D’Angelo’s Black Messiah: Politics & Nihilism

Reviewers have compared D’Angelo’s Black Messiah to Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Going On; to me, Sly’s project is way more groove-heavy, driving, direct, while D’Angelo seems to be working with what I’d call the anti-hook (a few tracks excepted), somehow merging trance and funk, his more extended pieces less like dance jams and more like nihilistic, sprawling soundscapes. I couldn’t help wondering if D’Angelo had been listening to Radiohead circa OK Computer or Kid A. I’ll even venture that he revisited Pink Floyd during the making of this album. And I can’t imagine that Hendrix’s three primary releases aren’t somewhere in his top 20.

I had trouble making out D’Angelo’s lyrics during the first two or three listens (well, I actually never stopped having trouble making out his lyrics), so simply approached his voice as another instrument in the mix, a source of melodic and atmospheric direction, frequently reminiscent of Prince, occasionally George Clinton, and once or twice Marvin Gaye. That said, D’Angelo’s voice seems uniquely plaintive for the genre (though I can’t claim to be exhaustively familiar with this area). At any rate, I finally looked up the lyrics online (pretty convenient, but how did these people figure out what he was saying?). D’Angelo sings in “The Charade”:

Crawling through a systematic maze to demise
Pain in our eyes
Strain of drowning, wading through the lies
Degradation so loud that you can’t hear the sound of our cries

And then the chorus:

All we wanted was a chance to talk
’Stead we only got outlined in chalk
Feet have bled a million miles we’ve walked
Revealing at the end of the day, the charade

D’Angelo offers a social and political statement, perhaps a response to the current spate of police brutalities but also a broader historical proclamation re the “charade” of sociological change, a questioning whether there have in fact been significant shifts in American norms (I was reminded of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, Between the World and Me, which came out in July of this year). Even after the “million miles,” the “degradation” continues.

And there are the comments in the liner notes: “Some will jump to the conclusion that I’m calling myself a Black Messiah. For me, the title is about all of us…We should all aspire to be a Black Messiah.” D’Angelo references Ferguson, Egypt, and Occupy Wall Street, and closes by saying, “Black Messiah is not one man. It’s a feeling that, collectively, we are all that leader.” I tend to be suspicious of explanatory or supplementary text; it seems like a way to influence a listener without using an appropriate instrumental and/or lyrical approach within the musical context itself. That said, I saw and read these words, so it was impossible at that point to totally disregard them (even if it led me to consider that D’Angelo’s political commentary might be a bit incidental).

“1000 Deaths” opens with Khalid Abdul Mohammed’s evangelical reminder that Jesus was undeniably a dark-skinned man with “nappy hair.” D’Angelo’s vocal on this song is at its most melancholy, delivered for contrast amidst a finger-snapping, hip-swaying bass line and, later in the song, an insistent guitar part, both instruments played by D’Angelo himself.

“Really Love” is one of the album’s more classically R&B grooves, a quintessential 70s-ish love song that might on first listen be a fit for easy-listening stations; however, the mix is moody, textured, pensive. Still, it manages to speak to the body, a sultry, dark, pained dance. There’s death in these tracks, something funereal. And certainly there’s nostalgia. D’Angelo sings in “Back to the Future 1”:

I just wanna go back, baby
Back to the way it was
I just wanna go back, baby
Back to the way it was
I used to get real high,
But now I’m just getting a buzz

Much funk, soul, and R&B occurs as communal, due perhaps in part to gospel roots, serving as an invitation for solidarity, whether to celebrate or grieve. Despite D’Angelo’s references to “all of us” and “collectively,” this is a CD that echoes from an isolated space. Many if not most of the songs are steeped in loneliness; occasionally there’s a reaching out, more often a lament from the distance. Many of these tracks ring as confessional, monologue, soliloquy, a lone voice wafting within a familiar but deconstructed or deconstructing musical cosmos. In this way, D’Angelo acknowledges his various predecessors, incorporating what he can use, modifying much, and dismantling the rest.

—John Amen