D'Angelo

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

D'Angelo's real name was Michael Eugene Archer, and he was born in 1974 in Richmond, Virginia. His father was a minister in a Pentecostal church, and as a child he played piano in church. With his group Precise he won Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem three times in a row in 1991. He then moved to New York. His first success came in 1994 with U Will Know, a song he wrote and produced for the R&B supergroup Black Men United.

Music and breakthrough

His debut album Brown Sugar appeared in 1995. D'Angelo played many of the instruments himself and drew on the soul of the 1970s, with warm keyboards, slow grooves and layered vocals. Critics see the album as the beginning of neo-soul. He collaborated with Erykah Badu and sang the duet Nothing Even Matters (1998) with Lauryn Hill. In 2000 came Voodoo, a looser and rawer album that entered at the top of the Billboard 200 and won a Grammy. The video for Untitled (How Does It Feel) made him a sex symbol against his will.

Influence

After that, D'Angelo withdrew. He struggled with depression and addiction, and only in 2014 did his third and last album appear, Black Messiah, which was again awarded a Grammy. He died in 2025 of pancreatic cancer, while working on a fourth album. With only three albums he became one of the most important names in R&B around the turn of the century.

Listening

• 
  Brown Sugar · D'Angelo, 1995
  Apple Music ↗
• 
  I'll Stay · Roy Hargrove (The RH Factor) met D'Angelo, 2003

Discography

Studio albums

• 1995Brown Sugar
• 2000Voodoo
• 2014Black Messiah

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 6: Fear of a Black Planet^NL Reader
• After Hours: Session 4^NL Reader

Mentioned in other articles

• Neo-soul GenreNeo-soul is R&B that harked back to the soul of the 1970s, with Erykah Badu and D'Angelo, among others.