Earlier today the news of D’Angelo’s passing hit me like a ton of bricks. When I got the notification, I immediately texted my wife to see if she had heard the unfortunate news. I thought of how many times we had listened to Black Messiah while we waited for the birth of our first child.
It was my final year of seminary and the semester started with the murder of Michael Brown. The horror of his murder, a news story I watched develop in real time through the tweets of those on the ground in Ferguson, shook me to my core. By the time cable news covered it, I was further enraged by what I viewed as disrespectful treatment of a young man whose life was taken away unjustifiably.
This anger I felt spilled into every assignment I worked on that fall semester. History class? Black Lives Matter. Preaching and worship? Black Lives Matter. My time with seminary had been complicated already with me wanting to leave during my first semester, taking a leave of absence after my first year, and needing to come back to Richmond (after vowing never to return) to finish my degree.
Somewhere along the way the anger I had felt productive. I lead a group of seminarians to write an open letter inviting the institution to repent for its role in developing white supremacy. I participated in a die-in on Broad Street. I could see hearts and minds on campus and in the city being moved toward repentance. And in between my schoolwork, activism, and obstetric checkups, I had Black Messiah on repeat.
This album is a masterpiece and is all the evidence I need to place D’Angelo in the pantheon of great musicians. His album made me feel like we were working towards something worth living for. Tracks like “Betray My Heart” and “Till It’s Done (Tutu)” became meditations for me. I would sit in the Advancement office doing my student worker job and play the album on repeat all shift.
It felt at the time like we were actually moving toward the hopeful future we strived for. Clearly, looking back over the past 11 years, there have been some wins and some losses. But artists like D’Angelo are a part of a tradition that prioritizes joy. So much of the music that we call pop specializes in happiness. But happiness can’t get you free. It’s too fleeting. Joy is what you need to keep going no matter what it looks like. Singing about love and devotion in a time of hatred and cruelty are exactly what we need to keep on keeping on.
I often think of that scene in Selma, when Dr. King calls Mahalia Jackson in the middle of the night and asks her to sing. He says to her that he “needs to hear the Lord’s voice” and we need that so much in this moment. Artists who make the soundtrack that sustains us when our God given work feels hopeless. Musicians whose art is so transcendent that we cannot help to be renewed. In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, D’Angelo said, “I want to do what YHWH is leading me to do. I’m trying to keep myself open, my heart open, to receive and to know what that is.” One of the sacred mysteries of life is that we never know our precise impact. We may vaguely know we mean a lot to someone or to a lot of people but we can never know the full magnitude. My hope and prayer is that when we cross that river, and are welcomed home, we get to see the fullness of our utility to God and are enraptured by endless gratitude.
I thank God for D’Angelo’s life, his faithfulness to his gift, and pray that his memory will forever be a blessing.