After a period of personal strain, including struggles with alcoholism, D’Angelo returned in 2014 with the surprise release of Black Messiah. It had originally been due out the following year, but D’Angelo brought forward the release in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, which was surging amid nationwide protests over police killings of Black men. After a grand jury failed to indict a police officer for fatally shooting Michael Brown, D’Angelo told his manager, Alan Leeds, “I want to speak out,” Leeds told The New York Times.
The album was a phenomenon. Its playful spins on psychedelic funk and R&B belie lyrics that cut through to D’Angelo’s personal and political soul. In his quiet period, D’Angelo had taught himself guitar, and he played alongside an elite band—including drummer Questlove, bassist Pino Palladino, guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, and horn player Roy Hargrove—credited as the Vanguard.
“This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” D’Angelo told GQ in 2014. “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”
After the album’s surprise release, “Really Love” went out as a radio single and earned D’Angelo two of his three nominations at the 2016 Grammy Awards. He won one of them—for Best R&B Song—and another, in Best R&B Album, for Black Messiah, bringing his lifetime Grammys tally to four. His earlier wins both came in 2001: Best R&B Album (Voodoo) and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for “Untitled (How Does It Feel).”
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