I tell Rock that Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, the drummer for the Roots and one of D's closest collaborators, has ticked off much the same list. Questlove has a theory about what happens to black genius—what he calls "a crazy psychological kind of stoppage that prevents them from following through. A sort of self-saboteur disorder." Rock says he understands.
For a black star, Rock says, "there's a lot of pressure just to be responsible for other people's lives—to be the E. F. Hutton of your crew. Everything you say is magnified. I mean, street smarts only help you on the streets. Or maybe occasionally they
will help you in the boardroom, but boy, you wish you knew a little bit about accounting." There is pressure to be original but also pressure to be commercial, to make money, to succeed. Sometimes the two run at cross-purposes.
I ask Questlove what he thinks has held D back. He says it's not just the way "Untitled" turned D'Angelo into "the Naked Guy," though of course that didn't help. It's something bigger. "We noticed early that all of the geniuses we admired have had maybe a ten-year run before death or, you know, the Poconos," he says. "That renders D paralyzed. He said he fears the responsibility and the power that comes with it. But I think what he fears most is the isolation"—the kind that fame brings.
Questlove believes D's "eleven-year freeze" must end, not just for the artist's sake, but for the culture's. "I've told him: He is literally holding the oxygen supply that music lovers breathe," Questlove says. "At first, it was cute—'Oh, he's bashful.' But now he's, like, selfish. I'm like, 'Look, dude, we're starving.' When D starts singing, all is right with the world."
···
Michael Archer grew up not knowing Jesus' name. To some black Pentecostals, God is known as Yahweh and the son of God as Yahshua or Yahushua. "We would go to other churches and people would be saying 'Jesus,' " he recalls. "I was like, 'Who are they talking about?' " The piano, on the other hand, was something he understood innately. At 4, he taught himself to play Earth, Wind & Fire's "Boogie Wonderland."
When he was 5, his parents split, and the boys went to live with their father. "Mom was struggling," he says of his mother, then a legal secretary. Michael played the organ at his father's church and helped lead the choir. When he was 9, however, his dad "was battling his own demons," and the boys went to live with their mom for good. After that, "me and my father really didn't have much contact with each other."
In those years, Michael was drawn to his maternal grandfather's Refuge Assembly of Yahweh, up in the mountains outside Richmond. The region had been a hub of slave trading before the Civil War, with Richmond being a place where 300,000 Africans and their descendants were sold down the James River. Then and now, church was a place where loss could be mourned, pain salved. But what attracted Michael was the way fire and brimstone infused the music. In the temple, Michael saw his elder brother Rodney speak in tongues; he witnessed healings and exorcisms. At one Friday-night revival, he noticed a woman in a pew a few rows up. She was acting strange—tugging at her clothes, foaming at the mouth, ripping at the Bible. "She was possessed. E-vil," he says, breaking the word in two. "It was a long, hot, steamy night, and that demon disrupted it." He recalls his grandfather and the other ministers praying hard as the woman crawled on all fours, screamed, and ran outside to jump on the hoods of cars. "The demon was raising holy hell, and my grandfather came outside. He had big hands, and he didn't say a word. He just—" D'Angelo raises his palm to me—"and she falls out. That's it. End of story."
Already Michael was developing into the musical connoisseur that D'Angelo is today. His Uncle CC was a truck driver who moonlighted as a DJ, and he had a huge record collection. This was the beginning of what D now calls "going to school"—delving deep into jazz, soul, rock, and gospel history, from Mahalia Jackson to Band of Gypsys, from the Meters to Miles Davis to Donald Byrd, from Sam Cooke to Otis Redding, from Donny Hathaway to Curtis Mayfield to Sly Stone to Marvin Gaye. When Michael was 8, Gaye had just made a comeback with "Sexual Healing" and won two Grammys. "Everybody was talking about him," D'Angelo recalls. "Everybody." So just after Sunday sermon on April Fool's Day 1984, when Michael learned Gaye was dead at 44—shot by his own father—he was crushed.
That night, D'Angelo had the first of many dreams about Gaye. It was in black and white and took place at Hitsville U.S.A., Motown's Detroit headquarters. D was playing piano while a bunch of famous Motown stars milled about, waiting for Gaye. "When he finally showed up, he was young, very handsome, the thin Marvin. Clean-shaven. Very debonair," he told an interviewer back in 2000. "He came straight to me and shook my hand and looked me dead in the eyes, and he said, 'Very nice to meet you.'& He grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go."
After that, whenever Gaye's music came on the radio, Michael felt a chill. The opening bars to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" made him get up and leave the room. It was as if the power in Gaye's music had been linked, somehow, to his tragic end. "I would be petrified," he says—so petrified that his mother took him to a therapist. But the dreams of Gaye—himself a preacher's son—didn't go away until Michael turned 19. That was the year he changed his name to a moniker inspired by Michelangelo. That was also the year that his demo tape found its way into the hands of Gary Harris, then an A&R executive at EMI Music.
For a black star, Rock says, "there's a lot of pressure just to be responsible for other people's lives—to be the E. F. Hutton of your crew. Everything you say is magnified. I mean, street smarts only help you on the streets. Or maybe occasionally they
will help you in the boardroom, but boy, you wish you knew a little bit about accounting." There is pressure to be original but also pressure to be commercial, to make money, to succeed. Sometimes the two run at cross-purposes.
I ask Questlove what he thinks has held D back. He says it's not just the way "Untitled" turned D'Angelo into "the Naked Guy," though of course that didn't help. It's something bigger. "We noticed early that all of the geniuses we admired have had maybe a ten-year run before death or, you know, the Poconos," he says. "That renders D paralyzed. He said he fears the responsibility and the power that comes with it. But I think what he fears most is the isolation"—the kind that fame brings.
Questlove believes D's "eleven-year freeze" must end, not just for the artist's sake, but for the culture's. "I've told him: He is literally holding the oxygen supply that music lovers breathe," Questlove says. "At first, it was cute—'Oh, he's bashful.' But now he's, like, selfish. I'm like, 'Look, dude, we're starving.' When D starts singing, all is right with the world."
···
Michael Archer grew up not knowing Jesus' name. To some black Pentecostals, God is known as Yahweh and the son of God as Yahshua or Yahushua. "We would go to other churches and people would be saying 'Jesus,' " he recalls. "I was like, 'Who are they talking about?' " The piano, on the other hand, was something he understood innately. At 4, he taught himself to play Earth, Wind & Fire's "Boogie Wonderland."
When he was 5, his parents split, and the boys went to live with their father. "Mom was struggling," he says of his mother, then a legal secretary. Michael played the organ at his father's church and helped lead the choir. When he was 9, however, his dad "was battling his own demons," and the boys went to live with their mom for good. After that, "me and my father really didn't have much contact with each other."
In those years, Michael was drawn to his maternal grandfather's Refuge Assembly of Yahweh, up in the mountains outside Richmond. The region had been a hub of slave trading before the Civil War, with Richmond being a place where 300,000 Africans and their descendants were sold down the James River. Then and now, church was a place where loss could be mourned, pain salved. But what attracted Michael was the way fire and brimstone infused the music. In the temple, Michael saw his elder brother Rodney speak in tongues; he witnessed healings and exorcisms. At one Friday-night revival, he noticed a woman in a pew a few rows up. She was acting strange—tugging at her clothes, foaming at the mouth, ripping at the Bible. "She was possessed. E-vil," he says, breaking the word in two. "It was a long, hot, steamy night, and that demon disrupted it." He recalls his grandfather and the other ministers praying hard as the woman crawled on all fours, screamed, and ran outside to jump on the hoods of cars. "The demon was raising holy hell, and my grandfather came outside. He had big hands, and he didn't say a word. He just—" D'Angelo raises his palm to me—"and she falls out. That's it. End of story."
Already Michael was developing into the musical connoisseur that D'Angelo is today. His Uncle CC was a truck driver who moonlighted as a DJ, and he had a huge record collection. This was the beginning of what D now calls "going to school"—delving deep into jazz, soul, rock, and gospel history, from Mahalia Jackson to Band of Gypsys, from the Meters to Miles Davis to Donald Byrd, from Sam Cooke to Otis Redding, from Donny Hathaway to Curtis Mayfield to Sly Stone to Marvin Gaye. When Michael was 8, Gaye had just made a comeback with "Sexual Healing" and won two Grammys. "Everybody was talking about him," D'Angelo recalls. "Everybody." So just after Sunday sermon on April Fool's Day 1984, when Michael learned Gaye was dead at 44—shot by his own father—he was crushed.
That night, D'Angelo had the first of many dreams about Gaye. It was in black and white and took place at Hitsville U.S.A., Motown's Detroit headquarters. D was playing piano while a bunch of famous Motown stars milled about, waiting for Gaye. "When he finally showed up, he was young, very handsome, the thin Marvin. Clean-shaven. Very debonair," he told an interviewer back in 2000. "He came straight to me and shook my hand and looked me dead in the eyes, and he said, 'Very nice to meet you.'& He grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go."
After that, whenever Gaye's music came on the radio, Michael felt a chill. The opening bars to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" made him get up and leave the room. It was as if the power in Gaye's music had been linked, somehow, to his tragic end. "I would be petrified," he says—so petrified that his mother took him to a therapist. But the dreams of Gaye—himself a preacher's son—didn't go away until Michael turned 19. That was the year he changed his name to a moniker inspired by Michelangelo. That was also the year that his demo tape found its way into the hands of Gary Harris, then an A&R executive at EMI Music.
