D'Angelo - Black Messiah (2014)

Chris Dave, the drummer on this album, has made an album of his own which will be out on Blue Note next month.

hmmm, i know Questlove, james gadson, and chris dave all played on Black Messiah, but i've never seen a track by track breakdown on who plays on what - until now.

https://storify.com/amaah/black-messiah-liner-notes

ain’t that easy - james gadson
1000 deaths - questlove
the charade - questlove
sugah daddy - gadson
really love - started with questlove, ended with gadson
back to the future, pt 1 - questlove
till it’s done (tutu) - unclear?
prayer - chris dave
betray my heart - questlove
the door - d’angelo
back to the future (pt 2) - questlove
another life - questlove

Tutu is unquestionably Questlove on drums.

Among other things (just the sound, and the press roll at the beginning), I think of that three note fill (that starts on the 4 and has a flam at the beginning) as one of his signature licks.

has a new song on the RDR2 soundtrack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obJuKmMjFG4

https://images.ctfassets.net/5jh3ceokw2vz/3QfGPJD8zMvifV37RhuOne/b97ad8c2ab17e28986cc5a192306c2c6/0Z0A9862.jpg?w=1600

https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/dangelo-the-devils-pie/

^^ Great photographs and story about Carine Bijlsma's documentary about D'Angelo.

The doc is great!

Is there any way to watch this online yet?

You might need a VPN, but it's here:

https://www.2doc.nl/documentaires/series/3doc/2019/devils-pie-dangelo.html

Listening for the first time since probably 2016 and i'm not sure why i haven't been pumping this one a month minimum

you are hereby ordered to pump it 4x month for the following year to make up for your mistake

Be nice if The Charade weren't always so timely and poignant

it's been awhile for me too

Just listened to this album a few times the other week, it has definitely continued to justify its immediate hype.

Sooo did any intrepid slskrs ever happen on a rip of that 'slingbaum' track with D & Badu?

His best album. Thank God hes gotten better album by album. Even if they do take a while.

Agreed. As amazing as Voodoo is, this one is where it's at imo.

Not sure why it took so long for "Another Life" to click in for me but ... man ... it really is among the best things he's ever done.

There's an interview with Ben Kane in the newest Tape Op, he says that he worked on Black Messiah for a decade, just hoping it would come out at some point. And now that they're back in that process, so working on new music that maybe will be released someday.

i think maybe the most unbelievable "moment" in music that year is from the introduction to The Charade, from 18 to about 26 seconds in, as the vocals rev up like a train and the drums fading in as well. it's a feat of wizardry to pull it off as smoothly as he does. if you're not paying attention, you don't even notice how it's rolls up into the verse. just beautiful

typo city but great song A+

‘1000 Deaths’ slays me...Eddie Hazel soundtracking a Vietnam vets final bad trip...awesome!!!

"the charade" is a miracle of a song, agreed

Another life is sublime,beautiful,tragic, just one of his all time best songs. Incredible. Esp that fractured vocal. Black messiah makes a lot if brown sugar sound tentative, and voodoo sound over ambitious, puffed up, and like he was trying on soneone else's clothes on. This album is when he really started showing himself.

I don't care about 2020 opinions, I care about hearing this viny-only vanity project by some Italian keyboardist with D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Chris Dave.

it'll show up eventually

I'm surprised it hasn't already!

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/who-the-hell-is-slingbaum-dangelo-fka-twigs-erykah-badu

Ok, apparently he's not Italian. But almost certainly independently wealthy.

all the descriptions of it sounded terrible tbh

the slingbaum album is indeed easy to find on soulseek fyi

xp Karl--heck yeah, great point: haven't listened to it in a while, but yeah, the way the drum machine and synth and brief bass harmonics and guitar and vox all 'wake up' in those 25 seconds is so seemingly effortlessly exciting

And also hard agree that, while having admitted it's been a minute, Black Messiah has likewise def become my go-to D in recent years

I could barely even tell D was on that Slingbaum track. I think I remember one song seemed okay

Another Life does this wonderful thing where it keeps switching from tentative to confident, and has these chords that are like an unsure ascent, and the infinite D'Angelos harmonise in the most bewitching and unexpected ways. It really sends me.

https://m.mixcloud.com/sonos/radio-hour-with-dangelo/

whoa

Ah, man. This was from a while back, right? Any links to a download floating out there?

Just played Black Messiah for the first time in eons, actually.

I need to write down the tracklisting. I could see d'angelo as a DJ. God knows he has the time in between albums!

Good thing he knows "the secret to beating writer's block".

Actually I have no trouble believing that he has no issue with writer's block, he just takes forever laboring over a record and deciding he wants to release something.

Wonder what his discogs username is.

questlove has said that he's a perfectionist and a tinkerer who never thinks his music is good enough to be released

and yet Black Messiah sounds the opposite of laboured; the influences and references are all upfront, but it still sounds fresh, spontaneous, rough almost. certainly not overproduced.

i was at the press event where they played black messiah for the first time ever and i remember questlove saying that they essentially had to wrest control over the music from d’angelo during a very small window of time in order to get a track list done and the album released, or else he never would’ve put anything out. but it’s not like the songs weren’t done

Hed never over produce his music. He likes early 70s stuff too much to do that I think his tinkering is more in the Coppola sense. There will always be something else he thinks of.

over under finished

it's just words

also thinking about the record as a finish is just not

think he's just kinda neurotic basically

unprofessional to diagnose on the fly imo

Hopefully he has a therapist but I doubt it somehow

tracklist to that mix -
sly - i cannot make it
nick hakim - i dont know
mahavishnu orchestra - you know you know
george duke/billy cobham - almoustafa the beloved
lewis taylor - i dream the better dream (not heard this guy in years)
prince - sister (lol)
prince - head
ohio players - silly billy
pete rock/cl - soul brother #1
fishbone - subliminal fascism
gangstarr - take 2 and pass
funkadelic - cholly
de la - potholes
slum village - get dis money
unknown mortal orchstra - ministry of alienation
funkadelic - grooveallegiance
marvin gaye - soon ill be loving you again
brentford all stars - greedy g (love that the one dub record he picks is a JB cover lol)
dangelo - the root

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxMYh9TwEbs

to demonstrate how long stuff can gestate with him, questlove leaked this version of "really love" all the way back in 2007 and while it's missing a few details that were added to the final version, it's not like it was radically reworked or anything since then