After nearly three hours and two encores, D'Angelo had the audience at the Apollo in the pocket of his cotton drop-crotch harem pants. Halfway through a fifteen minute rendition of "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" that would eventually end in a theater-wide singalong, his voice growing to a register that rips Bibles and bodices, the singer violently shed the black shawl that had been covering his neck and shoulders. A shudder swept through the crowd as D'Angelo's band, The Vanguard, swelled behind him. "Oh, shit!" screamed a woman next to me, sounding genuinely surprised.
It wasn't his first time: D'Angelo brought down the same house as a 16-year-old amateur night contestant in 1991. The singer's struggle with substance abuse and "Kate Moss shit" has gnarled and enriched his legend, but compared to some recent shakier performances, he looked remarkably comfortable for his first full-length gig (on his late friend J Dilla's birthday, no less) since the release of Black Messiah in December.
"So if you're wondering about the shape I'm in / I hope it ain't my abdomen that you're referring to," D'Angelo sang in "Back to the Future (Part I)," patting his belly with a smile.
The sold-out crowd was just as thrilled with the older material; "Brown Sugar" brought a round of knowing glances and high-fives. A marathon, breakneck "Chicken Grease" felt like gospel.
"I know I'm probably going over the time limit, but," Michael Eugene Archer told the crowd with a shrug, before launching into another 16 sweat-drenched bars.
That was about the most stage banter D'Angelo mustered; he appeared mostly engaged with directing his sprawling band in and out of jams within songs within jams. The Vanguard includes Pino Palladino, "the greatest living electric-bass player," and former Prince guitarist Jesse Johnson, who was sharp as a tack and dressed like a mashup of Bo Diddly and Muammar Gaddafi.
The loudest thing in the room by a mile was D'Angelo's voice, which seemed about right.
On the way out onto 125th Street, the stunned crowd passed a man in a pinstripe suit holding a microphone with the Apollo's insignia on it.
"Does anyone have anything to say about tonight's performance?" he offered. "Would anyone like to say anything about D'Angelo at the Apollo?"
It's not that we didn't have anything to say, but what words could you use to say it?
