D’Angelo: "Sugah Daddy"
Front page photo by Greg Harris
One way to stay relevant after 14 years is by sticking to things that won’t go away. There will always be men and women and sex and love and money—along with the endless tensions that follow. Money will cloud the godliness of man; love will screw-up money; sex will make love harder; men will love sex more than money; women will love money more than sex. The permutations are infinite.
Pop history knows this, and D’Angelo knows pop history: There was Mary Martin brushing away would-be suitors to the tune of Cole Porter on “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in 1938; Ray Charles singing the praises of a well-heeled lady friend on “I Got a Woman” in 1954; Nina Simone pining for satisfaction on “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” in 1967; a 13-year-old Michael Jackson wailing about wanting to “be your sugar daddy” even though he knew better in 1971; Prince and Nikki and corvettes in the ’80s; all the way to Frank Ocean’s 2012 track “Pyramids”, which sources the origins of destructive love and greed back to ancient Egypt.
On “Sugah Daddy”, D’Angelo gleefully wraps himself up in this imperfect past. His voice flits from left to right and around, like he’s playing the confused horndog as well as the angel and devil on his shoulders. His solution to the problems of ids and super-egos involves something else that seems to stay through eras and ages: groove. Courtesy of D, longtime bassist Pino Palladino, 75-year-old living-legend drummer James Gadson, and some of the swingingest horns and handclaps since, well, Voodoo, the music of “Sugah Daddy” makes an amazing case for analog realness that could convert the most gleaming digiratti. But, as always, D isn’t forcing anything. He’s doing his thing, laying in the cut. Human nature will be there.
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