d'angelo - brown sugar (poll)

cruisin' is prob my favorite but since it's a cover i'm gonna knock it down a peg

1. lady
2. cruisin
3. shit, damn, motherfucker
4. higher
5. jonz in my bonz

(voodoo kicks this album's ass btw)

maybe i should've put "brown sugar" at no. 5 in stead of jonz, in any event great album but i think he really kicked it up a notch for voodoo

also fuck w/ the second half of this much more than the first half

i love the gospel overtones of "higher"

"Lady" looms so large over this album for me (Saadiq > D'Angelo) that it's kind of hard for me to even rate the other songs, should listen to it some more though

Lady is my favourite song of his. I could listen to that bass line forever.

every song a banger

D'Angelo featuring AZ - Lady (DJ Premier's Just Tha Beat Mix) (1996) (HQ)

D'Angelo - Cruisin (Dallas Austin Remix)

D'Angelo featuring Redman - Me And Those Dreamin' Eyes Of Mine (Def Squad Remix) (1996) (HQ)

D'Angelo ft. Kool G. Rap - Brown Sugar (Beatminerz Remix)

also fuck w/ the second half of this much more than the first half

― fapper don (J0rdan S.), Sunday, 27 May 2012 16:40 (6 hours ago) Bookmark

funny, the opposite is what i recall but i'll listen again tmro

Lady is my favourite song of his. I could listen to that bass line forever.

― Kitchen Person, Sunday, May 27, 2012 8:06 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bass line on Brown Sugar is a little mo better. Has a little more roll to it. Bass lines all over this album tho obv.

Might vote Higher although Lady is the sure win here, deservedly of course. First slow dance with my wife was soundtracked by Lady. Love the coda on it, just let that beat and D's vocals ride out for a few minutes, bothers me none.

"Lady" is my least favorite of the singles. Love the Primo remix tho. I'm stuck between the other three and "Shit, Damn, Motherfucker".

oh shit this is hard. somewhere between alright, cruisin, when we get by and dreamy eyes

and the rest of the album

urgh dreamy? dreamin'.

Still one of my favorite albums period.

Brown Sugar
Me and Those Dreamin' Eyes of Mine
Lady
Cruisin'
all the rest

bit the bullet and voted for "Eyes"

what a great album! haven't listened to it in over a year it seems. I'll relax and listen to this tonight.

I voted the title track.

Was sort of worried about the neighbors; This thing has a lot of bass for 2am relaxing.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

not enough votes :(

shit, damn, motherfuckers on ilm have lousy taste

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11XaUKsMU8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRBrvhKiMs0

YUUUP

People rag on polls but when it comes to albums like this one, great conversations, stories, and awesome youtubes abound

bumpin this hard today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1tY6dQAtmo

"lady" may be his best single song

Yeah I agree with that.

Surprised this poll got so few votes.

I've never liked the OG version much tbh. Something about the production that I can't put my finger on bothers me.

hmm I kinda hear that actually maybe. The bass sound always seemed a little muddy to me. It's the only song on the album that has the bass mixed like that.

yeah, I think the muddiness of the bass is exactly it

put that in contrast to the perfect bass sound on Brown Sugar. or even like Devils Pie, which crawls as deep as Lady but still maintains it's clarity

alright

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I_dMmPcv-E

late pass smh at this

You know, this album might still be his best.

I quietly agree

fuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Nooooo

the goat

Christ on a bike.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/dangelo-dead-obit-obituary-1235446878/

it's so... very him to go out this way :( rest in power you absolute genius and gift to the world

No!

Three albums in 30 years.

51 is so young

I wonder how long this was going on. :(

he had to bow out of roots picnic earlier this year

Three albums in 30 years.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 14, 2025 12:35 PM (three minutes ago)

and the last one has never sounded more relevant than it has this year

Three albums in 30 years.

I was thinking about how he somehow remained a major presence, or a potential one at least, the whole time. Even the decade since Black Messiah, there felt like the possibility he'd re-emerge again with something. R.I.P. So glad I got to see him on the Black Messiah tour, one of most feel-good shows I've been to. (Too short because it was a festival set, but just terrific.)

RIP. What a talent.

and each one of those albums sounds like nothing like the one before

Truly sad for the child he shared with Angie Stone who also passed this year

children rather

that “sometimes it snows in april” cover that J0rdan posted upthread still hits like freight train :( :( :(

Damn, that really sucks. I'll never forget the beginning of that First Ave show, when the crowd went totally silent, then let out a cheer like nothing I've ever heard before. Sometimes life's moments are gifts, and that was truly one of them.
:(

I don't remember that moment, lol. But I do remember lots of other beautiful moments from that show (and also how much my knees hurt by the time they actually took the stage, ha).

Oh damn, I didn't even know about Angie Stone. :(

The closest I think I’ll ever get to a religious experience was that 2015 tour.

He is my favourite artist. Voodoo is my favourite album. All 3 are perfect.

I’ve never really got sad about artists dying. They are people I don’t know. But I’m sad tonight. 51 is way too young.

As I type, I’m listening to the band laughing at the end of Chicken Grease. It is a moment of pure joy.

Live At The Jazz Cafe rerelease is really hitting <3

Prefecture, this (kinda lame) review of that show mentions Questlove sitting in with the opening band, pretty sure that didn't happen right? He was just DJing inbetween, unless I've completely blanked it out of my memory. The opening band was fun though (Eric Leeds, Petar Janjic, a bunch of Mpls heavies).

https://www.startribune.com/review-d-angelo-burns-brightly-at-first-avenue/325479831

show i saw during the 2015 tour (nyc) had chris dave on drums

Same for Mpls, and Pino.

Such sad news. I recently put on Black Messiah again and cautiously hoped we would get new music from him since it's been ten years. I had no idea he was even sick

this is the worst news, he was truly the greatest, his discography is unmatched

Jordan - you might be right, although I cannot confirm since I was only at the 2013 duo show. I am still thankful I got to see him (and Questlove) at least once, but damn, i would have definitely loved to also have seen that 9/2015 performance

I played through the discography today and was struck by the way "Playa Playa" and "Ain't That Easy" open their respective albums — in both cases, rather than making some hurrah of reintroducing him, they kind of drop in media res into D'Angelo's workshop, like you can feel it all taking shape around you, and eventually the murk resolves into grooves, and he's just there, doing the thing. Almost like the albums conjure him, or his essence precedes his presence.

Making sure we all know about this, released during lockdown days:

https://ianwallaceproductions.bandcamp.com/album/dangelo-live

A live mixtape I compiled and mixed for Okayplayer a few years ago under my old artist name (Sam Champ). Mostly performances from the Voodoo tour.

I played through the discography today and was struck by the way "Playa Playa" and "Ain't That Easy" open their respective albums — in both cases, rather than making some hurrah of reintroducing him, they kind of drop in media res into D'Angelo's workshop, like you can feel it all taking shape around you, and eventually the murk resolves into grooves, and he's just there, doing the thing. Almost like the albums conjure him, or his essence precedes his presence.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 14 October 2025 22:01 (one hour ago)

Yes Ive always loved this quality

Agreed, it’s like being invited over to someone’s house and as soon as you step you get this wonderful, comforting aroma of home cooking.

I opened this thread like three times, each time mindlessly feeling surprised that Shit Damn Motherfucker only got one vote and am only now seeing the news

yea something like that
omg are you fucking kidding me

absolutely brutal. rest in power

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOndQVYx7n0

been listening to this fantastic performance this morning, seems to be the best video of his 2015 tour?

Terrible news, my friend texted me early this morning once the news hit, had to run to the computer to play some for everyone I work with...only one of them had ever heard of him. (They're not music people, so to speak).

Forgot to add: they were all impressed.

This is from the Bonnaroo show I saw, just so good. This was an 11 p.m. slot, so it was late-night party time. The whole tent was sweaty and dancing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Y-v58qApo

love the version of “she came in through the bathroom window” they did during that superjam. down and dirty

Yeah that was a few years earlier, I wasn't there that year. I was bummed I missed it when I saw he'd shown up. The videos of it are great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmV9HbMSpls
live brazil, 2000

i'd be pretty surprised if there isn't a posthumous album that ends up being completed by some of his close collaborators, we know he had another half album's worth of material from the black messiah sessions that was fairly close to completion, and that he'd used that as the starting point for the next album. it sounded like sessions had been going pretty well in recent years too.

one of the tracks that almost made black messiah and was at least initially intended for the follow-up is his cover of bob marley's "burnin' and lootin'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ik1Hb7v2dk

there's supposed to be a lot of other unfinished material in the vaults too, but most probably isn't very close to completion. we know he'd been digging through some of that for the next album too though, like raphael saadiq mentioned last year that d'angelo had recently been working on some old material that the two of them had written & recorded with q-tip in the 90s

another thing that's supposed to be in the vaults is a fully mixed voodoo tour live album. questlove said there was at one stage a plan to put that out with a few of the new studio tracks in 2010

this really feels more devastating than this sort of thing usually is, he's way too young and i could still believe he had his best work ahead of him

has anyone seen questlove say anything?

I think the silence is the response.

i would be more surprised if there isn’t a posthumous album than if there is

It's astonishing just to see that band from the Black Messiah tour, they're all leaders on their own and the absolute best out there (Chris Dave, Pino, Sharkey, etc). They probably don't go on the road for just anybody and uniting behind D feels like the the bes possible use of their powers.

I think it's actually really heavy that none of his close collaborators have posted anything publicly yet (that I've seen).

Ben Kane posted this song with a story about D playing this record for him in the studio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unaIWfo_3VE

Relistened to the discography over the past two days— it is remarkable what an artistic achievement Black Messiah is, kind of a wild decision to revisit Sly’s “Riot” and then do a lap around it— and the way it slips from extremely funny to deeply sad so easily, it’s just amazing

xxxxxpost - great post tipsy, that really captures it

The whistle in "The Door" is the best, most cheerful hook he ever wrote.

he really blended classic 70s soul and R&B with hip hop in such an organic way, like didn't do a lot of explicit hip hop production stuff but the way his drums were, they just knocked in a classic boom bap way where the person couldn't have come up in the 70s, it had to be post hip hop

like Prince, being older, always felt pretty ham-fisted when he tried to engage with hip hop or new jack swing

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DP1nWmUDq7T/?igsh=MXdpNzF4dnhlOWl4OQ==

D’Angelo hear talking about growing up in Richmond hearing the falsetto of the Legendary Ingramettes, a great Richmond Virginia gospel group that have always wowed me when I saw them live

Thanks, love the Violinaires stuff.

Here's that whole Bonnaroo show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--xfhJ9e3ok

And this in-studio gospel jam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeMpZNpfWcA

Hell of a good Israel Daramola piece here -- gift link:

https://defector.com/waiting-on-dangelo?giftLink=3b6670924465bafd25fdb2a5be603428

That’s a great piece.

great piece, but c'mon:

Out of his entire collection of nearly a thousand CDs, I found a literal handful of modern pop records, one of which was ABBA (I would love to find out what hold this band has on every person in the entire world born after 1950).

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DP1Xv7vjXx2/?igsh=MXhtZ3FsbzgzdDAybw==

D'Angelo doing dc go-go greatest hits

"really love" is the entirety of prince's career in a single song

Huh, I don't get much of a Prince vibe from that one, either the melody or the feel. I think of Prince's melodies as not moving as much and being inseparable from the lyric, where I think you could play 'Really Love' on any instrument and it would translate.

Been listening a lot to the Violinaires btw.

The YouTube algorithm bearing more gifts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu4k9Crulyo

https://www.instagram.com/p/DQb6lVyEb8x/

https://www.thefader.com/2025/11/11/unreleased-dangelo-music-could-be-coming-soon questlove's teasing that a posthumous album's on the way but it's questlove so who knows how long it'll actually be