Another Life

D’Angelo disappeared for fourteen years. Voodoo in 2000, then nothing — the weight of fame, the physical and psychological toll of being treated as a body rather than an artist, the long process of finding his way back to music without the conditions that had driven him from it. Black Messiah arrived in December 2014, released suddenly without advance notice, and it was received as one of the most significant albums of the decade.

“Another Life” closes it. After an album of politically charged, rhythmically complex, deliberately distorted soul and funk — music that demanded to be heard as a statement about Black life in America — D’Angelo placed his voice in the most direct, unmediated way at the album’s end. No distortion. No complexity. Just the most beautiful instrument in neo-soul, finally unobscured.

The arrangement is lush and unhurried — sitar, strings, the band operating at a whisper to allow D’Angelo’s vocal the space it deserves. Rolling Stone compared it to Prince’s “Adore” and Al Green’s “Beware,” and both comparisons are apt: this is love song as devotional act, desire expressed with such sincerity that it transcends genre. The sitar gives it a slightly psychedelic quality that locates it outside any specific era.

“In another life / Maybe we’ll be free / In another life / You and me.”

The lyric is poignant given the album’s political context — Black Messiah was partly about the impossibility of freedom in this life, in this country, right now. “Another Life” does not resolve that impossibility. It holds open the possibility of something beyond it.

D’Angelo has not released an album since. “Another Life” may be his final word for some time. If so, it is a beautiful one.