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Raphael Saadiq featuring D’Angelo, ‘Be Here’ (2002)
During the long years between albums, D’Angelo made sporadic appearances with trusted collaborators like Raphael Saadiq. D’Angelo shares songwriting credit on “Be Here” and multiplies vocal harmonies on the second verse, urging, “You should see the tricks that I got.”
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‘Ain’t That Easy’ (2014)
When D’Angelo re-emerged with “Black Messiah,” his music had grown denser, more openly political, more bruised and more uncompromising. “Ain’t That Easy” opened the album with a song of desperate love: “You can’t leave me,” he moans. “It ain’t that easy.” The track coalesces out of noise and siren-like sounds to turn into a lurching, chugging rocker, with group vocals that give way to solo outbursts: “You won’t believe all the things you have to sacrifice just to get peace of mind,” he sings, sounding far from peaceful.
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‘The Charade’ (2014)
“All we wanted was a chance to talk / ’Stead we only got outlined in chalk,” D’Angelo sings in “The Charade,” a bitter song about injustice, lies, systemic racism, stubborn faith and unyielding determination. With D’Angelo overdubbing enough vocals to sound like a crowd, there’s a marching feel to the beat, while a sitar hook flies above the mix like a banner.
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‘Really Love’ (2014)
D’Angelo was fond of long intros, and “Really Love” begins with more than a minute of sustained orchestral strings behind a monologue in Spanish from Gina Figueroa, saying she can’t bear her man’s jealousy and domination. But then it gets jazzy and friendly, with D’Angelo deploying his most endearing falsetto to insist on his purest affection. Without the intro, it would be one of his most easygoing love songs.
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‘Betray My Heart’ (2014)
On an album that often exults in weight and murk, “Betray My Heart” is the opposite: crisp, transparent, airborne. It’s a promise of devoted love: “Just as long as there is time / I will never leave your side.” And it swings: with a lean, ticking drumbeat, an uncluttered blend of electric piano and guitar, and vocals and horns tossing around some counterpoint — one more reminder of D’Angelo’s sheer musical ingenuity.
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‘Unshaken’ (2019)
This minor-key rock dirge, written with Daniel Lanois and Rocco DeLuca, showed up in the video game “Red Dead Redemption 2.” It vows, “May I stand unshaken / Amid, amidst the crash of the world,” over mournful guitar picking and tidings of increasing desolation: “I once was standing tall / Now I feel my back’s against the wall.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nytimes.com ’
