Untitled (How Does It Feel)
On D’Angelo
D’Angelo
February 11, 1974 - October 14, 2025
How we yearned for that camera to dip south just one inch.
D’Angelo’s 2000 Untitled video. We rarely saw male sexuality like this in pop culture, overshadowing one of the grandest love songs. America’s fraught relationship with the Black male body, literally laid bare.
Much was made of the video then and will be made now. But what he leaves is the music. Oh, the music of that era! “Neo-Soul” was a marketing label for Tower Records; it was just soul. Brown Sugar, Voodo, Nothing Even Matters with Lauryn, on rotation if you had taste and loved love.
And of course, Untitled. As his 7-minute opus, crescendos into that orgasmic final act, it ends abruptly, mid-howl. It’s almost cruel.
If you love that song, you know that hard end is coming and it only makes you love it harder.
Life’s like that. 51 is far too young.
