History made: D'Angelo, Brixton Academy

D'Angelo threw off his hood and the crowd went crazy. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

Mark de Clive-Lowe witnessed D'Angelo play London's Brixton Academy on Wednesday 19 July 2000.

I was living in London at the time and I hadn't been there that long. There was a huge buzz behind the show because D'Angelo's album Voodoo already had this mystique around it - it was unlike anything else that had been out. Then you had the Jill Scott record, [Erykah Badu's] Mama's Gun, [Common's] Like Water for Chocolate - that whole scene was the hottest thing there was. So when I head D'Angelo was coming to London, I got tickets straight away.

The anticipation at the show was palpable. He is one of those cats who is unlike any other. It reminded me a little of the first time I went to a Lakers game in LA. I grew up in New Zealand watching a lot of NBA, and there I am at a Lakers game and the starting five are coming out, and there's Kobe Bryant. There was that kind of buzz - it was so special and so real.

Voodoo was very much a studio record and, as a musician, that kind of thing makes me very curious to see how it will be performed live. He had this huge set-up on stage and an incredible group of musicians - Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson on percussion, James Poyser on keys, Pino Palladino on bass, Anthony Hamilton on backing vocals... a true supergroup.

I'll never forget the start of the show. The whole stage went to black and they were playing a loop off tape, a twisted out-of-space break or something, and then the whole band was onstage walking around in a circle, all in dark hooded robes. The anticipation at that moment was incredible.

When they launched into the first joint, the lights came up, D'Angelo threw off his hood and the crowd went crazy. The band just shredded the record - they turned it inside-out from beginning to end; the arrangements were ridiculous. The whole show had so much energy. I remember when they got to Shit, Damn, Motherf**ker, and the aggression and the anger. I was like, 'Wow, it's like that shit actually happened to him'. My friend Bluey from Incognito was at that show, and he was working on the new Incog album. He left the show and chucked most of it out. It was that kind of show.

D'Angelo is definitely head and shoulders above the rest - there's no one touching him. He's a consummate musician and a visionary artist. He's the whole package, and that was all on display at the Brixton Academy.

For four years after that show, every show I went to I was so unimpressed by. I came out of a Prince show and a Chaka Khan show, and everyone's like, 'Man, that was amazing'. I was like, 'That was okay. The Voodoo show, now that was amazing.'

D'Angelo plays London's Brixton Academy on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 February.

Mark de Clive-Lowe's new album Renegades is out now on Tru Thoughts/Rhythmethod

Who: D'Angelo
Where: Brixton Academy, London
When: Wednesday 19 July 2000

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