And Yet, the Soul Remains — Remembering D'Angelo

There is a strange rhythm to the way the world moves now. Fast. Constant. Loud. We scroll, we post, we mourn, we move on. Somewhere in that endless motion, we forget how to be still. We forget how to feel.

Lauryn Hill said, “people need reflection,” and she was right. We need time to sit with our memories, our music, our losses. To sit with the echo of a voice that changed something inside us. To sit with the sound of a note that once split the sky open. To sit with what our people gave us, because they gave us everything.

When an artist leaves, we shouldn’t rush to fill the silence. That silence is holy. It is the sound of legacy taking shape, of impact settling into the bones of a generation. Stillness is where the lessons live.

Think of the first few notes of 1995's Brown Sugar. They don’t just play, the bass moves like honey, slow and sure. It’s not music that demands your attention; it invites your surrender. Then came Voodoo in 2000, with its smoke and sweat and slow time. It was an album that taught us to be patient, to listen between the beats. It moved like prayer, like something conjured.

And tucked within that prayer was "One Mo’Gin," a confession wrapped in grit and groove. The keys drift like smoke through half-drawn blinds, and his voice, tender, bruised, human, reaches for something already fading. You can hear him talking to the past, to that one who still lingers in memory’s doorway. It’s not just longing, it’s forgiveness disguised as melody. A man trying to unlearn his pride through song.

Then there’s "When We Get By." The horns sway like late-summer heat, the rhythm leans soft against the ache of everyday survival. It’s love music, yes, but also freedom music, a reminder that getting by is a kind of victory too. It sounds like front porches and good laughter, like Sunday coffee cooling beside an open window. That song doesn’t reach for perfection; it holds the beauty of trying.

D’Angelo’s music was not made for hurry. It was made for reflection, for rooms where incense burned low and thoughts stretched long. "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" wasn’t just a song. It was a meditation on intimacy, on presence, on being fully alive in a single moment. His art, like so many who came before him, reminds us that the spirit doesn’t rush. It lingers. It breathes. It teaches us that greatness isn’t measured in trends or streams, but in how deeply it makes us pause.

By the time Black Messiah arrived in 2014, it felt like he had distilled silence itself into sound. Every track carried a kind of knowing, a whisper of revolution, a reminder that soul is both resistance and rest. That album didn’t chase time; it slowed it down.

So this week, maybe we don’t need more noise. Maybe we need space. Maybe we honor our greats by slowing down, by listening again, by remembering the way their work made us see ourselves.

Because people do need reflection. And in the stillness, in that sacred quiet between one note and the next, we find not only them, but us.