Grammy-winning neo-soul singer D’Angelo dies at 51

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D’Angelo performs at the 2012 BET Awards in Los Angeles in July 2012. D’Angelo, the soul and R&B singer who kicked off music’s neo-soul movement with virtuosic, sensual and spiritually searching albums like “Brown Sugar” and “Voodoo,” has died at 51.

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Recording artist D’Angelo performs during a Spotify press event in New York in May 2015. D’Angelo, the soul and R&B singer who kicked off music’s neo-soul movement with virtuosic, sensual and spiritually searching albums like “Brown Sugar” and “Voodoo,” has died at 51.

LOS ANGELES >> D’Angelo, the soul and R&B singer who kicked off music’s neo-soul movement with virtuosic, sensual and spiritually searching albums like “Brown Sugar” and “Voodoo,” has died at 51.

In a statement to Variety, the singer’s family said that “The shining star of our family has dimmed his light for us in this life.”

“After a prolonged and courageous battle with cancer, we are heartbroken to announce that Michael D’Angelo Archer, known to his fans around the world as D’Angelo, has been called home, departing this life today, October 14th, 2025,” they continued. “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.”

D’Angelo won four Grammys and was nominated for a total of 14, taking home an R&B album trophy in 2016 for “Black Messiah,” plus R&B song honors for “Really Love.” Previously, he won the R&B album Grammy for “Voodoo” with his song “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” taking home the 2001 award for male R&B vocal performance.

D’Angelo was both immeasurably influential on generations of R&B, yet had a complex and fraught relationship with fame that led to stints of years out of the spotlight.

Born in South Richmond, Virginia, D’Angelo was a gifted musician even in childhood, performing alongside his Pentecostal minister father in church and in local acts. His music would always be informed by the spiritual potential of gospel, even when it was in service of more earthly pleasures or political urgency.

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“This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” he told GQ in 2014. “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”

After signing to EMI in 1993, he released his debut album “Brown Sugar” in 1995. The album — a crowning achievement of the “neo-soul” wave that included Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Maxwell and others — was a hit, spending 65 weeks on the Billboard 200 on strength of hits like the title track, “Lady,” and “Cruisin.” D’Angelo and his neo-soul peers’ embrace of modern, hip-hop-inspired production methods and genre-hopping influences made for a potent reinvigoration of R&B.

D’Angelo became a close friend and collaborator with the Roots’ bandleader and drummer, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, a fellow devotee of ’60s and ’70s soul with an eye towards modern musicianship. The two worked for years on the LP that became D’Angelo’s popular breakthrough, 2000’s “Voodoo.” A smoldering, piquant blend of R&B, funk and savvy songwriting (courtesy of the studio collective the Soulquarians, which included horn player Roy Hargrove, keyboardist James Poyser, bassist Pino Palladino and producer J Dilla), the album was a triumph of soul craft and modern musicianship.

But many fans knew it best for the hot-and-bothered video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” where a shirtless and muscular D’Angelo crooned straight into the camera, and instantly became a generational sex symbol. Even as the clip made him a star of a new caliber, he loathed being reduced to its erotics at the expense of his long-honed artistry.

Wary of the public eye, after the “Voodoo” tour D’Angelo retreated to his Virginia home to work on a follow-up LP. He lost a beloved uncle and grandmother, and soon fell into what he’s described as a long, painful period of alcohol and drug abuse. He fell out with Questlove after the drummer and bandleader played a snippet of new material on a radio show. In January 2005, D’Angelo was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and marijuana and driving while intoxicated. Two rehab stints failed to stick, and nearly died in a September 2005 car crash. Music executive Irving Azoff eventually paid for him to attend Eric Clapton’s Crossroads treatment center in Antigua.

While he signed a new deal with J Records (later RCA) and continued to write and record, he still stumbled in recovery. In 2010, he was arrested and charged with solicitation after offering a female undercover police officer $40 for sex. But after years mourning J Dilla’s death in 2006 and, later, Amy Winehouse’s in 2011, he made amends with Questlove and the two got back to work on new music.

D’Angelo threw himself into remastering the guitar and emerged as a fleet and expressive player with an ear for evocative psychedelia. That sound would define his long, long-awaited 2014 LP “Black Messiah,” which he released into the simmering Black Lives Matter movement, responding to police killings of young Black men.

With his new backing band, the Vanguard, the LP was an invigorating return to form that placed his music in a long lineage of Black radical soul. “Till It’s Done” samples a speech from a documentary about the late Black Panther activist Fred Hampton, who was killed in 1969 by Chicago police. “Really Love” samples Curtis Mayfield’s “We the People Who are Darker Than Blue,” a weary accounting of the damage a system of abuse takes on the Black psyche. “All we wanted was a chance to talk/ Instead we only got outlined in chalk,” he sings in “The Charade.”

The album provocatively captured its era of political uprising, yet also reintroduced D’Angelo to the public as an artist and performer. His return tour was a smash hit, and he looked relieved to no longer be seen as a 20-something lust object but rather as a formidable musical intellect, a ferocious player and songwriter meeting the urgency of the moment.

D’Angelo later retreated back into private life, though he spoke candidly about his struggles with substance abuse and recovery in the 2019 documentary “Devil’s Pie.” He released one single, “Unshaken,” in the video game “Red Dead Redemption 2,” played a popular Verzuz battle at the Apollo Theater and appeared in Questlove’s documentary on Sly Stone, “Sly Lives!,” commenting on his kindred spirit Stone but also revealing a more private vantage point on his craft and relationship to fame.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing music, sports,” he says in the film. “We as Black folk we always gotta be three-four-five steps ahead of everybody else in order just to break even. It’s just always been that way.”

In March, Angie Stone, D’Angelo’s ex and the mother of his son, was killed in a car crash in Alabama. Months later, the singer had been slated to headline the Roots Picnic show earlier this year, but pulled out for medical reasons. “Due to an unforeseen medical delay regarding surgery [I] had earlier this year, [I’ve] been advised by my team of specialists that the performance this weekend could further complicate matters,” he wrote on Instagram, announcing the cancellation.

D’Angelo is survived by his son, Mike Jr. “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,” his family said.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

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