Dear D'Angelo

..because it's really love.

D’Angelo,

I don’t even know where to start, except maybe with the way your music still feels like a living thing. Not something left behind, but something breathing, moving, sanctified. You left us this week, and it’s like the air itself shifted.

You were one of the first people who made me believe I could create my own way and mean it. You came outta Richmond, and I’m from just an hour down the road in Farmville. Same soil. Same trees. Same hot ass air that hums different once summer hits. So when I saw you move the way you did, when I saw somebody from here bend music into something divine, it cracked something open in me. You gave me permission to create like I wasn’t supposed to fit into nobody’s box.

I don’t have many good memories with my mama. Our story is jagged, half-forgotten in the way that grief and survival blur things..but she gave me you. That Voodoo album? That was one of the few good ones I do have with her. I remember her blasting “Send It On” while cleaning the house so loud our double wide would vibrate, and how I would sit in my room and feel the bass shake me from the inside. How “Playa Playa” would fill the house like a benediction that she sealed her cleaning with…because she never played the album in order.

Ever.

The house would smell like Awesome cleaner and felt like a hug, and for a minute.. just a minute ..everything felt okay.

That album was four years old by the time I heard it after moving back in with my mom, and it cracked something open in me before I had language for what it was. It was safety as I navigated how unsafe I felt.

I didn’t know yet that I was a Hoodoo. I didn’t know that the very spirit moving through those songs was the same current I’d come to live by… the conjure that hides inside Black sound. How you can hear the church all up and through your sound..but you made it feel…different.

Did you know you were a conjure man? I’m pretty sure you did.

You don’t create the way you did and not know that.

That was the first time I felt music feel possessed. The first time I understood that art could be conjure, that sound could be spirit..I just didn’t have the language for what I was feeling as a teenager.

Even now, when I write..you’re there. Playa Playa, The Root, Chicken Grease, Devil’s Pie..they sneak into my writing playlists. There’s something about how you build tension and release it..it’s how I try to write. You taught me how to sit in a feeling, how to not rush the art, how to make it mean something.

As a creative from the SOUF, as a Black writer trying to carve my own way through the noise, I think that’s what you gave me most: permission. Permission to move slow. To create from the gut. To treat every word like a note, every paragraph like a prayer..to build the tension until I feel like I can’t breathe and then only when I’m ready..release my words into the page like a protection.

When I heard you passed, I went quiet. No tears, just stillness..just me and my coffee. I think it’s ‘cause you’re one of them artists who felt eternal. But even in your passing, you reminded me what legacy really means, and legacy is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. It’s not about being known (I’d rather not be perceived honestly..) it’s about being felt. You made us feel. You reminded us of who we are and who we have the capacity to be as creatives.

“I’m gon’ put my finga on the trigga..gonna pull it..we gon’ see..”

Your transition made me wanna create like I mean it. To build something that outlives me. To make words that hold people the way your music holds me.

So… thank you, D. For showing what’s possible when you create from the soul. For giving the Souf another sound to be proud of. For leaving a map for the rest of us who are still trying to make magic.

As a side note: my brother Jay did an amazing set tonight in tribute of D’Angelo that I encourage you to check out: D'Angelo Tribute

Rest easy, legend. Love and light to your transition.
Your sound still lingers.
Your spirit still hums through the red dirt.
And the girl who left her heart at her grandfather’s grave somewhere in Virginia, the girl who grew up an hour away.. is still playing Voodoo and learning how to create like she means it.

Two up, two down.

Mec