W
hen I was awoken on the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 14, I stared at the phone. No call that early is good news. I braced myself. I knew … but I didn’t know.
Sigh. But I knew.
I had one propitious foot in the fight beside D’Angelo, another irresolute one in the “maybe it’s time for him to go home, Ahmir” shoe. D himself told me in our last convo at Sloan Kettering, “I’m hanging on, brotha … but today was hard … y’know?”
I know, man … I know.
Truthfully, I wasn’t ready for that gut punch. I’d been bracing for it for some 25 years — since the deluge of Voodoo in 2000. I always had a looming feeling concerning D like a “any moment now I will get ‘the call’“ feeling. Most of our mavericks who fly that close to the sun never get to see that journey through. And now here we are at 5:30 a.m.
I had seconds to decide: How do I process this new reality? My preference was not to start my Tuesday morning … mourning.
Tear ducts filling, I searched for a happy distraction to slow this grand-piano-speeding-down-a-San-Francisco-hill feeling in my stomach. I wanted one bright memory. One. And just then it hit me.
It’s May 1997.
We’re taking a dinner break in month eight of our (unknown then) four-year sentence at the Electric Lady Soul Prison while making Voodoo. Michael Jackson has just released Blood on the Dance Floor. Not exactly a must-experience event, but MJ always deserved at least a two-minute song gander … right?
Enter “Morphine.” Or better yet, enter our collective shock at “Morphine”’s bridge. Nine Inch Nails chaos one second, then that coda drops and — well — go ahead and cue the song up at 2:37 and imagine being in our studio hearing this for the first time.
You know that meme of brothers at an outdoor table laughing so hard they cling to each other before collapsing to the floor? That was us. We laughed so hard at that over-the-top delivery I sent a studio assistant to get Advil. Don’t come for me — I’m MJ-all-day till I die — but that bridge wasn’t what I was expecting from the best student of James Brown, the king of going-to-the-bridge-dreaming up.
We replayed it six times, driving everyone within earshot mad. We mocked it so lovingly it ironically became one of my last favorite MJ moments on wax.
Speaking of laughing until injury: Our fellow Soulquarian James Poyser once reminded me that next to Busta Rhymes, no one shattered bones giving a double-snap salute like D. I sometimes skipped greeting him just to keep my drumming hand intact. Pain is love, but come on.
D’Angelo, to me, was one of the last pure artists in Black music. I know we sold the mysterious seriousness well, but the truth is — we were a silly bunch.
I admit I might’ve earned an extra couple of years of friendship if not for … OK. What had happened was: Three days after Christmas of ’93, the Roots were mixing our major-label debut. Engineer Bob Power kept raving about some “Mike” who was the second coming of Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Frankie Beverly. “Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.” In my mind, no one could come close to how Prince held us hostage 10 years prior. Nor will they ever. So this was already a hard sell.
Then “Mike” walked in. Game over. His Timberland chukkas gangsta-leaned like the “Smooth Criminal” video. No way THIS guy was the future in those dusty-ass Timbs. I gave him a pound and retreated to the break room to exploit the free long-distance phone. (Consistency check: A year later I’d initially dismiss J Dilla the same way. I’m a lucky man.)
Cut to two years later — the 1995 Source Awards. Turning point for hip-hop. I’ve said it: That day was hip-hop’s funeral. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but no one was the same afterward. East Coast vs. West Coast wasn’t a myth anymore. Materialist rap vs. conscious rap. Dre wins Producer of the Year; New York boos. Snoop snaps, “Y’all don’t love us?!?!?!” I sensed a powder keg and bolted like Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds.
Outside MSG I ran into street promoters. A kid sized me up: “You’re gonna love this.” He handed me a sampler cassette. To be polite, I pocketed it. Normally I’d never listen to those “tell me what you think” tapes. But that night, processing chaos in the hotel, I noticed a name on my nightstand: Bob Power. Wait — what’s a D’Angelo? Brown Sugar? I put it in my Walkman. By second 12, I was all in. The music was confident, controlled — 30 years of soul (and the next 30) in one breath …
… then a slow-motion realization hit like that Ralphie line in A Christmas Story: “Ohhhh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge — this is Mike!! the Timberland-shoe guy!”
D’OH!!!!!
Rewind to April 1, 1984: Marvin Gaye dies, shot by his father. For both D and me, that day carried reverence and darkness. We shared complicated fathers, marked by love and … the other side of love. We both turned that tragedy into nightmares of our own complicated relationships with our own dads. My dad used Marvin’s death as a subtle sermon: Respect is real, and disrespect has … consequences. I lived under that energy.
So did D.
Photograph by DANNY CLINCH
Cut to April 1, 1996. Our first real day talking, and one framed by Marvin in every way. The Roots were on tour with the Fugees and Goodie Mob, and I met up with D at the House of Blues in L.A. during Soul Train Awards weekend. One of the first things D told me was he’d just recorded a version of “Your Precious Love” with a singer he just met named Erykah Badu, whom we also met that weekend (three generals in the same army all meeting at the same time … no big deal). Later on he confessed to me that the intro to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” haunted him — it genuinely scared him. My version of that fear is the modulated coda in Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead,” which I first heard during a childhood injury.
Of course, I had to test him — one day not long after I popped the CD in just to see what would happen and turned the volume up.
D wasn’t lying. It froze him. I might’ve made it an ongoing prank, but after attempt two? I knew a third would mean hands thrown.
We never discussed “Grapevine” again.
Ever.
Now cut to a year later — April 1, 1997. After a rough split with management, D’s career was in flux. D’s former manager had a demo of a song called “Bitch.” It wasn’t ready, but it pointed toward what Voodoo would become — beautifully nasty. An artist that the aforementioned manager had signed (let’s call them “Redacted”) came across a tape of “Bitch” and later released something … lightly derivative.
Man, that got under D’s skin! To me? Pssshh!!! Yet ANOTHER chance to prank him (I don’t learn).
The Roots were mixing Illadelph Halflife with Bob Power at Battery in Midtown Manhattan, and the Soulquarians (Common, Erykah, D, etc.) were working on various projects across town in the Village at Electric Lady. I called Rahzel, our human beatbox, and told him to impersonate (“Redacted”) and confront D over the phone: “You bit my style!!!!!” I stayed close to D to hear it.
Most folks would’ve gone fisticuffs ON SIGHT!!!! D did get heated — but in the nerdiest, most D’Angelo way possible.
“Man,” he said, “you so phony! Chords suck. You don’t know how to stack vocals!!!!! Your vibrato is ass! Lyrics whack! BRING IT! I will battle you ANY STAGE ANY TIME, n***a!”
… Wait — wha?
Not the reaction I expected. D’Angelo went … technical? That’s when I realized I was stuck with a quote-unquote “artiste” — someone who couldn’t not think about music. I mean who else critiques chord structure mid-beef? Guess I was the one fooled.
That was D at his most intense.
During the Voodoo sessions he once called at 4 a.m. “Yo man, we gotta talk.” Was this a confrontation? What kept him up? The idea that Common had a funkier track for his Like Water for Chocolate LP (which D’Angelo and I both were working on at the time) than D’Angelo had for Voodoo.
“That’s my funk!!!!!!!!!! He don’t know what to do with that funk!!”
I called Common and suggested a swap. He was chill. “Chicken Grease” went to Voodoo; “Geto Heaven Pt. 2” (originally D & Lauryn Hill) went to Common.
Then came Voodoo. Then came everything. That album remade Black music. There’s a before and an after. Its tour was the greatest soul revue since prime Prince — we spent four years studying him; naturally, we wrote our love letter back.
But D’s core never changed. One day on tour — in a nondescript spot like Milwaukee — Halle Berry happened to be side-stage during soundcheck. I couldn’t see her behind my cymbal, but D could. Suddenly soundcheck turns into full-throttle, balls-to-the-wall performance with no warning. Why are we doing a full-fledged, life-depends-on-it 18-minute version of “Devil’s Pie”?! Dude, save it for the show! Mic tricks, dips, splits, slides, the whole thing. On one slide, a nail tore his faux-leather pants from thigh to ankle. Pants became skirt. And yeah — commando.
That was D: all in, even at soundcheck.
He was the same in the studio. Fourteen years between Voodoo and Black Messiah — a lifetime. When I came in for the latter, every piece of Voodoo gear was still there intact as if we’d never left. “Guys,” I said, “why are we using VHS tapes and floppy disks and CDs from ’97? The world moved on.”
Not in his mind.
“We’re going straight vintage,” he said.
I didn’t get it — but one man’s comedy is another’s heart-on-sleeve pursuit of perfection.
He was slated to headline the Roots Picnic this summer. We rehearsed two weeks out. He was famously secretive, but something felt different.
The first clue: Rehearsals started late. Nothing new in his world, but this was ridiculous. I scheduled 10 p.m., but the first note hit at 3 a.m. By seven, I had to leave for the airport. He looked wounded. “Where you going? We only did a few hours.”
In retrospect, I see his clock was health-shifted. He struggled to hold his guitar, preferring to sit at keys. I thought it was an aesthetic choice — a throwback ’95 vibe. I didn’t realize the medical truth unfolding. When asked, he said he’d been through something but was on the mend.
Even so, that last rehearsal felt … final. I started thinking to myself, “Why do I feel like this is the last time I’m gonna play this song with him?” I tried to ignore it, but then the unspeakable happened. Hard to explain, maybe hindsight talking, but he didn’t fight me on the ONE thing he always fought me on.
The most radical act for D was to play the album versions live. To him it felt lazy. In 25 years, we did “the normal versions” just once. For the Picnic, I suggested: Let’s just do straight-no-chaser Brown Sugar cuts. Simpler, freer, less stage business. It was so easy I almost argued against my own idea.
He agreed immediately.
Too quickly.
I have to say, the last weeks with him were probably the best for our friendship. Music was always the template for our communication. Now here we were in the hospital — no soundproof separation booths, no drums, no keys, no instruments, no musicians. Nothing but just the two of us talking. About where our lives had been in the past five years or so. I’ll admit that the uncertain finality of it all was somewhat awkward for me. Is this visit gonna be my last visit? Is this concert gonna be the last one we watch together? Will this be the last J Dilla beat we lose our minds over? Man … since that day back in 1996, talking about our hometowns and high school and our churches and our fathers and how we escaped it all, we hadn’t talked all that deep.
I mean, don’t get me wrong — for 30 years we were having a different type of conversation. But it was a conversation we let the world in on. A new language, a new sound, a new vibration.
I had a fear of giving him a 30-years-overdue update on where I was in life since we first met. Now, I had no lifelines or “Dude, you gotta see this concert clip from 1978 that just came out!!!!!” distractions.
Was he gonna judge me? That I went the way of a “professional” with projects here, and events there, and random businesses and too much busyness to ever come back home to just check in at least? Wonder if he felt like I saw him as another footnote in the way-too-long list of tragic parables who failed to make it through to the other side.
Then we dropped our guard, silenced our inner voices, and spoke.
It was the healing I really didn’t see coming. We had both dived into a new spiritual destination, embracing metaphysics. Talking about astral traveling. Me playing koshi bells and binaural tones on a loop on his sound system. This was the most Zen hospital room of all time — crystals and candles, herbs, incense, oils, spices and tea. Us going back and forth sharing Dr. Joe Dispenza and Spirit Science YouTube clips. Of course, we both landed in this new space of peace and growth!
As if on cue, hospital noises — beeps, blurps, and tones — started to go off, calling to mind the sounds MJ sampled on “Morphine.” We slowly looked at each other like, “I know we ain’t about to sing that damn bridge again.” We were still intact as brothers, as if we never left!
(Whew … I knew it, man … I knew it)
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