This feels blasphemous to say, so I’m just going to say it: It felt like I’d seen James Brown at the Apollo.
This past weekend D’Angelo and the Vanguard performed at FYF, a festival in Los Angeles. The hour-long set consisted mostly of cuts from 2014’s Black Messiah, but also a couple of fan-favorites from 2000’s Voodoo, including a delivery of Spanish Joint so smooth and sweet that I could’ve sworn that actual honey was dripping from the light fixtures.
But what stood out most was D’Angelo’s performance of The Charade. Good gracious, The Charade.
Before launching into the third track from Black Messiah, D’Angelo ordered the crowd to “Put up your fists for all the victims of police brutality. Hands up!”
Right then, it all came rushing back. The sorrow and grief for all the names of the black men, women, and children I never should’ve even known. The frustration I’ve felt at every non-indictment. The confusion and ultimately seething anger at how simple and benign the idea “Black Lives Matter” is, yet so often misunderstood, if not violently contested. The utter, suffocating despair of it all.
And then, I looked around. Every fist was in the air, and for what felt like the first time all weekend, not a single phone was out. Except for mine, of course. The moment was too good not to keep forever.
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He then launched into a cathartic rendition of The Charade, during which Jesse Woods Johnson (an OG guitarist that used to rip alongside Prince back in the day) melted all of our faces off with a searing solo.
D’Angelo closed out the set with a 10-minute version of Sugah Daddy during which the Virginia-born musician literally put his foot in the piano.
I’m sure you thought that I was joking about the “James Brown at the Apollo” thing, but I am dead serious.
D’Angelo swagged around the stage and played the band and the crowd alike. He cut the music and asked “Y’all ready to go home yet?” decided the answer didn’t really matter because he sure as hell wasn’t ready to leave, demanded the music back on the downbeat, and (of course) they gave it to him.
After re-appearing out of the smoke to perform Really Love clad in a huge fedora and a cape, he was down to a sweat-drenched tank top, bouncing around the stage with his bandana nearly falling off.
He couldn’t have cared less. And as far as I could tell, neither could any of us. Minus the one kid in a pre-distressed Green Day t-shirt complaining about how long the finale was taking.
Somebody did the right thing and barked back at him: “Boy if you don’t shut up … Can’t you see we’re at church?!”