Twelve years has passed since stellar soul artist and Richmond, Virginia native D’Angelo delivered his Grammy Award winning murky masterpiece Voodoo (2000) and I stopped holding my breath for a follow-up a long time ago. Like yesteryear Beach Boys fans patiently hanging around record stores waiting for Brian Wilson to complete Smile in 1967, folks have been anticipating a new D’Angelo album for a while. In December 2008, a press release was sent out announcing that D (as fans, friends and family call him) signed with J Records, which has since folded, and was in the studio sweating over his third disc. Supposedly called James River, it was reported that Prince, Cee-Lo and Q-Tip were working with the brown-skinned recording angel.

Four years later, we’re still waiting. “D’Angelo’s musical dilemma reminds so much of Donny Hathaway’s,” explains singer/songwriter Gordon Chambers. “A friend who once lived next door to Hathaway told me that he would sit at the piano creating the most incredible music, but personally he never thought it was good enough.”

When D’Angelo first emerged on the music scene, he was a shy and sensitive 21-year-old who mumbled between drags of his constant Newport cigarette, sometimes avoided making eye contact and hid behind a self-constructed wall that protected his fragility from the world. Besides the seemingly lack of ego, what made D’Angelo stand-out from his R&B contemporaries was his conscious decision to embrace the down-home foundations of blues and gospel.

While there were other southern born singers, producers and songwriters on the Billboard R&B Charts in 1995, most noticeably Dallas Austin, TLC, Monica and Jermaine Dupri, their studio slick music embraced a more Northern sensibility. D’Angelo’s compositions, on the other hand, would have sounded perfect on the chitlin’ circuit thirty years before or in the back of a juke joint while the rowdy patrons sipped glasses of moonshine. Blending southern phrasings with big city cool, D’Angelo clearly possessed a similar rhythmic spirit as yesteryear FM heroes who made records for Stax, Hi or Atlantic.

http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/on-dangelo-and-the-birth-of-neo-soul/1

[Edited 1/18/12 9:06am]

silverchild said:

Ok...I don't even know how to begin by saying how inaccurate this entire article is. The title just says it all.

Yeah I'm scratching my head at this article.

This has to be one of the most misinformed articles I've read in a while. I didn't see anything about J Dilla in this article either...

Very misleading title...

Tittypants said:

silverchild said:

Tittypants said:

This has to be one of the most misinformed articles I've read in a while. I didn't see anything about J Dilla in this article either...

Same thing I was saying. Why was India.Arie of all people given the most adoration in this artice?

I didn't get it either.

silverchild said:

Tittypants said:

This has to be one of the most misinformed articles I've read in a while. I didn't see anything about J Dilla in this article either...

Same thing I was saying. Why was India.Arie of all people given the most adoration in this artice?

Yeah, that article sucks. A totally useless one if you ask me. Maybe they were just trying to find something to talk about with D'Angelo & that's the best they could come up with D'Angelo himself would give Dilla mad props for the help of birthing of neo-soul anyway....along with Kedar Massenburg & a few others.....