D'Angelo with the Vanguard and without
I stumbled upon D’angelo’s music in high school. It was around 10th grade and I had just transitioned out of my mother’s soul records to hone in on the Manchester sound and be a big man. While this was only a couple years ago music discovery was markedly different then, so was storage. Youtube was the prime resource to determine whether an artist fit your tastes. Once you found your mark you would do the needful torrenting. Storage limits were a lot more tangible pre-cloud, and each megabyte was territory to be carefully appraised then staked. In that economy of finite space it was amazing to find an artist with only 2 albums to his discography. Both works of a Dionysian sensuality I had never experienced before.
Brown Sugar and Voodoo, ordered chronologically. Brown Sugar made me feel invincible in that tempestuous time of hormones and stolen glances. Under it’s tutelage I was master of love and longing. I was still shy though so I did not know how to go about applying this knowledge. Thus, I stumbled awkwardly through that period, holding the music close to me. Brown Sugar came from a position of being completely ok with oneself. The sort of self-assurance that came after multiple conquests in love. Which was way past my horizons at that point in time.
Voodoo, to me, was borne of the pain when every relationship has crumbled and slipped through your fingers time after time despite all sorts of schemes and machinations. The kind of pain that makes you go under and inwards. The desolation of Voodoo was a lot more relatable to me at 16, when my first ‘relationship’ failed and I kept questioning whether I was man enough. What did masculinity mean and would the answer doom me ? Thru it all I aspired to be a man who could relate to Brown Sugar. By knowing affection in excess. I believe I have experienced what I had wished for then. Lust in varying hues, and the charms and turbulence of passion. Despite going through that gauntlet Voodoo still remains the album closer to me. Maybe because we eventually learn that the joy in fleeting affections is just as fleeting.