D’Angelo had already proven a transformative R&B figure as a 21-year-old with his 1995 debut LP Brown Sugar, scoring hits and winning awards and growing the movement that would ultimately be known as neo-soul. And when his sophomore album Voodoo arrived in 2000, it topped the Billboard 200 — helped by the success of its gorgeous ballad single “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” and its nakedly vulnerable (and also just naked) music video — while drawing rave reviews. But instead of marking just the beginning of D’Angelo’s superstardom, it also marked its end, as he grew wary of the kind of attention the MTV-conquering clip earned him, and ultimately disappeared from music making altogether.
This month on the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, our Vintage Pop Stardom spin-off series Vintage Almost-Pop Stardom is welcoming on first-time guests to look at really interesting artists during years in which they brushed up against pop stardom, but perhaps never quite got all the way there. We’ve already discussed 1995 Björk, 2005 Paul Wall and 2011 Bon Iver, and this week we close with 2000 D’Angelo, who sadly died at age 51 earlier this October. The Vulture writer Craig Jenkins (who wrote an excellent D’Angelo remembrance after his passing) looks back with us to the year when D’Angelo got a real taste of pop stardom — during an extremely big moment for extremely big pop music — and quickly found it unpalatable, as the things that his fans and his label wanted from him proved wildly incompatible with the things he most cared about as an artist and performer.
Along the way, we ask all the most important questions about 2000 D’Angelo: Does the myth overwhelm the reality when it comes to Voodoo? What did people get wrong about the “Untitled” video? Who were the most important members of the album’s supporting cast? Was “Untitled” logical makeout music for A.J. Soprano? Is it wildly inappropriate to compare peak Childish Gambino to peak D’Angelo? And perhaps most importantly: Was there any world where D’Angelo didn’t disappear for a decade after Vooodoo — or where we got a fourth album after Black Messiah?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most important moments from D’Angelo’s 2000, all of which are discussed in the podcast — and subscribe to both the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for great new episodes every Thursday!
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Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Also, please consider giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org.
