UNTITLED (REMEMBER ING D'ANGELO)

I WAS PLANNING to make this letter a celebration of the 30th edition of GQ’s Men of the Year. A milestone worth celebrating, certainly. But when I sat down and began typing, I had something else on my mind.

- Will Welch

On the set of D'Angelo's 2012 GQ photo shoot.

Back in 1997, I was picking my way through my favorite used-CD store on Roswell Road in Atlanta and I lifted a copy of D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar off the rack. I remember carefully studying the track list and the sepia-toned portrait of D’ on the cover, looking for a sign.

Back then, if you wanted to check out an album you pretty much just had to buy it. Buying used helped me make whatever cash I had go further, but still, the $8.99s and $11.99s added up fast. I really needed every purchase to hit.

At the time, I was mostly content to get my R&B from the radio, so I invested in rap, country, rock, and jazz. (In 1990s Atlanta, you didn't need to buy Usher albums to know every word off My Way.) But going off the mysterious, bubbling groove of Brown Sugar’s title track, and the other big single, “Lady,” I took the plunge. Once the album hit my car’s CD changer, it almost never came out. I spent hours aimlessly cruising around Atlanta to the ethereal funk of D's voice, which floated around the off-kilter boom-bap of his drums. I felt like the only person who knew D'Angelo bent time with his music.

By the time his next album, Voodoo, came out in January 2000, I had moved to New York City for college. It had been four and a half years since the release of