D'Angelo's Genius was Pure, and Rare

"He was best known for deftly combining the heft and tenderness of soul music with the ingenuity and nerve of hip-hop, and while he was acclaimed in all the usual ways-four Grammy Awards, two platinum-selling albums, a music video so sexually charged that it still feels dangerous to watch in mixed company-he was also reclusive, enigmatic, unknowable. D'Angelo was a generational talent-an unusually artful singer, and an experimental and idiosyncratic songwriter."

"D'Angelo, who was born Michael Eugene Archer, in Richmond, Virginia, is often compared to Prince, and, I think, rightly so-each wielded a carnal, otherworldly falsetto. But, perhaps more crucially, they shared an exquisite sense of pacing, as if they were attuned to some elegant internal rhythm. Neither could be hurried. That feeling-stately, easy, deliberate-is inherently sensual. You'll register it, sometimes, in the slowest but most provocative gestures: a curl of smoke, a brush of hands, the right sort of glance from across a room."

D'Angelo died at fifty-one of cancer. He combined the heft and tenderness of soul with the ingenuity and nerve of hip-hop. He won four Grammy Awards, had two platinum-selling albums, and produced a music video so sexually charged it still feels dangerous to watch in mixed company. He remained reclusive, enigmatic, and released only three albums in nineteen years, with Black Messiah appearing in 2014. Born Michael Eugene Archer in Richmond, Virginia, he is often compared to Prince for their carnal falsettos and exquisite sense of pacing. He favored restraint and deliberate pacing, making sensuality through small, provocative gestures. He signed a songwriting deal at seventeen and released Brown Sugar in 1995 at twenty-one.

Read at The New Yorker