Remembering D’Angelo with Prof. Mark Anthony Neal

KPFA - Hard Knock Radio

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5d ago 59:58

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Hard Knock Radio opened on a somber note as host Davey D reflected on the passing of D’Angelo, coming just months after the loss of his former partner Angie Stone. To make sense of the moment and the legacy, Duke University scholar Mark Anthony Neal joined the show to map D’Angelo’s cultural footprint—far beyond the “sex symbol” frame that followed the “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” video. Neal places D’Angelo squarely in the lineage of serious Black musicianship: a church-trained multi-instrumentalist who fused gospel harmonies, jazz chops, and hip-hop’s rhythmic imagination into something both classic and radically new.

Neal argues that “neo-soul” was always a marketing box; D’Angelo insisted he made “Black music,” period. That stance showed in the company he kept—Roy Hargrove, James Poyser, Questlove, and most centrally J Dilla—an ensemble of collaborators (the Soulquarians) who operated like a late-’90s/early-’00s Motown or Philly International. From “Brown Sugar” forward, D’Angelo’s records bent the sonic landscape: hip-hop drum science, jazz voicings, and gospel movement in dialogue. Neal notes the contradiction of Black genius under industry gaze: the body gets commodified, the music gets sidelined. D’Angelo’s decade-long retreat mirrors Sly Stone and Miles—a refusal to be reduced.

Davey D connects that collective model to regional waves—Bay Area hyphy, Atlanta’s crunk, Houston’s screw, Dungeon Family/Organized Noize—reminding us that collaboration, not isolation, keeps Black music innovating. The conversation also locates D’Angelo within Virginia’s deep bench (Timbaland, Missy, Neptunes, Teddy Riley), with the Black church as incubator. Closing out, Neal highlights his latest book, Black Ephemera: The Crisis and the Challenge of the Musical Archive, calling for community control over Black cultural memory in an era of platform choke points and corporate firewalls.

Pionion: If we honor D’Angelo’s legacy, we protect the ecosystems that birthed him—church bands, open studios, regional collectives—and we stop outsourcing discovery to platforms that mute dissent and flatten context.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.

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