Then
Now
Okay, so if you're like me you wondered what ever happened to singer,
D'Angelo. It seems like after he put out
"Untitled (How Does It Feel)" he just disappeared. And that was back in 2000 which was the height of his career. And I was feeling both albums.
He brought you songs like "
Brown Sugar", "
You're My Lady", "
Cruisin'" (yea a Smokey Remake), and one of my personal favorites "
Sh*t, D*mn, M*thaF*cka." lol
Anyways, he never released a third LP due to drug and alcohol abuse.
So getting to the point, in the August 2008 Issue of Spin Magazine, his former manager Dominique Trenier blames the “Untitled” video for D’Angelo’s downfall. According to Trenier, he pushed D’Angelo to do the video “naked” which opened him up to a new fan base who only came to his shows to see him take off his clothes:
“We couldn’t get through one song before women would start to scream for him to take off something” says Hargrove. “It wasn’t about the music. All they wanted was for him to take off his clothes.”
The cat calls had an undeniable effect on D’Angelo. “He’d get angry and started breaking sh*t,” Thompson remembers. “The audience thinking, “f*ck your art, I wanna see your ass!” made him angry”.
For D’Angelo, who, as Trenier puts it, “isn’t a sexy dude” but a “real
musician who wears glasses and plays video games,” the objectification appeared to do lasting damage. “I didn’t realize how vulnerable he was or how deep his issues ran.” Says Leeds. “He’s cursed now with fretting over how much of his fan base is because of how he looked as opposed to his music. It took away his confidence, because he’s not convinced why any given fan is supporting
him.
“I feel really guilty, because that was never the intention” Trenier
says. “Untitled wasn’t supposed to be his mission statement for Voodoo. I’m glad the video did what it did, but he and I were both disappointed because, to this day, in the general public’s memory, he’s the naked dude.” - Spin Magazine August 2008 Issue
The article went on to say that D’Angelo had strong roots in the church and struggled with the feeling of selling his soul to the devil because of his music.
He didn't enter the industry looking all buff and that in fact he was chunky, nerdy kid in glasses.
They made him work out to pull the video off and the newfound attention took a toll on his self esteem. He was a real musician who wanted people to buy his records and attend his shows for the “art” but he felt as though they were only buying his records because he exposed his body.
..Well I raise my hand proudly to say that I was one of the individuals who, when the "Untitled" video came on, would walk up to the TV and look down thinking that I was gonna see what the camera was not showin lol.
I loved and still loved his music. I'm just mad that he went from looking like that to looking like ODB (R.IP)..
Well, for good measure:
Now
