This day last year I gave a talk about an album I’m working on called Deadhead. I didn’t sleep until like 4 am that morning trying to make a mix of 'lace,' and my words, listenable. This video is the best of those words. I wrote 'thesis day' a few weeks later about pretty much everything on my mind at the time except my thesis. It all just overflowed. The sun peered into my studio as I wrote the piano part and it blinded me but it also jolted me awake. It possessed me enough to know that I couldn’t leave anything on the cutting floor…say it plainly or don’t say it at all. It was around the same time my body started giving out, probably warning me that I was about to have the gnarliest health issues of my life in the second half of the year. (U shouldn't stay up until 4am or it will get worse.) The title of the song will never live up to what I felt but that’s kind of like this speech too. It was a day that proved that a year long project wasn’t just a cathartic mess, and even if it was/is a room full of my family friends and peers weren’t gonna let me know hahah But anyway here it is:
a life that’s mine.
Pedalling potions
dead weight
& exceptions
I THINK I listened to this beat almost every day between 2022 and 2024. I don’t know why it gave me so much comfort at that time, BUT IT got to a point where I'd listen every night Night before bed. THE MOST MEMORABLE NIGHTS WERE IN THE SPRINGTIME OF 2022 AFTER AN ESPECIALLY severe WINTER, WHEN I WAS FINALLY ABLE TO sit outside noticing that THE AIR had changed from the kind that bites you to the kind that invites YOU. IF YOU had been Between MY headphones WHEN “INST. #5” CAME ON - i wish you had been - you might FIND A BRAIN EXPANDING, other times filled with frustration THAT I WASN'T A BETTER MUSICIAN, and sometimes (though not very often) inspired enough to RETREAT TO MY STUDIO downstairs and SLOPPILY rehash WHAT I'D HEARD.
BUT THE MAIN TAKEAWAY:
“how the fuck WAS THIS a throwaway?”
That question was usually prompted after hearing (and then replaying) the B-section near the end (SEE 5:37), a part that IS THE BEST OF all the cool ideas d'ANGELO teases out for the first five minutes. IT'S one of those musical moments you can't believe exists, the kind OF shock to your system that HAPPENS so rarely AND throws you on this individual planE of experience JUST LIKE When HE asks “won't you come closer?” ON “UNTITLED." I'M LISTENING TO IT AS I WRITE. STILL stunned. There’s A comment I ALWAYS scroll by: @F1PLANETRAINGUY-FUN says he “Bust’d a MADD NUTT @ 5:37.” ME TOO. 5:37 dOESN'T necessarily elicit an out-of-body experience, it’s definitely one more akin to a “MADD NUTT," that ends SO abruptly at 6:24, as soon as you want more OF IT. SIX MINUTES IS PRETTY GOOD THOUGH, NO?
YOU CAN HEAR D'ANGELO TESTING OUT HIS SIGNATURE FENDER RHODES GOING THROUGH A WAH-WAH PEDAL IN the early seconds of “Inst #5." it sounds a bit different from how he would dial in that tone and MAKE IT THE signature sound of Brown Sugar. LESS WAH-WAH, I THINK. “INST #5” WAS presumably recorded during the brown sugar sessions, BUT THE WAY IT ENDED UP ON YOUTUBE ALMOST 25 YEARS LATER HAS been so BENT OUT OF SHAPE AND compressed THAT you can't tell whether these mysterious “blips" (SEE 0:47, 2:10, 2:25, 3:59) are the WORK OF THE FENDER rhodes or THE guitar. it's just THESE WEIRD CLIPPing noISES of both instruments coalescing, AND THEY'RE DISTINCT TO THIS PIECE. WHETHER THE low-fidelity EXPERIENCE OF “INST #5” WAS INTENTIONAL OR NOt, more “madd nutts” to be busted. so sick.
i didn't realize it at the time, but EVERY NIGHT I WENT OUTSIDE (EVEN ON THE RAINIEST ONES IN APRIL), i was engaged in a sort of ritual. despite how I SOMETIMES FELT ABOUT the world or the man i was becoming in it (still very much becoming), I went TO BED FEELING grounded. it was like a meditation. D'ANGELO'S music WAS fertile soil. AND SOMETIMES IT QUITE LITERALLY BROUGHT US OUTDOORS: THE PERCUSSION textures of “really love” makes a rim shot and a finger snap sound like twigs being softly crushed by a boot. THIS IS ONLY ONE EXAMPLE. but MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT WAS HOW HE ACKNOWLEDGED AND ADDED TO A beautiful tradition of black music, inscribING in that tradition his own little SIGNATUREs.
"IT'S JUST A BEAT!"
i would've loved a d'angelo beat tape. FOR ME, SOUNDS HELP ENCOURAGE DISCOVERY more often than words CAN (THOUGH D'S WORDS ARE EQUALLY AS BRILLIANT). D'ANGELO LET THE MUSIC DO THE WORK FOR him. SPEAK THROUGH IT AS YOU WILL, or don't (on “inst #5,” d'angelo vocalizes ONLY once – see 4:43-5:00). THIS BEAT IS special because it shows evidence of a process being realized. he was testing shit out. when it comes to my heroes, i like knowing THAT THEIR technical PROWESS was CONSTANTLY DEVELOPING, and that nobody, NOT EVEN OUR MOST SKILLED MAESTROS, arrive at brilliance OVERNIGHT. D'ANGELO WAS POSSESSED BY an INCREDIBLE APTITUDE for many things, YES, BUT HE WAS ALSO DEEPLY AWARE THAT it could only be realized through a slow process THAT WORKED FOR HIM. HE WAS a patient artist whose best work came out on his own schedule. AMID THE FLURRY OF TRIBUTES ON INSTAGRAM LAST WEEK, GHAIS GUEVARA PUT IT BEST: “SEVERAL YEARS BETWEEN ALBUMS MEANS SOMETHING. IT MEANS A PROMISE AND A COMMITMENT. A KNOWLEDGE OF SELF ENOUGH TO GO: ‘I CAN’T GIVE YOU WHAT I PROMISED AS AN ARTIST, SO ALLOW ME GRACE FOR NOW'”. this is not only A beautiful way to remember OUR legends, it is absolutely necessary.
THANK YOU D'ANGELO FOR proceeDING when YOU WERE ready. I HOPE YOU WERE READY FOR WHAT'S NEXT TOO, WHERVER THAT IS.
WE'LL DO WHAT WE CAN
-C