I’ve been listening to Teddy Pendergrass since he died… the way you do, you know, and I’m deep into his “IT Should Have Been You when I think, I’ve heard the lines “You’ve got somebody, I’ve got somebody too” and I think I’ve heard those lines before. And I have, D’Angelo qiotes em on “One Mo’ Gin”.
Who else is there? Despite his disappearing since 2000, D’Angelo’s shadows hangs over soul men as a future nobody else even attempted. D’Angelo is in the same league as the great seventies soul singers, Brown Sugar and especially Voodoo are the standard bearers of soul. If you don’t know these two albums you might remember his duet with Lauryn Hill on “Nothing Even Matters”.
But if you don’t know Voodoo you gotta give it up because it is simply awesome, extremely melodic, intensely beautiful R&B. Called neo-soul at the tim, it is an update of Prince and Pendergrass put together and shaken well. Live, the man is simply one of the greats but he is yet another eccentric and has played New York precisely once in the past ten years. And I was there at Radio City Music Hall and that guy played the shit outta the place for three hours. An astounding, legendary performance.
And anyway, who is the comptetition? Neyo? Maxwell? don’t make me laugh. Neither of em come close to D’Angelo’s deep, deep rhythms and songs so powerful… listen to “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”, it’s not that it is better than anything Prince has done in the 00s. That’s a gimme. It’s that it as good as anything Prince has ever done.
And he has recorded two albums in fifteen years and it’s time he got back one mo’ gin.