>Thoughts ?

Really good album with lots of good songs to dig into. I'd love to hear the vocals with less shenanigans on them to decide for myself if I'd be better off with more clarity. I know for sure that it would make my street-teaming efforts easier. But hell...I rode around with the booklet to Voodoo for months. And I'd sit in the car with it and just listen over and over..I damn near studied that album.

>favourite tracks?

Most of em could be my favorite at any time. For now...

Till Its Done: The 'groove'. The drums. The vocals. It all 'goes together' better than anything else on the album (besides Really Love). The Marvin Gaye 'what's going on: all in one song'-ness of it. The La la laaaaaaaaaaaaaaa part is special. 'Are you there?' gets me every time too.

I turned a corner on Sugah Daddy BIGTIME. That's the song I listen to over and over most often now. The way the 2nd verse ends with the 'meaningless romance' line but he just keeps coming up with stuff to say about how cold the chick is and how he's convinced that he's gonna evade his better judgement at least long enough to be her sugah daddy. 'She crossed her fingers when she said her vowwwwws'. Cold-blooded!

Another Life..If I'm ever gonna be a big rusty dude crying at a concert, it'll probably be sometime during this song. I'm almost not overwhelmed by it anymore but I still dig it so much. The 'E' rhymes throughout! The way he extends the 'E' to say 'sleep' on the 1st verse and 'compete' on the 2nd is so piercing to me. The sitar. The dueling D'Lo part at 4:30. And the wording is so longing and submissive to the desire..cats don't crush on chicks like that on record anymore. Mack Wilds was kinda there but not at this level. Cats are too cool for this type of Winnie Cooper/Kevin Arnold but grown shit. "I got a craving for confection so swEEEEEt". "I wanna touch in all the placing the plEEEEEase". Just grand.

>was it worth the wait?

The idea that D'Angelo was no more had all but sunk in with me YEARS ago, so I wasn't even really 'waiting' anymore per se. So the fact that this album exists AND I like it...it has to be a yes. I refuse to not appreciate it even if I can now admit to being selfishly ticked that a damn good artist like D fell into all that he fell into to make his catalog have this big of a gap. He's basically been absent for my whole adult post-college life until now. Bullshit! And it drifted me away from most of his catalog. One Mo Gin, Heaven Must Be Like this, Untitled, Lady and Dreaming Eyes of Mine almost pissed me off at some point. That's my pre-BM D'Angelo top five probably.

>does it fill that missing void?

Probably not. But it easily reminded me that I had been operating WITH a void. AKA it let me know that I had been bullshitting with the way I had been listening to most music because I could get away with sleep-listening to most stuff without missing too much. My speakers in the car were aight but they weren't real. Not using the M50x joints for all music was a lazy mistake. The 15" old school floor speakers I have in the living room weren't being done justice or getting the proper work.

This shit reopened my listening pores and said 'naw...you're gonna listen! You're not too cool, smart, musically aware, and/or jaded..and if you are, cut it out and just listen!'. I do that for certain artist and every now and then in general, but I had been slacking.

I love feeling the way I felt in 2001 when I was late-passing mad 70s albums.

Or when I was 6 years old listening to Thriller OVER AND OVER again with the album cover and words sitting in front of me.

Or when I was in high school and I 'rediscovered' Prince with my more aware ears and realized that he had ran a LOT of stuff by me as a kid.

Side: My parents would skip Barry's Love Serenade when I was around, so I basically didn't hear that song until I was older. I'd hear 'TAKE IT OFF' then someone would get up and take the needle off by the time he was saying 'panties'. I knew something was up.

I also remember the feeling when I got old enough to REALLY love the mood of Maze. Golden Time of Day, Happy Feelings..you know, that old close your eyes and see sunset and just love life shit. Black Messiah gives me some of those feelings again. That's gotta be good for me.

Jimaveli