Review: D’Angelo & Friends do Verzuz, a soulful salve in a pandemic winter
Soul singer and bandleader D'Angelo put his own spin on the Verzuz livestream music series, performing at the Apollo Theater.
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Competition is built into the name of Verzuz, the popular online R&B and hip-hop series that has pit acts against one another in livestream battles during the pandemic.
But D’Angelo is not one for musical one-upmanship. Rather than face off against an alleged equal a la Verzuz tussles such as Rick Ross v. 2 Chainz or Patti LaBelle v. Gladys Knight, the generous-spirited neo-soul singer chose to reach out to peers rather than square off against them.
His Verzuz, streamed Saturday night on Instagram Live and Apple Music, was called D’Angelo & Friends.
And who would those friends be? That was the question going into the event staged at the Apollo Theater in New York.
Would it be a cathartic blowout, with a band perhaps anchored by Roots drummer Questlove, who anchored the singer’s seductive 2000 album Voodoo? Or something more intimate, with a slow-cooking, poly-rhythmic approach suitable to a cozy quarantine evening?
He opted for the latter. Joined by DJ Scratch, D’Angelo entered dressed in a full-length fur coat with his broad-brimmed Canadian Mounties-style campaign hat cocked just so.
Playing and singing over his own records spun by Scratch, the singer switched between acoustic and electric piano, applying his supple falsetto to hypnotic songs from Voodoo as well as 1995′s Brown Sugar and 2014′s Black Messiah.
A tantalizing taste of new material was offered in an untitled slow jam opener accompanied by trumpeter Keyon Harrold that eased into Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’.”
Rappers Method Man and Redman came out for “Left & Right” and “Break Ups 2 Make Up.” And D’Angelo himself seemed surprised by the arrival of singer-guitarist H.E.R., with whom he paired for her “Best Part” and Lauryn Hill’s “Nothing Even Matters.”
But the real thrill was the sound of D’Angelo back in action, with such songs as the percolating “Devil’s Pie” and erotic masterpiece “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” acting as a soul-comforting salve most welcome in a pandemic winter.