R&B singer D’Angelo

D’Angelo was “one of the greatest musical talents of his generation”

(Image credit: Lionel Flusin / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

D’Angelo left everyone wanting more. An acclaimed neo-soul singer, guitarist, and producer in the 1990s and 2000s, he reimagined R&B, armed with a falsetto that grew into a euphoric shriek. Hits like “Lady,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” mixed hip-hop beats with soothing melodies and reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s R&B chart. Voodoo, released in 2000, won the Grammy for best R&B album, and “Untitled” won best male R&B vocal performance. The video for the song, which lingered over the singer’s nude, sweat-drenched body, turned him into an instant sex symbol, a role he hadn’t sought and didn’t know how to handle. He coped with drugs and alcohol, releasing just three albums in two decades. “Sometimes, you know, I feel uncomfortable,” he said in 2000. “To be onstage and trying to do your music and people going, ‘Take it off! Take it off!’”

A Pentecostal minister’s son, Michael Archer grew up in Richmond, Va., where he sang in church. The nickname D’Angelo, short for Michelangelo, was acquired in his teens, when he was a local singing sensation. He won an amateur competition in New York at 17 and signed a record deal at 19, in 1993. His first album, 1995’s Brown Sugar, drew from soul and gospel. He then took his time meticulously crafting Voo-doo, and critics and fans greeted it rapturously in 2000. Alongside friends like Questlove and Erykah Badu, “he was at the forefront of a movement that charted new paths in soul, R&B, and hip-hop while maintaining a deep admiration for the past,” said Rolling Stone.

As the ogling and attention generated by the “Untitled” video became too much, D’Angelo retreated to Virginia and was charged with cocaine possession in 2005. His passion for music and distaste for the spotlight created “an internal tug-of-war,” said The Guardian, that resulted “in much of his material either failing to make it into the public domain or languishing for years until it emerged.” When he finally released another album, 2014’s Black Messiah, it won two Grammys. He was working on a fourth album when he died of pancreatic cancer at 51. Despite his limited output, D’Angelo was “one of the greatest R&B singers and musical talents of his generation,” said The Washington Post. Yet he resisted categorization. “I never claimed I do neo-soul,” he said. “I do Black music. I make Black music.”