<\/p>\n
\u201cHow does it feel?\u201d<\/p>\n
D\u2019Angelo asks that question \u2014 worries it, caresses it, plumbs its unseen depths \u2014 no fewer than two dozen times in what might have been his signature hit.<\/p>\n
A meticulous, slow-to-boil ballad from the R&B singer\u2019s 2000 album \u201cVoodoo,\u201d \u201cUntitled (How Does It Feel)\u201d is basically a seduction in seven minutes: The song opens with D\u2019Angelo asking a woman to come closer, which because the groove is so spare and his voice such a murmur, she can\u2019t help but do. As the song gradually picks up steam, his singing gets grittier and the words more graphic; he offers to take off her clothes and to \u201ctake the walls down\u201d between them. Yet even with electric guitars and background vocals cascading around him, he continues checking in with his lover until the music cuts off abruptly as though somebody turned on the lights.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow does it fe\u2014,\u201d we hear him sing, a man suspended in a state of eternal concern.<\/p>\n
D\u2019Angelo, who died Tuesday at 51<\/a>, made soul music for three decades in that tender and attentive spirit. His song \u201cBrown Sugar\u201d catalogs the pleasures of a partner\u2019s body; \u201cReally Love\u201d contemplates the not-especially-sexy reality of long-term coupledom. In \u201cLady\u201d he\u2019s exhausted his ability to keep secret his relationship with a woman he knows \u201cevery guy in the parking lot\u201d wants to steal from him.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m tired of hiding what we feel,\u201d he pleads, \u201cI\u2019m trying to come with the real.\u201d<\/p>\n The Virginia native\u2019s slim but hugely impactful discography \u2014 just three LPs and an assortment of live cuts and loosies \u2014 showcased the same loving commitment to the sensual possibilities of pure sound. Listen to his tightly harmonized vocals in \u201cSend It On\u201d or to the gorgeously murky electric piano in \u201cOne Mo\u2019Gin\u201d or to the knotty percussive crosstalk in \u201cSugah Daddy.\u201d<\/p>\n In his music, D\u2019Angelo fashioned intimate psychic spaces with infinite sonic detail.<\/p>\n Amid the digital luster of mid-\u201990s rap and R&B, the craftsmanship of his 1995 debut, \u201cBrown Sugar,\u201d marked him as an old soul \u2014 indeed as one of the handsome faces of what became known as neo-soul: a marriage of \u201970s-style themes and song structures with the attitude and rhythmic swagger of hip-hop. The genre also encompassed the likes of Maxwell, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu<\/a> and Angie Stone, about whom D\u2019Angelo was said to have written songs on \u201cBrown Sugar\u201d and with whom he had the first of his three children. (Stone died in a car accident<\/a> in March.)<\/p>\n D\u2019Angelo didn\u2019t quite embrace the neo-soul label: \u201cI do Black music,\u201d he once said. Yet there was no denying his deep connection to soul-music tradition; among the tunes he covered were Smokey Robinson\u2019s \u201cCruisin\u2019\u201d and Roberta Flack\u2019s \u201cFeel Like Makin\u2019 Love.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBrown Sugar,\u201d which went platinum, made D\u2019Angelo a star \u2014 cultural capital he spent in assembling a group called the Soulquarians to record \u201cVoodoo\u201d at a supremely unhurried pace that allowed the music to bloom with intricacies \u00e0 la Prince<\/a> or Stevie Wonder.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just trying to create, taking my time to make the best music possible,\u201d D\u2019Angelo said in an interview<\/a> with The Times in 2000.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> What Minnie Riperton\u2019s music means 50 years after ‘Lovin’ You’<\/a><\/p>\n Earlier this year, the veteran R&B musician Raphael Saadiq told me<\/a> about stumbling into the sessions for the album at New York\u2019s Electric Lady Studios \u2014 D\u2019Angelo\u2019s other collaborators included drummer Questlove, bassist Pino Palladino and trumpeter Roy Hargrove \u2014 as he walked through Greenwich Village one summer day.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to get something to smoke on,\u201d Saadiq recalled, so he knocked on the studio\u2019s door only to discover D\u2019Angelo at work inside. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018You got a joint?\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah, I got a joint \u2014 but come in, let\u2019s write a song!\u2019\u201d The two came up with \u201cUntitled (How Does It Feel),\u201d which Saadiq said ends the way it does because \u201cthe tape ran out as we were playing.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 2000 Times interview, D\u2019Angelo said he \u201calways thought \u2018Brown Sugar\u2019 was a little overproduced\u201d and that with \u201cVoodoo\u201d he \u201cwasn\u2019t too concerned with things sounding too perfect or neat or clean.\u201d The result \u2014 funky, richly textured, a little jagged at the edges \u2014 set a template later embraced by admirers such as Frank Ocean, SZA and Steve Lacy.<\/p>\n Yet for D\u2019Angelo, the success of \u201cUntitled,\u201d which hit No. 2 on Billboard\u2019s R&B chart and won a Grammy for male R&B vocal performance, was complicated by the sensation that was its music video<\/a>. The clip presented him as a naked sex object; D\u2019Angelo\u2019s discomfort with that role pushed him to withdraw from the spotlight just as his career was exploding.<\/p>\n In the years that followed he struggled with addiction, suffered medical issues and ran into trouble with the law. But he also seemed dismayed by what was going on in the world. In 2014 he returned to music with \u201cBlack Messiah,\u201d an album shadowed by the dark specter of racialized police violence: \u201cAll we wanted was a chance to talk \/ \u2019Stead we only got outlined in chalk,\u201d he sings in \u201cThe Charade,\u201d which came out in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.<\/p>\n Even at its bleakest, though, D\u2019Angelo\u2019s music found a kind of clarity \u2014 erotic, moral, political \u2014 in the rituals of devotion. \u201cJust as long as there is time, I will never leave your side,\u201d he sang in \u201cBetray My Heart\u201d \u2014 one more attempt to take a wall down with a feeling.<\/p>\n