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D'Angelo: What the Hell Happened?
Thanks to that video, D'Angelo was poised for superstardom, and the R&B renaissance he led was about to change the world. Instead, he fell into a spiral of substance abuse and arrests -- and virtually disappeared. Eight years later, his friends and colleagues reveal where he's been and what it's going to take to bring him back.
By David Peisner 08.05.08 5:38 PM
On a Sunday in April 2006, Gary Harris pulled up to D'Angelo's large starter mansion outside Richmond, Virginia, in a limo. Harris, the A&R man who'd first signed D'Angelo in the early '90s and who had overseen his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, was on a mission: to escort the singer to Eric Clapton's Crossroads Treatment Centre in Antigua.
As he walked into the spacious kitchen, Harris knew this wouldn't be easy. Spread across the kitchen table, marble countertops, shelves -- nearly every available flat surface -- were empty alcohol bottles of all conceivable varieties. "There was scotch, vodka, beer," Harris recalls. "While I was waiting for him, he emptied the contents out of the corners of three or four bottles to get a shot." D'Angelo himself was unshaven, about 40 pounds overweight, and hadn't packed. "He was trying to act like he didn't know I was coming that day," Harris says.
According to Harris, it took more than five hours to corral D'Angelo into the limo. Then the real journey began. Four days after hooking up with him, Harris had only gotten the then-32-year-old D'Angelo as far as Puerto Rico, delayed by missed flights, a forgotten passport, and the singer's insistence on emptying every hotel minibar he came across. After two days of trying to coax D'Angelo from his room at the Ritz-Carlton in San Juan, Harris threw up his hands.
"I told him he can do whatever he wants, but I'm getting on a plane," Harris says. "D'Angelo broke down and cried," and then agreed to go to Crossroads. The night he arrived, Harris says, "he called everyone he knew to send him a ticket to get him out of Antigua." D'Angelo wasn't in denial about his alcohol problem, Harris explains. "He just wasn't prepared to deal with it."
Six years earlier, a very different-looking D'Angelo stood on a small platform at a soundstage in New York City. His muscled frame was naked, save for a small gold crucifix on a chain, nestled in the valley between his pecs, and pajama bottoms hanging impossibly low on his chiseled hips, exposing the lower regions of a flat, V-shaped torso that pointed suggestively toward his crotch. The pj's would be invisible in the "Untitled (How Does It Feel?)" video being shot that day. In it, the camera opens tight on D'Angelo's head before drawing back slowly to reveal this once-chubby choirboy in all his sculpted glory. The effect is gloriously uncomfortable. As the camera sucks him in, it feels intimate and intrusive, revealing and voyeuristic.
"We made this video for women," says Paul Hunter, who directed "Untitled" along with D'Angelo's then-manager, Dominique Trenier. "The idea was, it would feel like he was one-on-one with whoever the woman was."
The video was actually the second made for D'Angelo's sophomore album, Voodoo. (The first, an artsy performance clip for "Left & Right," stirred little interest.) It was part of Trenier's strategy to shed the artist's Brown Sugar–era image as a doughy 21-year-old kid sitting behind a piano. Although D'Angelo had been working out intensely with trainer Mark Jenkins, he was anxious about the video.
"Initially, to him, it seemed completely bonkers," says Trenier, who managed D'Angelo from 1996 to 2005 and still considers him a close friend. "He didn't quite get what I was saying. He kept going, 'What do you mean, 'naked'?"
Awesome article.
D'Angelo will never be known as the naked guy to me instead he will always go down as one of the smoothest soul singers of our time. After all he made a song with the hook being three curse words and the shit sold 4 the movie business his voice is mesmerizing and his melodies are so sweet i love him........although i must say he was much finer 10 years ago so let him know workout a lil bit honey you was too sexy get that back BOO OK BYE 4 NOW
It doesn't matter what he looks like. Good music is good music. The man is a musical genius and I, for one, can't wait to hear what he's going to share with the world when he's ready.
****es D!
D'angelo's music has been some of the greatest, smoothest, classiest, hottest, most innovative stuff to come out in decades. We need you back. We don't care if you're cut or heavy. (Of course you were a sex god to all of us deprived women but that wouldn't have meant anything if you hadn't been a music god under God.) When God gives you such an amazing talent you need to use it even if it's only for yourself. Fame has ruined a lot of people who turned to booze and drugs, but just kick the fame and the hype in the butt and start playing and singing again. D'angelo was never just "the naked dude" to anybody I know. He and the musicians he has worked with have always been one of a kind, top notch artists.
His music made me come alive. It was the best thing I have ever heard in years, after all the trash that has been coming out that passes for music. I don't care if you're cut, or heavy just come backand serenade me with your soulful voice and transport me to anoher place. I thought he was perfect on Brown Sugar and Voodoo was just another thing altogether. Smoking! But D., please we need you like the flowers need the rain. Please don't let all tat amazing talent go to naught.
well, i went to school with mike;actually sat with him im choir. this was 7th grade. he played @ the school assemblies, and any other musical event we had. i just want him to bounce back. he is a walking pillar of talent, humbleness, skill, wisdom & a certain level of unceartinty. why? thats my question. he posses it all. he even had the drive to shape & mold his physique into a Godlike image. GEORGOUS!!!!!! however, it obviously wasn't the missing piece to his puzzle. AWWW... if i had the recipe, i would gladly take him a big bowl of it; warm ,with crackers & ginger ale. however,he should know that hewas not built to be defeated. our minds can be guilty of playing tricks on us more than we would like to admit. d'angelo,if you are listening; COME BACK DADDY,I (ecuse me) WE NEED YOU. BRING BACK THE LOVE. A.S.A.P. do we need to come to your house & get you?????
The man's music touches my soul now the same way it did 9 years ago.
D'Angelo is a musical genius, and like many artists before him, the pressures of writing music of such high caliber seem to have burnt him out.
Personally, I cannot wait to hear his work again. His music kept me sane during a very tough period in my life, in a part of the world that he probably cannot imagine his music reaching. I'm waiting patiently for the next masterpiece.
It's sad to know that he'd spiraled like that. I'm not a big R&B fan, but D'Angelo was one of the few artsts whose sound I liked. I hope he does more work, it'd be a shame for that talent of his to just not shine again.
its called life and a lot of people go thru trials and tribulations, its all a process of learning
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