He was dragged into the abyss swollen and strung out. Climbing out, chiseled and sober, singing “What’s going on” and its as if he never left. After a 14 year absence, D’Angelo returned on Dec.15 with the album “Black Messiah.”

According to his bio on RollingStone.com.

D’Angelo is a multitalented, soul-singer studied in the art of groove, croon who came to prominence in the 1990s as one of a select few male vocalists to master the hip-hop and R&B mixed genre known as Neo Soul. Neo soul is a modern music that finds ways of giving homage to the soul music of the past with hip hop attributes in the music, such as sampling and beat making.

D’Angelo got his start in 1995 with the album “Brown Sugar” and followed up five years later with “Voodoo”, both platinum according RIAA.com. After the release of “Voodoo”  D’Angelo made appearances on records by J Dilla, Raphael Saadiq and Snoop Dogg. Unfortunately he soon fell into a hiatus, plagued with arrests ranging from Drug possession to soliciting sex to an undercover cop.

Now he has returned with an album that was well worth the wait. “Black Messiah” is a masterful collection of songs with notable social commentary.  The great instrumentation mixed live instruments and machine oriented production, provided by D’Angelo, and Questlove of The Roots.

The first track, “Ain’t That Easy”, engulfs you in this overwhelming explosion of bass guitar mixed with D’Angelo’s signature luminescent vocals and leads you on a journey after that; The tracks are diverse ,the closest to anything sounding the same can be found in the first three songs, only because of the use of electric guitar, bass, and drums.

The best example of diversity has to be the 5th song “Really Love”, it starts with the delicate sound of violins and then a sample of a Spanish speaking woman whispering comes on, this is followed by flamenco guitar, the violins fall into the background; The two are combined into a complicated mix of string instruments shadowed by a Spanish voice and a drum machine clap.

In Black Messiah there is a good mix of socially conscience songs and the typical love songs that you will find on an R&B album. D’Angelo keeps things mature, he follows no trends lyrically or musically.

In the title track “Ain’t That Easy” you get comments about modern media and our slavery to programming on the internet and television. The most critical record is “The Charade”, the song deals with the black experience, both in the past and in modern America, saying that black people have walked a million miles in adversity, but have even further to go in what is supposed to be a post racial society.

I enjoyed this album, I hope that his next record does not take more than four years. I give Black Messiah 10 Sly Stone songbooks out of 10 signed Eddie Hazel guitars (Funky).

What do you think I should review next and what did you think of this record? Leave a comment on everettclipper.com.