American - Musician | February 11, 1974 -
The music business is a crazy game, especially for somebody like me who is really a purist about the art. Trying to balance the pressures of commercialism, it's a tightrope. It's a fine line between sticking to your guns and insanity.
D'Angelo
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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?
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Coming up, the music of my era was very conscious. I grew up on Public Enemy, and it was popular culture to be aware. People were wearing Malcolm X T-shirts and Malcolm X hats. It was a very cool thing to know who Malcolm X was. It was all in the lyrics. It was trendy to be conscious and aware.
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I played a lot of keyboards, but I really wanted to produce the sound that was in my head that I was trying to emulate on the keys. I wanted to do it for real. And it makes me look at the keys in a different way. So it's like I'm looking at the guitar and bass more like meat and potatoes and keys like coloring over top of it, you know.
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Just about the entirety of the first album, 'Brown Sugar,' I wrote it, the majority of that record in my bedroom in Richmond. And all of the demos for it were done on a four-track in my bedroom. I think EMI was a little leery of me being in the studio producing it on my own, which is what I was fighting for.
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I love - you know, I'm a big fan of Prince and Curtis Mayfield and Smoky Robinson. It's something to be said about a man who can be very masculine but still display that sensitive side, and that falsetto does it perfectly.
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Prince, you never knew what to expect from him from one album to the next. Miles Davis was like that. You know, once you get used to one style, boom, he switched it and, you know, switched gears on you. So those artists are very exciting to me, very exciting to follow their path, you know, and their journey.
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'Black Messiah' is a hell of a name for an album. It can easily be misunderstood. Many will think it's about religion. Some will jump to the conclusion that I'm calling myself a Black Messiah. For me, the title is about all of us. It's about the world. It's about an idea we can all aspire to. We should all aspire to be a Black Messiah.
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