While heartfelt tributes from influential musicians to D’Angelo have flooded social media since his passing on October 14th, fans have waited with anticipation for the thoughts of one artist in particular: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. On Thursday, Questlove finally broke his silence on D’Angelo’s passing with a powerful eulogy published via Rolling Stone entitled “The Burial Of Black Genius…..Aka D’Angelo Lives!” featuring more than a few novel insights into the late Michael Eugene Archer‘s mercurial mind.
Questlove, the famed leader of The Roots and Oscar-winning documentarian and historian, has been known to pay tribute to departing legends with thoughtful and thought-provoking reflections on their legacy, but two weeks went by without a public comment from him on D’Angelo’s unexpected death at age 51 following an unpublicized battle with cancer.
Related: D’Angelo In Memoriam: Thank You For Talkin’ To Me, Michael. [Feature]
Of course, that delay was understandable, if not expected: Alongside his work with The Roots and his ever-growing resume as a documentarian, Questlove is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking work with D’Angelo, both during their time as founding members of the Soulquarians collective and on the sessions and associated tours for D’s last two albums, 2000’s Voodoo and 2014’s Black Messiah.
While the two were famously close friends and collaborators, Questlove had on various occasions spoken about the worry he felt about D’Angelo and his struggles with fame and attention. As Thompson explained in 2019 D’Angelo documentary Devil’s Pie, he would have loved to play music with D’Angelo every day, but remained largely absent from the mercurial artist’s life during many of the years between Voodoo and Black Messiah due to D’s mental struggles with everyday things like leaving his house or showing up to jam sessions. “I think he has fears of being ‘the chosen one,’” Questlove noted in one interview clip. “I was living with a sense of dread [that] one of these days I’m gonna wake up and he’s not gonna be there,” he explained in another.
In Sly Lives (aka the Burden of Black Genius), Questlove’s recent documentary about Sly Stone and his tumultuous relationship with fame as a “Black genius,” D’Angelo is appropriately among the artists interviewed. The fact that the title of Thompson’s D’Angelo remembrance is a play on the title of the Sly Stone doc indicates the immense reverence he held for his departed brother from the article’s very first words.
“The Burial Of Black Genius…..Aka D’Angelo Lives!” is unsurprisingly moving given the personal context and is worth a read in full here (well said as always, Ahmir). Questlove also posted a pair of videos in which he reads the piece out loud and embellishes on certain sections (see below). In the meantime, we’ve highlighted a few of the passages and insights that most stood out to us from the Questlove-penned D’Angelo tribute in Rolling Stone.
An obscure Michael Jackson bridge from 1997 was Questlove’s first source of comfort after learning of D’Angelo’s passing.
Tear ducts filling, I searched for a happy distraction to slow this grand-piano-speeding-down-a-San-Francisco-hill feeling in my stomach. I wanted one bright memory. One. And just then it hit me. … It’s May 1997. We’re taking a dinner break in month eight of our (unknown then) four-year sentence at the Electric Lady Soul Prison while making Voodoo. Michael Jackson has just released Blood on the Dance Floor. Not exactly a must-experience event, but MJ always deserved at least a two-minute song gander … right?
Enter “Morphine.” Or better yet, enter our collective shock at “Morphine”’s bridge. Nine Inch Nails chaos one second, then that coda drops and — well — go ahead and cue the song up at 2:37 and imagine being in our studio hearing this for the first time. You know that meme of brothers at an outdoor table laughing so hard they cling to each other before collapsing to the floor? That was us.
You know that meme of brothers at an outdoor table laughing so hard they cling to each other before collapsing to the floor? That was us. We laughed so hard at that over-the-top delivery I sent a studio assistant to get Advil. Don’t come for me — I’m MJ-all-day till I die — but that bridge wasn’t what I was expecting from the best student of James Brown, the king of going-to-the-bridge-dreaming up. … We replayed it six times, driving everyone within earshot mad. We mocked it so lovingly it ironically became one of my last favorite MJ moments on wax.
Michael Jackson – “Morphine” (1997)
D’Angelo was terrified of the intro to “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye.
[D’Angelo] confessed to me that the intro to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” haunted him — it genuinely scared him. My version of that fear is the modulated coda in Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead,” which I first heard during a childhood injury. Of course, I had to test him — one day not long after I popped the CD in just to see what would happen and turned the volume up.
D wasn’t lying. It froze him. I might’ve made it an ongoing prank, but after attempt two? I knew a third would mean hands thrown. We never discussed “Grapevine” again. Ever.
Marvin Gaye – “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” (1968)
Questlove would sometimes avoid greeting D’Angelo to protect his hand from aggressive daps.
Our fellow Soulquarian James Poyser once reminded me that next to Busta Rhymes, no one shattered bones giving a double-snap salute like D. I sometimes skipped greeting him just to keep my drumming hand intact. Pain is love, but come on. … D’Angelo, to me, was one of the last pure artists in Black music. I know we sold the mysterious seriousness well, but the truth is — we were a silly bunch.
Voodoo classic “Chicken Grease” was initially going to be on Common’s Like Water for Chocolate album.
During the Voodoo sessions he once called at 4 a.m. “Yo man, we gotta talk.” Was this a confrontation? What kept him up? The idea that Common had a funkier track for his Like Water for Chocolate LP (which D’Angelo and I both were working on at the time) than D’Angelo had for Voodoo.
“That’s my funk!!!!!!!!!! He don’t know what to do with that funk!!”
I called Common and suggested a swap. He was chill. “Chicken Grease” went to Voodoo; “Geto Heaven Pt. 2” (originally D & Lauryn Hill) went to Common.
D’Angelo – “Chicken Grease” (Voodoo, 2000)
Common – “Geto Heaven Part Two” (Like Water For Chocolate, 2000)
D’Angelo and The Roots rehearsed straight-ahead album versions of Brown Sugar material for their eventually canceled Roots Picnic 2025 performance.
He was slated to headline the Roots Picnic this summer. We rehearsed two weeks out. He was famously secretive, but something felt different. The first clue: Rehearsals started late. Nothing new in his world, but this was ridiculous. I scheduled 10 p.m., but the first note hit at 3 a.m. By seven, I had to leave for the airport. He looked wounded. “Where you going? We only did a few hours.”
In retrospect, I see his clock was health-shifted. He struggled to hold his guitar, preferring to sit at keys. I thought it was an aesthetic choice — a throwback ’95 vibe. I didn’t realize the medical truth unfolding. When asked, he said he’d been through something but was on the mend.
Even so, that last rehearsal felt … final. I started thinking to myself, “Why do I feel like this is the last time I’m gonna play this song with him?” I tried to ignore it, but then the unspeakable happened. Hard to explain, maybe hindsight talking, but he didn’t fight me on the ONE thing he always fought me on.
The most radical act for D was to play the album versions live. To him it felt lazy. In 25 years, we did “the normal versions” just once. For the Picnic, I suggested: Let’s just do straight-no-chaser Brown Sugar cuts. Simpler, freer, less stage business. It was so easy I almost argued against my own idea.
He agreed immediately. Too quickly.
Read the full Rolling Stone piece by Questlove on D’Angelo here or scroll down to him read and embellish upon the written piece. You can also revisit our resident D’Angelo super-fan’s reflections on his passing here.
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