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D'Angelo Live in Paris, France on January 29, 2012
D'Angelo performed a cover of Bowie's "Space Oddity". [Edited 1/29/12 23:02pm] | |
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Live rendition of "Untitled (How Does It Feel)"
"Higher/One Mo' Gin"
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** falls out **
Dude still got it! Just like old times!
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Thanks for these, Identity!! Getting excited for Friday
Stranger | |
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So more "Chicken Grease". | |
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I LOVE YOU D... STAY WORKIN IT!!! YAY [Edited 1/30/12 8:09am] | |
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I cant get over how good this man looks... omg[img:$uid]http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/dangelo_stockholm.jpg[/img:$uid]
Can D'Angelo Transform R&B Again? January 30, 2012
If you were on the East Coast of the United States it happened early Thursday evening. You might have found out through Twitter, Facebook, IM, text message, even a phone call: D'Angelo is performing, live, in Stockholm, and it is happening now. Shaky iPhone videos began trickling onto YouTube, hastily written missives sprouting up on music blogs. Following ?uestlove's Twitter feed was like following someone having dinner with a unicorn.
The first clip to spread was an eight-minute version of "Chicken Grease," and watching it was a supernatural experience, seeing the ghost of R&B past and just maybe the ghost of R&B future crammed into one man who was, suddenly and most improbably of all, the ghost of R&B present.
Eleven years have passed since Michael Eugene Archer, a.k.a. D'Angelo, last performed in public, his disappearance being one of the great mysteries—and at times, seemingly impending tragedies—in recent pop music. Spin published the most exhaustive investigation into his whereabouts back in 2008, but by that point even among the most devoted he'd become a spectral figure, washed up and left for dead.
It was all a sad thing, because for a long while it had been difficult to remember a time when D'Angelo wasn't the future of R&B. He'd released his remarkable debut album, 1995's Brown Sugar, at the age of 21, the vast majority of which was written, produced, and performed by D'Angelo himself. Like most musical genres, R&B subscribes to a Great Man theory of its own history, and the young prodigy from Richmond, Virginia was quickly anointed heir to a tradition that stretched from Ray to JB to Sly to Stevie to Prince, and hey, throw Marvin and Michael in there for good measure.
He always did like to take his time, and when he finally released his sophomore album, Voodoo, in January of 2000, Brown Sugar was nearly five years old. Voodoo was a difficult and brooding monster of a record, and while years' worth of anticipation pushed it to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, some reviewers were confused and put off. Rolling Stone gave it a tepid three stars, complaining that "long stretches of it are unfocused and unabsorbing."
Hindsight is 20/20, but what most everyone knows now—and, truthfully, a lot of people knew then—is that D'Angelo had made a masterpiece, a revelation, the most darkly brilliant and sonically askew soul record since There's A Riot Goin' On. Voodoo was the first R&B album to effortlessly and completely grasp the revolution that hip-hop had wrought on popular music: its explosion of the conventions of songwriting and soundscape, its wholesale intellectual remapping of musical tradition. Nowhere was this more evident than on "Devil's Pie," a fusion of gospel and hip-hop that's a muttering, snarling dystopia, in which D'Angelo's off-kilter vocals careen against the snares and scratches of Gang Starr's DJ Premier. It's a prophetic and frighteningly original piece of music. Elsewhere, tracks like "Playa Playa," "One Mo' Gin" and "Spanish Joint" pulsed with demented ecstasy, and even more radio-friendly cuts like "Send It On" were stalked by weirdness, mid-'60s Curtis Mayfield filtered through an acid flashback.
And then there was "Untitled (How Does It Feel)," the ballad that would come to both define and ultimately undo D'Angelo. Sprawled over seven minutes in length, it begins with obsessive austerity, methodically building through two verses and a bridge, then dipping into a perfect decrescendo to set up an out-chorus culminating in what, for lack of an appropriately existent adjective, we'll refer to simply as The Screams. It's a performance that consciously set out to be the most outlandishly erotic piece of soul music ever recorded, and quite possibly succeeds. The music video that accompanied it—featuring the singer in an infamous state of undress—made the song an MTV hit but coarsened its maker, reduced him to a sex symbol, all Screams and no build. It was too much, and he left.
R&B never entirely recovered from Voodoo, a record that essentially shoved an entire genre into an accelerating DeLorean—where we're going, we don't need roads—and then abandoned it like a confused litter of kittens. If D'Angelo is actually back—and whisper it; watching the videos the other night felt like coming upon a trembling fawn in a clearing, being scared to move lest you scare it off—it's hard to predict what it means. Thursday's Stockholm set featured four new songs, including "The Charade" and " Sugar Daddy," the former of which sounds like Secret Life of Plants-era Stevie Wonder, the latter like Earth, Wind and Fire gone to church. ?uestlove, a longtime confidant and co-conspirator, says James River, the 12-years-in-the-making follow-up to Voodoo, is "97 percent done" and describes it as "the black version of Smile," referring to the legendary Beach Boys album that's basically the Atlantis of '60s pop.
It's all probably enough to ensure that a few folks lost some sleep on Thursday. John Legend's a talented guy who's a bit too comfortable in the role of the academic neo-soulster that D'Angelo was never interested in playing; the Weeknd gets up to a lot of interesting things but in a way that suggests a few dozen worn-out copies of Voodoo kicking around his closet. D'Angelo's closest rival in terms of talent and critical regard is The-Dream, who makes phenomenal music but hangs out in a pretty different side of the pool, or at least a different pool of Prince records (The-Dream's got Controversy and 1999 on lock, while you always got the sense D'Angelo went straight for the deep cuts on Black Album and Crystal Ball).
Back in the days of Voodoo, Robert Christgau famously dubbed D'Angelo "R&B Jesus," and since Thursday the resurrection puns have flowed freely. But I'd go back even further, to what Sam Phillips, the man who recorded Elvis Presley and Howlin' Wolf and knew a bit of such things, once said about rhythm and blues music: "This is where the soul of man never dies." Sitting at a computer on Thursday, watching a ghost—dancing, sounding incredible, a vision of a musician who was once the best of his generationt—it was hard not to believe, just a little, in something like that.
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Stream This 'D'Angelo Live' Mixtape
Much to the excitement of music lovers everywhere, D'Angelo has been staging a comeback via a tour of Europe that, thankfully, has resulted in some absolutely flooring fan-shot footage.
To celebrate dude's return, DJ/producer Sam Champ has compiled the aptly titled D'Angelo Live, a collection of live recordings from the soulful crooner and his killer live band.
There are 15 tracks in total and you'll find classic tracks from D'Angelo's discography along with a few choice covers of material from the late J Dilla. That intro featuring music from Slum Village's "Fantastic"? Oof, so good. You can stream the mixtape and view its track listing below. [OKP]
Track listing:
http://soundcloud.com/oka...ngelo-live
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I will forever love and miss you...my sweet Prince. | |
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This is NOT from the current tour, just so u know. | |
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Really? I don't see that on any level. maybe I'm missing something? | |
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GC is correct there. The streaming mixtape contains archival, but highly essential, live concert recordings of D'Angelo. | |
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OMG this is really happening??? This has to be the biggest surprise and the best thing that has happened in 2012 musically so far. WOW I just hope he has some strong vocals on the album because these grooves are fucking fantastic!!! Stevie Wonder = EARTH
Prince = WIND Chaka Khan = FIRE Sade = WATER the ELEMENTS of MUSIC | |
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I will forever love and miss you...my sweet Prince. | |
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Oh well thanks for letting me know.
[Edited 1/30/12 11:33am] | |
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Yeah am I not listening hard enough???
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D'Angelo's Return in Europe: A Singer Comes Out of The Shadows January 30, 2012
For fans of future funk, rhythm 'n' jazz, of the mystical place where soul collides with space and extended grooves, this weekend was spent scouring the Web for evidence.
Was it indeed true that D'Angelo, the 37-year-old singer, songwriter, guitarist, creator of a mere two albums in his career, whose secluded life away from music has been the stuff of legend, had done a few gigs in Europe with a full band?
Over the weekend, YouTube offered evidence that it was true, in the form of clips from gigs in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Paris that showed the singer performing for the first time since 2000, presenting old songs and a few new ones to crowds of admirers.
It's been more than 10 years since D'Angelo's now-classic sophomore album, "Voodoo," floated its seductive "Sign of the Times" into the hearts of millions.
Since then, D'Angelo got in trouble with the law, had stopped releasing music, and started on what seemed to be a legendary eating binge that in photos captured the singer with the mythic washboard abs looking like Elvis Presley on the day of his demise.
The past few months, though, have been rife with rumors of the singer's return, both to the stage and with new recordings. Questlove, the drummer for the Roots, was quoted on Pitchfork in early December as saying that the new full-length album was "97 percent done," and that, “for all intents and purposes, this album is the black version of [The Beach Boys'] 'Smile' -- at best, it will go down in the 'Smile'/'There’s a Riot Going On'/Miles Davis’ 'On the Corner' category."
The evidence from the Paris gig at Le Zenith, suggests that D'Angelo's most certainly got his groove back. Check out the eleven-minute version of "Devil's Pie" that transcendently glides into "Chicken Grease."
He also did a pretty remarkable version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
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I will forever love and miss you...my sweet Prince. | |
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I know it's true but could they not.Concert Review ‘Things Have Changed’ for D’Angelo Janaury 30, 2012
It only took D’Angelo 12 years to get his groove back.
On Sunday, the artist who defined a late-1990s music genre known as neo-soul, commanded the stage at Le Zénith, a venue on the northeast edge of Paris.
That is, when he was actually on stage (more on that later).
The 5,000-strong crowd – urbane and urban in equal measure – hardly needed coaxing by the preshow emcee to “Faites du bruit!” (make some noise). “Day-ahn-JAY-lo!” they screamed, Frenchifying his name, until the band appeared shortly before 9 p.m. Doors opened at 5:30 and the ticket listed a start time of 7; but for those who had waited more than a decade, the notion of late was relative.
This marked the third performance of the D-Tour, which kicked off last week in Stockholm and will also make stops in Amsterdam, London and Oslo. That it is actually happening has prompted amazement and delight across the music world.
D’Angelo began the 90-minute set with Playa Playa, the first track from his second album Voodoo and a song that comes across as both self-affirmation and braggadocio. “Play you like a pro/And take over the show/Stick you and defeat you/Rob you of your glow.… We’re the playas number one.”
In the years since Voodoo, the artist born Michael Eugene Archer withdrew from his music career; his most notable appearances included court on various charges of drunk driving, drug possession and assault and a stint at Eric Clapton’s rehab facility, Crossroads Treatment Centre, in Antigua.
This was a tragedy for fans. Along with Maxwell, Erykah Badu, Angie Stone and a few others, D’Angelo’s style represented a fresh spin on soul and a richly flavoured counterpoint to much of the mainstream saccharine goo being produced at the time (Who Let the Dogs Out? andOops!... I Did It Again were low points of 2000). Neo-soul like his could not be fudged; it demanded vocal intensity and laying feelings bare.
His songs remain compellingly seductive today and his voice can still stretch from hazy bass to crooning, Prince-like falsetto. His guitar and piano chops have only improved with age.
At 37, D’Angelo’s frame is thicker now, but his arm muscles cast their own shadows and his torso is tight. Certainly, he’s refocused considerable time on his body since the infamously bloated police shot from a few years back that bears little resemblance to the virile, chiselled sex symbol who appeared naked down to the v-shaped male nether region in Untitled (How Does It Feel).
And on that note, when he teased out the first piano chords of Untitled, it was a reminder that D’Angelo had been with us all along, through countless romantic fantasies. To hear it live represented a certain level of fulfilment that no other song reached.
He brought none of his demons into Le Zénith, although he acknowledged his absence just once and offhandedly. After singing “Things have changed – some for the good, some for the bad,” a line from One More Gin, he shook his head and added, “Ain’t that the truth.”
His fans yearned for the D’Angelo who wooed while he woo-woo’d on his 1995 album Brown Sugar and turned more bluesy and boozy forVoodoo. They got tastes of both but never quite enough. For large stretches of time, he would disappear offstage or perform from the sidelines, leaving his charismatic, cohesive band, the Testimony, to jam in his absence.
The longer an artist stays away, the higher the stakes. It seems D’Angelo would rather reinterpret his hits than revisit them. In a way, this makes him like a lover who has returned but is only willing to rekindle the romance halfway. For the first of his two encores, he boldly covered David Bowie’s Space Oddity, infusing it with moody funk.
Then D’Angelo gifted the crowd with Sugar Daddy, one of three new songs that, if the momentum continues, will appear on a forthcoming album, James River.
Sugar Daddy channelled James Brown in a way that excited some of the audience and bored others. One guy chanted “refund” in French. That might explain why D’Angelo has opted to begin with Europe. Once he hits North America, his comeback will no longer be mere flirtation.
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Amsterdam show cancelled tonight owing to him falling off the stage before the gig?!? | |
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Oh shit! | |
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Oh please! I refuse to believe it was THAT bad!
Maybe Timberlake is cobbling together a tour he can go see. |
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I liked Sugar Daddy.
They're now offering it as a download: | |
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Yes ..........sir.
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Is this an official release i.e. has D himself sanctioned it? I remember back in the day that okayplayer was where you could find D'Angelo's (never updated) official site. I think it was still promoting Voodoo in 2005... |
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It's an unofficial release, a site-supported mixtape, if you will.
D’Angelo posing in Afro-Punk tee in Paris.
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That's him now?
That looks like D'Angelo circa 2000. Boy bounced back! |
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Another pic of D'Angelo. Courtesy of French music site. | |
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that last pic, whew! is there an interview that goes with it? "Lack of home training crosses all boundaries." | |
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