D'Angelo: Salvation Sex And Voodoo

It's come to this: you had a Baby Ruth for breakfast, you're operating on three hours' sleep, and you're sitting in a rented Hertz in the parking lot of a CVS drugstore waiting for your cell phone to ring. You're waiting for D'Angelo. You're not alone. Ever since the hip-hop/soul singer released his promising first album, Brown Sugar (1995), with its old-school crooning and new-school beats, fans, critics and impressed fellow musicians have been eagerly anticipating his follow-up. Even hip-hop folkie Beck--a guy who could give a rat's behind about most pop CDs--asked you a few months ago, "Is D'Angelo done with that album yet?"

Well, finally he is, and the brilliant, smoldering Voodoo (Cheeba/Virgin) is due in stores next week. Now you're waiting for the man himself. And waiting. And waiting. You make a mental note: Make some sort of reference in lead of D'Angelo profile to Waiting for Godot. Ten minutes later you make another mental note: Only pretentious journalists who aren't really very well read lead stories off with references to Beckett. Put Beckett reference in second paragraph.

Dooo-di-dooo-di-dooo! Your cell phone--which for some reason is programmed with the most ridiculous-sounding ring in all of telecommunications--goes off. It's D'Angelo's publicist.

"We're still looking for D," she says. "The interview will happen. Sit tight."

Dooo-di-dooo-di-dooo! D'Angelo's manager this time. Still looking.

Dooo-di-dooo-di-dooo!

"Yo, it's D. I just got up. Sorry about the wait. Where you at?"

Eighteen minutes later, D's buddy Brian, a friendly faced guy in a knit cap and a blue North Face jacket, pulls into the parking lot in a Volkswagen. Brian takes you to his apartment, which is nearby. He introduces you to Pee-Wee, a solidly built guy in a FUBU jacket. Turns out both of them were in a hip-hop band with D'Angelo back in grade school.

"D and us used to play all over the area," says Brian. "We still run the group. It's called I.D.U."

I.D.U.?

"Intelligent, deadly, unique," says Pee-Wee. Before you can ask who was intelligent, who was deadly and who was unique, D'Angelo arrives. He gives you a handshake and a hug, and everybody heads out. You pass a bail bondsman's office, a few check-cashing joints. You're just hanging now, seeing some of the Richmond, Va., streets that helped make Michael D'Angelo Archer who he is. D'Angelo recorded most of his new album in New York City, at Electric Lady Studios, the recording home of Jimi Hendrix. "I believe Jimi was there," says D'Angelo. "Jimi, Marvin Gaye, all the folks we were gravitating to. I believe they blessed the project." But Richmond is the turf the 25-year-old songwriter-producer draws from. Virginia is where D'Angelo's people--or "peeps" as he puts it--are from. You make a mental note that it's hard to say the word peeps and get away with it unless you're as cool as D'Angelo.

A fortyish woman stops D'Angelo. "You look like D'Angelo," she announces.

"I am," he says in a soft voice.