12 hours ago
4
Busta Rhymes has unveiled “Magic,” a tribute song to his late friend and neo-soul icon D’Angelo.
Rapping over the singer’s own classic 2000 single “One Mo’Gin,” the often frenetic Rhymes spends several minutes lovingly celebrating both the man and the artist. (Before letting the remainder of the seven-minute track play out to haunting effectiveness.) Whether you’re a fan of one artist and/or both, it’s the kind of homage that cuts to the beating heart of D’Angelo’s singular legacy.
In a corresponding interview with OkayPlayer, Rhymes detailed his 34-plus-year friendship with D’Angelo. The two met circa 1990 when the young singer joined Rhymes and A Tribe Called Quest during a studio session for 1991’s Scenario. Right off the bat, Rhymes said D’Angelo had “a good, beautiful energy.” But that dynamic quickly changed once he stepped up to the mic.
“D’Angelo’s personality speaks volumes because of how reserved he was,” Rhymes said. “When it was time for him to actually speak – when you heard him sing or play the keyboard — it magnified the polar opposite of how quiet he was.”
Despite D’Angelo being just 16 or 17 years old at the time, Rhymes said he “looked like a hustler from the five boroughs,” adding that he was actually a “man of few words. His embrace was welcoming, it was warm. He was already appreciative of what we was already doin’.”
Rhymes was also blown away by younger D’Angelo when Q-Tip had him play a little on an old Rhodes keyboard.
“When he did that sh*t it kinda f**ked everybody’s head up,” Rhymes said. “At the time, there wasn’t anybody in our crew who was playing instruments. When he was doing that shit live on the spot… it was like ‘Wow!’ This was some sh*t we wasn’t used to. For him to have been so young – because he was younger than us. I always felt like the baby in the clique – and he was younger than me.”
Rhymes went on to call their resulting friendship an “incredible experience.” D’Angelo was, in Rhymes’ eyes, so warm and familiar creatively even as he nonetheless blazed his own creative trail.
“Acknowledging him as a friend first, as a genius second, and as one of the most significant contributors to this culture,” Rhymes said. “I feel like the Earth shifted when D came to do music. He was the embodiment of some sh*t that was a complete balance of what our ancestors created, to where he took it. There’s nothing under the sun that hasn’t already been done. But it’s a whole other thing to make it your own and combine what has already been done with what hasn’t been done yet.”
And while Rhymes respects what others have done, he believes that no one can hold a candle to the one-of-a-kind crooner.
“There have been a lot of soulful artists who played and sang that came before him and came after him,” Rhymes said. “But the impact was nowhere near the level that he was able to do it on just three albums across 34 years. Even before his first album came out. Just watching him when I was around Tribe.”
D’Angelo passed away on October 14th at the age of 51 following a private battle with pancreatic cancer.
English (US) · 