D’Angelo & The Significance of October 14th
The more significant the date is for a person, the more they are likely to feel the date’s energy and to be affected by it.
Rainy days are harbingers. The rain nourishes the plants, the trees, fields and flowers and to the whole of flora and fauna and it dies by showering itself onto these. It again rises from the water bodies through evaporation. Thus, it is cyclical… immortal. It was raining when I heard on the radio that Marvin Gaye had died. I remember the day (Sunday) and how I curled up in bed listening to the radio DJ play his tribute to the fallen singer. It was also raining yesterday when I found out D’Angelo had passed away. It rained all day. As I scrolled through the various social media posts, I realized October 14th was also the birthday of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed African American man, by Minneapolis, Minnesota police during an arrest.
Harbingers can be specific events or messages from God intended to alert people to impending disaster if they do not repent. In a broader sense, biblical harbingers are not just omens, but also opportunities for people to heed the warnings, repent, and avert disaster. D’Angelo’s third album Black Messiah was also a harbinger, a sign of things to come. There is a historical through-line evident to the listener between the police killing of Fred Hampton in 1969 and the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. In the past five years more deaths have occurred. The protests that rocked America in 2020 resonate deeply within this history. Four years earlier, D’Angelo released Black Messiah.
“Black Messiah” was named after a term J. Edgar Hoover used to describe any charismatic black leader who could galvanize a movement. The album was closely associated with Black Lives Matter (BLM) due to its political and social commentary, which was released in response to events like the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. While not a direct protest album, D’Angelo stated he was “a concerned black man and as a father,” using his voice as part of the movement. He even appeared on Saturday Night Live with his band The Vanguard wearing all black and “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts. They performed the song “The Charade”:
All we wanted was a chance to talk
‘Stead we only got outlined in chalk
Feet have bled a million miles we’ve walked
Revealing at the end of the day, the charade…
We know from the rare interviews he’s given that D’Angelo was a spiritual man. He was the son of a Pentecostal preacher and often talked about spirits speaking to him from the other side. On the albums Voodoo and Black Messiah D’Angelo created a means of revealing messages from God. The latter was a message to us, his fans, about what was to come. In 2020, a number of protests and civil unrest began as reactions to the murder of George Floyd. The unrest quickly spread nationally and internationally.
During the 2020 Minneapolis riots, a Wells Fargo bank at 3030 Nicollet Avenue South was set on fire and heavily damaged. The site of the burned building is now being redeveloped into an affordable housing complex. A couple of weeks ago I visited the location (now called Opportunity Crossing) to prepare for my artist residency at Juxtaposition Arts. I’m currently designing a mural for this new building. I’m using D’Angelo’s Black Messiah as inspiration for the mural.
What people call a riot I call a rebellion. In my humble opinion the word “riot” is used by the media to dismiss or degenerate what’s really happening. Everybody knows the looting and burning is the voice of the unheard. — D’Angelo
In a widely publicized joint interview in 2015, D’Angelo discussed his respect for Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and his concerns about police brutality and systematic inequality. D’Angelo expressed a desire to use his platform as a musician to influence and educate younger generations. Both were featured in a video tour of Oakland, CA (see below), with Seale giving D’Angelo a tour of the city. The city of Oakland was the birthplace of the Black Panther Party.
A decade later D’Angelo lost his battle with pancreatic cancer but his words and music will remain with us forever:
Now more than ever is the need to sing about it and to write songs about it. And no one’s doing it. There’s only a chosen couple of people. I think it just takes one little snowflake to start a snowball to go down the hill. My contribution and say, Kendrick Lamar’s and some chosen others’ start the snowball. — D’Angelo
D’Angelo had already passed the baton to Kendrick Lamar and others who have taken it upon themselves to protest systematic inequality. We need these creative expressions of outrage (ex. music videos, Super Bowl halftime performance) now more than ever. Black Messiah signaled the approach of Kendrick’s 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly or TPAB, then nearly a decade later with GNX and “Squabble Up.” Producer Terrace Martin explained how Black Messiah, profoundly influenced TPAB recording sessions, which were defined by “dark energy” and untold loss.
Black Messiah was the newest, freshest thing that me, Sounwave, Kendrick, and Thundercat felt we could grasp and believe in. We were fans, and yet we felt like we were a part of it. We wanted to coincide with D’Angelo’s energy.
According to reviewer Will Fulton, these recordings celebrate vibrant but often overlooked musical networks of African American church music, jazz, and rock — communities of working musicians that are often invisible in mainstream pop culture. While for Kendrick, this indexing of black music history is connected to the conceptual narrative of TPAB, for D’Angelo it was an evident — if not central — aspect of his creative process. This is how we keep D’Angelo’s work and spirit alive: through our own contributions to make the world a better place for everyone (not just a few). D’Angelo was our harbinger and now it’s on us to heed his message.