‘He was one of a kind’: radio host and music industry coach Dyana Williams remembers D’Angelo
The Black Music Month founder knew the R&B and funk singer even before he delivered his "first industry performance" in Philadelphia, back in 1995.
In 1995, before the release of his debut album Brown Sugar, the singer Michael Archer — now known to the world as D’Angelo — showcased his talents to music industry insiders at the International Association of African American Music conference in Philadelphia.
“It was his first industry performance,” recalls Dyana Williams, the IAAAM conference organizer and Black Music Month Founder who was working with the then-21-year-old D’Angelo as a music industry coach.
“It was a lunchtime showcase at a hotel, and after that performance, people got it. They lost their minds, because all these people [had] worked with Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield — they had worked with the greats. And they knew what they were hearing, they knew what they were seeing.”
What they were seeing was D’Angelo. The singer, songwriter, and funk bandleader died at age 51 of pancreatic cancer at Memorial Sloane Kettering hospital in New York, on Tuesday.
Raised in Virginia, he played the piano and started performing in his father’s Pentecostal church by the time he was 4 years old. He went on to build a career in which he carried on the legacy of the great Black artists whose spirits shaped his singular, sensual music.
D’Angelo was famous for working at his own pace, and frequently working with Philadelphia musicians, particularly Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and keyboard player James Poyser. Both of them were members of the Soulquarians, which backed D’Angelo on his 2000 sinewy, soulful masterpiece Voodoo.
Being a D’Angelo follower meant waiting for the perfectionist, who battled writer’s block and only released three albums in his lifetime, to complete new music.
While Philly fans waited for a Voodoo follow-up, the multi-instrumentalist performed at the first Made in America festival on the Ben Franklin Parkway in 2012, and Questlove and other members of the Roots backed him up at the Theater of Living Arts on South Street the next year.
In 2014, he returned with Black Messiah, recorded with his backing band the Vanguard. A tour in 2015 brought him to the Keswick Theatre in Glenside. That turned out to be his final Philadelphia area performance, because a much-anticipated headline gig at the Roots Picnic this past June was canceled in the week before the show, with Maxwell stepping in as a replacement.
That was due to health reasons. D’Angelo was diagnosed and went into the hospital shortly after canceling his Picnic performance, said Williams, who remained close with the singer.
His illness interrupted work on new music that the singer had been making with producer Raphael Saadiq. “With Michael, in his mind, new music was never, ever done,” Williams said, adding that the music that he did release is “enough to last a lifetime — several lifetimes, in fact.”
D’Angelo, was her third client as an industry coach, Williams said in an interview on Tuesday. The second was Angie Stone, the singer who died in a car accident in Alabama earlier this year and with whom D’Angelo had a son, Michael Archer Jr. He also had a daughter and a son from other relationships. Williams said the singer, who had been in hospice for two weeks, was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, early on Tuesday morning.
Williams coached D’Angelo on music industry do’s and don’t’s and how to conduct himself with the media and fans, but she didn’t have to teach him anything about being a star.
“He had swagger,” she said. “I mean, come on! He had more swagger in his pinky nail … Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, Prince: all his heroes were embodied in him. He was a student. He was a pupil. He studied very carefully.
“And he was humble, no matter what. I was at his house and he had his Grammy in a box on the kitchen counter. I was like ‘Take the Grammy out of the box!’
“But he wasn’t that kind of person. He was very aware of his gifts, and he never took it for granted. Michael was very humble. He was very intense and passionate, but he embodied cool. He was one of a kind.”