top 40 weren’t my beat. It was all about pulling everything I could from Virginia’s own, because I might not get him back again before I needed to turn in the cover story.

I was overwhelmed with excitement. I had just gotten the first trade magazine cover interview for the artist that I knew would shake the world. The headline: “D’Angelo: Smooth, Natural and Revolutionary.”

And shake the world he did. His enchanting, urgent alchemy of soul, with gospel up top, funk all up and through, with hip hop anchoring the bottom turned platinum. All the while, he stayed reclusive and humble. He even sent me postcard from the road, simply signed ‘D’. He would move to Virgin Records for the release of the next album. By this time, I’ve left the magazine and relocated to New York City to write advertising campaigns at Sony Music. I was Lauryn Hill’s campaign writer, and their duet “Nothing Even Matters” on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is forever in my Top 5 hip hop soul duets of all time.  We’d fallen out of touch with the stardom that D and I both felt was inevitable, which was par for the course in the life of a hip hop journalist before smartphones and social media. My weekly column days had been traded in for multiple album campaigns, setting up or releasing or sustaining with new singles at a blistering pace: Jermaine Dupri’s Life in 1472. Maxwell EMBRYA. Destiny’s Child The Writing’s On The Wall. I watched D become a sex symbol and waited with the rest of the world for the next opus. He’d been teasing us with features: first Lauryn, then “Be Here”, a bold, smoldering invitation sung with Raphael Saadiq, and “Everyday,” where he joined hip hop pioneer and soul legend Angie Stone, who called D’Angelo “the love of her life”.

Summer of 1999. I get a call from Jasmine Vega, PR veteran, now at Virgin Records. She asks me if I can get down to Electric Lady Studios, because “D is here recording. He asked about you”. He had the studio where Hendrix, Wonder, and the Stones recorded locked out.

I waited at the door. Once it was confirmed that I was expected, it opened and I was escorted in. There was Jasmine, hugs, supermodel hair and megawatt smile at the ready. She led me to a room with a piano. D played, falsetto swayed, toying with melodies, mostly. I remember the aching, purity and beauty of his voice. Even his musical kinks were smooth. 

We ordered food. “They’re not letting me out until the album’s done,” he laughed.  He was the willing, pliant captive, surrounded by instruments, letting multiple sonic energies enter, combine and expand. Electric Lady swaddled us in the comfort of its history as he conjured even more. I didn’t know it, but Voodoo was brewing. After lunch, with visible pride in my eyes as ours locked, I hugged him and Jasmine goodbye. I had escaped, but my absence at 550 Madison never went unnoticed for long, so I had to head back uptown.

When I heard the news, my jaw dropped and my blood started to boil. Pancreatic cancer. At 51. Tears sprang at the thought of this beautiful, powerful genius in any kind of pain from such a cruel diagnosis, knowing the joy he brought to everyone he knew, and billions more he didn’t.

A day into a world without him, I took a walk along the East River while D sang. As I listened, the clarity of his awe, his carnal desire to not just please, but satiate his woman, and the constant expression of his unconditional love for Black women in particular wrapped itself around me. 

Arguing without having to doubt the relationship came standard.

“We may have an understanding/that’s okay/because you’re my girl and I’m your man/and that’s just fine/Girl, your touch still drives me wild/we’ll be alright” -“Alright” (Brown Sugar)

Being appreciated as rare and wanted to the point of delirium? D’Angelo would make it plain that he was sprung, with not one shred of shame.

”’Cause every time I see you baby, all I do is sigh/‘cause you’re the most precious things baby/that my dreaming eyes have ever seen…Your love be the cherry in my chocolate covered dreams” -“Me And Those Dreaming Eyes Of Mine (Brown Sugar)

Is he talking to us here? Yes. Because who else overstands the Black man?

“I’m not an easy man to overstand, you feel me/But girl you’re patient with me/I’m in really love witchu, yeah yeah” -“Really Love (Black Messiah) 

Understanding that certain attributes are requirements of his lover, D was never afraid to genuflect, or get downright freaky, while throwing the gauntlet.

”And it seems like to me/you want someone to fit your pedigree/ Baby I do…uh/So whatchu want? Smack yo ass/pull your hair/And I even kiss you way down there/You know that I will/Think I won’t?? -“Left And Right” (Voodoo)

Even when things went south with his “Lady,” hope and gratitude for time shared removed any threat of him becoming the crazy ex.

”I know you got someone and I got somebody too/but I’m unhappy and I miss the shit we used to do, yeah/I miss your smile/your mouth/your laughter, baby/Never bumped into your kind before or after” -“One Mo‘Gin” (Voodoo)

Yes, the world is mourning, but my sense is that this loss is hitting Black women really, really hard. At a time when we’re being punished for our greatness and maligned for our beauty, as our prescience about the future of society becomes fact in real time, and most of us would choose the bear, D’Angelo stands out as a virile, vulnerable master of musical and emotional intelligence. His delivery, his poetry, makes us feel safe, seen and adored for all we are. I’m going to cry when and where I need to.

How does it feel without D’Angelo? Like the worst possible place to be. 

Thembisa S. Mshaka is an essayist, screenwriter and award-winning creator of iconic advertising campaigns. The second edition of Put Your Dreams First: Handle Your Entertainment Business, drops next month.

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