In D’Angelo’s case, absence has made his heart grow funkier.
After 14 years of near silence, the Virginian and his band the Vanguard returned unannounced in December with the absurdly delayed third album “Black Messiah” and on Saturday night, he consummated his comeback with a steamy, sexually loaded two-and-a-half hour set at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
After so long away, the 40-year-old looked unsurprisingly nervy early on, performing the opening numbers in a shroud of darkness. Usually, it’s D’Angelo who plays the role of arch seducer but if anything, it was the crowd who made the R&B Adonis come out of his shell.
Time has not eroded the allure of his voice in the slightest. D’Angelo’s soulful tones and carnal shrieks still have the power to make belts loosen and bra-straps come undone instantaneously – a fact that became apparent during a sumptuous “Really Love.” With the swoons and squeals from his female fans buoying him, D’Angelo visibly grew in confidence with each passing song. By the time the Stevie Wonder swing behind “Brown Sugar” kicked in, D’Angelo’s inner-entertainer blossomed as he worked the crowd and disrobed just enough to show off his world-famous biceps.
The release of “Black Messiah” may have been sudden, but it certainly wasn’t arbitrary. The country’s recent racial and political upheaval fed into the album’s creation and now heightens the impact of its songs. No where was this more true than “The Charade” – a thick, psychedelic soul jam in which D’Angelo’s devotion to Prince shows clearly. With the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and even Trayvon Martin still stinging, the lyric “All we wanted was a chance to talk/Instead we only got outlined in chalk” felt like sledgehammer, and brought specifically times whoops from parts of the crowd.
The message was powerful, but D’Angelo’s grooves were pulverizing and the extended “Sugah Daddy” turned out to be the night’s highlight. Taking it’s playful piano riff as their base, the Vanguard built up the track into a (a)rousing workout that turned the audience into a mass of swaying bodies, while D’Angelo channeled the on-the-one poise of James Brown as though they were blood relatives. It must have lasted ten minutes, but if this ecstatic version had lasted for ten hours, the dancing wouldn’t have let up for a moment.
It was a long wait, but his stellar delivery of sex, funk, and politics at the Apollo certainly went a long way towards explaining D’Angelo’s tardiness. Even messiahs need time to get this good.