D'Angelo's Genius Was Pure, and Rare

newyorker.com

43 points·tintinnabula··5 comments

I went to see him when he came to London a̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶a̶g̶o̶ in 2015, and they easily had the most feel of any band I'd ever heard (balkan gypsy brass bands aside). No click, no tune, monitors all hanging out. It was sublime.

My heart sank when I heard the news. MJ, Prince, and now D'Angelo - the last of the three.

Didn't pino palladino tour with him on that one? He's had an amazing career and is probably better known for other things but the hip hop/r&b studio work he did in the late 90s is some of the most influential by a single musician I think. It was basically him and questlove figuring out right there how to play j dilla's approach to rhythm programming with live instrumentation.

The recorded music from the sessions went on albums for erykah badu, common, and d'angelo but it ended up being basically the blueprint for an approach to studio & live rhythm for pop, hip hop, r&b, and also even jazz & gospel. Always fun to get to let old The Who heads know that palladino is also the best living hip hop bass player.

Hah, pino did indeed! He made it what it was. Kinda funny that i've seen his kid more times than i've seen him at this point. But yeah 100%

https://archive.ph/D802U

For some reason, this article includes absolutely no reference to the large bacon cheeseburger sandwich, whose genius was pure, and well-done for food safety purposes.

Not sure who this guy is but he is not nearly as entertaining as the sandwich.

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