D’Angelo, Grammy Award-winning R&B singer, dead at 51 | ‘There was no conquest mission’: Fans ‘…

Explore the latest developments concerning D’Angelo, Grammy Award-winning.

D’Angelo, Grammy Award-winning R&B singer, dead at 51

D’Angelo, whose cool tunes and one hot music video turned him a legend of neo-soul, has died, according to a statement from his family. He was 51.

“The shining star of our family has dimmed his light for us in this life,” his family said in a statement provided to CNN by RCA, his longtime record company.

He died on Tuesday “after a prolonged and courageous battle with cancer,” his family said.

“We are saddened that he can only leave dear memories with his family, but we are eternally grateful for the legacy of extraordinarily moving music he leaves behind,” the statement added. “We ask that you respect our privacy during this difficult time but invite you all join us in mourning his passing while also celebrating the gift of song that he has left for the world.”

'There was no conquest mission': Fans 'missed the point' of D’Angelo’s infamously steamy video

As fans honour the loss of R&B legend D’Angelo and recall his sensual, slow-burn video for Untitled (How Does It Feel), it’s time to consider if the artistry wasn’t skin-deep.

There was a point in the 1990s when R&B fans couldn't be more scandalised. There was a sliding scale of sexuality that was either subtly imbued or gratuitously stamped across the melodies that crested the Billboard charts during the decade of D'Angelo's 1995 Brown Sugar debut.

Groups like Intro remade Stevie Wonder's Ribbon in The Sky, but they also sang that they wanted to slip and slide inside their listener. Elsewhere, Silk was hollering about licking someone up and down in falsetto. On the other end of the spectrum, Mint Condition, Brian McKnight and Boyz II Men sang romantic ballads about being down on one knee, despite their woman’s cheating because, "Baby, I knew about it and I just didn’t care".

D’Angelo’s Genius Was Pure, and Rare

This week, the R. & B. singer D’Angelo died at age fifty-one, of cancer. He was best known for deftly combining the heft and tenderness of soul music with the ingenuity and nerve of hip-hop, and while he was acclaimed in all the usual ways—four Grammy Awards, two platinum-selling albums, a music video so sexually charged that it still feels dangerous to watch in mixed company—he was also reclusive, enigmatic, unknowable. D’Angelo was a generational talent—an unusually artful singer, and an experimental and idiosyncratic songwriter. But he largely eschewed the accoutrements of stardom, releasing just three albums in nineteen years. (His final record, “Black Messiah,” came out in 2014.) It’s dangerous to codify that sort of resistance to celebrity as evidence of genius, but in a way, of course, it is—we all have an instinct to shield whatever feels most pure, and most rare.

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