The Dictatorship
I feared D’Angelo’s music would send me to hell — but it freed me
Even though I bought D’Angelo’s 2000 sophomore album “Voodoo,” I was afraid to listen to it because I was still very much a church boy committed to Pentecostal doctrines. I was a choir director and still planning to be a preacher and, perhaps, a pastor. Preaching was the family business, and I wanted to be a good son.
Voodoo was a spiritual practice I knew nothing about except that “saints don’t do that,” and I knew it would cause a spiritual crisis if I enjoyed D’Angelo’s music. Something so explicitly antagonistic to my spiritual beliefs, I feared, could be a portal to hell.
I knew it would cause a spiritual crisis if I enjoyed D’Angelo’s music. Something so explicitly antagonistic to my spiritual beliefs, I feared, could be a portal to hell.
But it wasn’t a portal to hell, it was a portal to freedom. What Michael Eugene “D’Angelo” Archer, a former Pentecostal church boy like me, modeled on “Voodoo” helped me figure out how to live a more generous and loving and honest life. Even when living a more generous, loving and honest life is very hard to do.
D’Angelo, whose album “Voodoo” won that year’s Grammy for best R&B album and whose single “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” won the Grammy for best R&B male vocal performance, died Tuesday at 51 after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
He won four Grammys in total. In addition to the two mentioned above, his 2014 album “Black Messiah” won a Grammy for best R&B album, and the single “Really Love” won a Grammy for best R&B song. But as one of the innovators of what was called neo-soul, D’Angelo’s influence was far greater than the number of awards he won and far greater than you might expect from someone who only released three studio albums over his career. He released his debut album, “Brown Sugar,” in 1995.
When I finally broke down and listened to “Voodoo,” I loved everything about it. The connections from song to song felt like a good Friday night church service feels when folks sing songs that flow from one to the next without pause. The movement from song to song — and within each song, too — pulsates and drives and grooves. “Voodoo” felt spiritual to me in ways I didn’t yet know how to name. But I felt it, and I feel it still.
My connection to the album made more sense when I found out that, because of his Pentecostal background, D’Angelo felt the intensity and fervor of the spirit the same way I did. And he wanted that intensity and fervor to be felt in sounds and songs he’d create with others. Pentecostalism, and he absolutely meant Black Pentecostalism, “totally informs everything I do,” D’Angelo said in a 2015 interview with television host Tavis Smiley. “When I’m on the stage, I bring that with me.”
What he’d bring with him is immersion.
Pentecostals not only believe in baptism by immersion — where the water covers the entire body — but they also believe in what they call the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You have to be submerged in the spirit, all up in and through it.
That is what listening to “Voodoo” is like, being immersed in the spirit. And apparently, it was what recording and performing it was like, too.
Russell Elevatedwho was the recording engineer for “Voodoo” and was a close collaborator of D’Angelo, said as much: “A lot of times [D’Angelo] would sing something to get the right inflection and intonation, versus trying to articulate the word … And also, we were mixing his vocal level lower than normal. He liked it where the track kind of had him enveloped — not really on top of the mix, but more inside of the mix.”
D’Angelo not only understood immersion; he wanted to perform immersion. He wanted to live life immersed in the power of Black love and joy and sound.
Obviously, D’Angelo, a son and grandson of pastors who learned to play multiple instruments in church, would have been made to fear hell for playing secular music.
He wanted to be inside the mix, his voice finding refuge and home in the surround of sound. Not more prominent, not less, but with, together, abiding, constantly unfolding voice in relation to instruments and rhythm. To live one’s life as an immersive reality is to always be in the middle of things, always held, always carried. And what a beautiful thing it is to be held and carried.
With its tambourines and hand claps and foot stomps and Hammond organ and guitars and the sounds of praise and worship and moaning and wailing, this is what the music of Pentecostalism achieves: an immersive caress.
Obviously, a church boy like D’Angelo, a son and grandson of pastors who learned to play multiple instruments in church, would have been made to fear hell for playing secular music the same way I initially feared hell for listening to it. But we can thank God for his grandmother, who, he told Tavis Smiley, gave him permission to play secular music even when others in his church forbid it.
She never reprimanded his desire, he intimated. It seems she accepted him in his fullness, in his softness, in his beauty and wonder and curiosity. And he showed what softness as Black musical genius could sound like. Taking the best of the tradition — the gospel and the soul and the blues, he was a bluesman more than anything. Earthy. Warm and vibrational.
We can only imagine the reactions to his move toward secular music, to say nothing of him naming his second album “Voodoo.” Church folks can be unkind and unforgiving when you take up other sacred practices and make connections between theirs and the ones they say are demonic — like Voodoo, like Santeria rituals. Or, for me, like queerness. I have understood and felt that unkindness. And it is heartbreaking.
There’s a part in James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” in which the narrator connects the intensity of Black Pentecostal worship and music to the sought-after high of substance use. “When she was singing before,” the title character says, “her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes — when it’s in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And distant. And — and sure.” This sense of being near and far, distant and close, warm and cool is the in-between of immersion. Baldwin writes that “[T]he man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for the same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.”
He was uncomfortable with being seen as a sex symbol and deliberately gained weight as he struggled with addictions to drugs and alcohol.
Though he was only shown from the waist up, D’Angelo appeared to be completely naked when he recorded the video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” But he was reportedly uncomfortable with being seen as a sex symbol and deliberately gained weight as he struggled with addictions to drugs and alcohol.
Some folks want drugs and sex and church to be very different kinds of things, but Baldwin in “Sonny’s Blues” tells us that no, they are of the same source. And D’Angelo sang to us to say that they are of the same source. I felt such a deep and abiding affinity for D’Angelo because, like him, I have attempted to find that immersive experience of intensity and fervor after leaving the church, the place where I learned and felt it most. You seek that intensity, you need that intensity, and sometimes you find it in love and joy, or sex and drugs. You want the immersive power but not the addictions that often come with it.
What he needed, what we all need, is space to be vulnerable, to allow it to flower and unfurl. And in his life, and with his music that will resound for generations to come, that will echo and hail us to its downbeat and groove, he showed how vulnerability and softness could be cultivated and tended to.
“Voodoo” and “Black Messiah,” and his debut album “Brown Sugar,” along with his features and live performances, offered a way to find balance in the immersive. Making music with others — musicians and audiences together — can allow for beauty to emerge because one is so very vulnerable and exposed to the world. In those performances, he allowed for vulnerability and softness to flourish.
Andon Crawley
Ashon Crawley is a writer, artist, and a professor of religious studies and African American studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of “Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility” (Fordham University Press) and “The Lonely Letters” (Duke University Press and is currently completing a book about the Black church, the AIDS crisis and the sound of the Hammond organ titled “From Infinite World: The Sound of the Hammond Organ and the Tragedy of AIDS in the Black Church.”(W.W. Norton)
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The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination, a spokesperson said late Wednesday, as two retiring Republicans on the panel dug in over President Donald Trump’s personal “anti-weaponization” deal with the government he runs.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s decision to delay the committee vote that had been set for Thursday marks a setback for one of Trump’s highest-profile Cabinet nominees, at the hands of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a pair of Republicans set to leave the chamber next year.
“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement,” the committee spokesperson said.
Blanche’s nomination to permanently head the Department of Justice needs the support of either Cornyn or Tillis to make it out of the committee to a vote by the full Senate, assuming all Democrats remain opposed.
“Why don’t you call over the Department of Justice and tell them they have one hour and 50 minutes to get me what I asked for,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday afternoon amid the hardening standoff over his demand that Blanche and the DOJ put in writing a commitment never to pursue the president’s prized “anti-weaponization” fund, and to clarify the terms of Trump’s personal deal with the Internal Revenue Service.
Tillis told MS NOW that the conversations were complicated by the need for the Justice Department to get “several parties” to agree on the language of the statement Cornyn and Tillis are seeking.
“What I’ve advised the chair, and I would assume Senator Cornyn said something similar, is that we’re not prepared to vote yes yet,” he added.
“The Department has been in regular communication with Committee members for weeks, and we look forward to continuing to work productively with Senators to address any concerns,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in response to the decision to postpone the committee vote.
Cornyn was set to meet with Blanche on Wednesday morning, but the meeting was called off after Blanche failed to meet the senator’s demand for written proposals to modify the controversial settlement agreement he brokered between Trump and the IRS. The Republican senator is set to leave Congress when his term ends in January after a bruising May primary loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s chosen candidate.
“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard (Blanche) is going through quite nicely.”
Cornyn made clear to Blanche during his confirmation hearing that he will not get his support until he agrees to reopen and modify the settlement. Due to the committee’s narrow Republican majority, one GOP “no” vote is enough to sink Blanche’s nomination.
The senator has asked Blanche to provide proof that the proposed nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund established as part of the deal between Trump and the IRS is formally dead, and he has also demanded Blanche narrow the tax audit immunity provisions the settlement afforded to Trump and his family.
Blanche has publicly stated that his department has dropped the fund, but he and the DOJ have dodged requests from Cornyn and a federal judge to put that in writing.
After announcing his meeting with Blanche would not take place Wednesday morning, Cornyn told reporters that changes from Blanche “in a modified release form” would be acceptable, but that “for some reason … they simply refuse to do it,” referring to the DOJ.
Shortly after the meeting was called off, a Justice Department official told MS NOW that the department “provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office.”
Cornyn said that proposal was “not responsive” to his demands because it did not address the tax audit immunity provisions in the settlement, one of his key demands.
In May, Blanche signed an addendum as part of the deal that granted Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from pending IRS tax audits. That agreement, which has been decried by former IRS officials and legal experts as unlawful self-dealing, is being contested in federal court.
Cornyn noted that Blanche testified under oath that he could meet the request during his confirmation hearing.
“Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or you know, go along, but they’re mistaken,” Cornyn said when asked why he thinks the DOJ could be slow-walking his request.
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived this week for his tour of Washington, he may have had a mission in mind.
Netanyahu needed to overcome his newly diminished stature and waning influence over his once close friend President Donald Trump as both leaders grapple with the unpopularity of a war they started together and is escaping their control.
His meeting at the White House with Trump on Tuesday, which was closed to the press, was the first face-to-face encounter between the two allies since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack against Iran on Feb. 28.
Trump gave him a muted welcome and afterwards simply described the meeting as “very good.” “Obviously, many important subjects were discussed,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Rather than an intimate one-on-one setting, the Oval Office was full of top U.S. officials — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
But Netanyahu continued the full court press on the Trump administration.
Over the course of two days, in addition to seeing Trump and attending Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral at the Capitol, Netanyahu also met separately with Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio, White House and Israeli officials confirmed to MS NOW.
The Israeli prime minister’s slate of meetings with key U.S. national security officials comes at a pivotal moment in the Iran conflict as tensions escalate in the region and Americans increasingly sour on the war. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 60% of American voters opposing U.S. military action against Iran and 74% against sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
Not only does Trump face pressure as Republicans face an uphill battle to retain congressional control in this fall’s midterms, Netanyahu’s fate as prime minister is at stake in Israel’s upcoming September elections – and he can’t afford to lose Trump’s favor.
The talks largely focused on what to do next as Iran continues to menace shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against American bases in the region and launch attacks on Gulf allies.
According to a senior Israeli official who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door meeting, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not come to a final decision after discussing three paths forward: get a “good deal” focused on Iran’s nuclear program and enriched material, have no deal and instead continue the blockade and economic pressure, or take escalated military action.
But Netanyahu did not tell Trump what he should do – nor did he express a preference.
The senior Israeli official noted Netanyahu has not ruled out diplomacy – as long as it is coupled with “very strong pressures,” calling the push to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program “a contest of will and a contest of force.”
“There are ways of squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them and negotiating at the same time,” the official said.
Netanyahu did not present President Trump with new intelligence regarding the underground Iranian nuclear facility Pickaxe Mountain, per the senior Israeli official, noting the U.S. and Israel already are constantly sharing intelligence – and know where Iran’s highly enriched material is. “We don’t think it’s moved, and I think we have a pretty good grasp on that,” the official said.
During their meeting on Tuesday, Trump and Netanyahu discussed ways Israel and the U.S. can work together to stop Iran’s nuclear program and get the Strait of Hormuz open to maritime trade, the senior Israeli official said.
The two leaders also discussed a third goal: to continue to undermine the Iranian regime and “possibly create future conditions for a change in that area.” U.S. officials have backed away from pursuing paths that would overthrow the current leadership, but Netanyahu still believes that could happen.
“The chasm that has been created between the people and the regime is not about to be closed,” the senior Israeli official said of Netanyahu’s thinking.
Netanyahu advised Trump in February that Israeli intelligence indicated launching strikes against Iran would lead to the toppling of the Islamic Republic’s regime – and five months later, the slain ayatollah’s son retains power with a close circle of hardliners, calling into question the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
But the senior Israeli official said at the time, Netanyahu did not promise the Iranian people would take fate into their own hands following a coordinated attack. Rather, he chose his words carefully and said that an attack could create conditions to “advance the probability or the possibility that that would happen.”
The conditions needed for the Iranian regime to fall, “did not materialize,” the official told MS NOW, adding, “not for lack of insight, but for either operational failure or decisions that were made.”
Despite Netanyahu insisting Israel and the U.S. are on the same page, differences still remain: the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and the Saudi nuclear arrangement did not come up during Wednesday’s White House meeting, according to a second Israeli official granted anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Meanwhile, the conflict continues to spread, with an Iranian drone attacking a U.S. gas storage tanker off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday.
Trump indicated he would not let Iran’s latest action slide, telling reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. would retaliate against Iran even as he leaves room for diplomatic talks to resume.
“It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point,” Trump said. “But we’re going to hit them very hard.”
As for what it would take for Israel to join the U.S. strikes, the senior Israeli official said that if Israel is attacked by Iran, “We will respond very, very forcefully and very quickly. And I think Iran would make a great mistake.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
International rage over FIFA’s close ties to President Donald Trump has reached a fever pitch after soccer’s governing body announced a plan to sell a significant stake to an investor group led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.
The president and his family have all but turned the White House into their personal piggy bank. And FIFA — which has its own sordid history of corruption — seems to have made itself a party to Trump’s self-enrichment under Gianni Infantino’s leadership, such as by paying for space inside Trump Tower in New York. (The organization has defended the office rental as a World Cup outpost.)
Soccer is seen by many as a unifying game. But Trump’s incorporation of FIFA into his political dynasty is threatening that idea.
FIFA has announced plans to sell a large minority stake in a new company that will run its main events, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, as part of a plan to triple the amount of development money it dishes out to its 211 member associations.
Under the proposals — which are subject to approval by a majority of those national associations and FIFA’s 37-member council — a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will take over all commercial operations, while FIFA remains the game’s global governing body and retains a majority stake in FFE.
A press release from FIFA confirmed the plans and said Thrive Eternal, which was launched by Joshua Kushner, is expected to lead the investment group that would control FIFA Forward Enterprise. FIFA did not clarify why Thrive Eternal was selected, and Kushner was already dabbling in sports.
But Trump basically has already given son-in-law Jared Kushner carte blanche to dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East while simultaneously hatching business plans in the region. (Jared Kushner has denied any conflicts of interest.)
Joshua Kushner reportedly has been a major donor to Democrats. But, predictably, the idea of another Kushner becoming financially entwined with the World Cup — the world’s most popular sporting event — and basically being dropped into a position of global significance isn’t going over well. Several other soccer governing bodies have expressed concerns, including Europe’s UEFA.
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement about The Athletic’s report, adding: “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also rebuked the plan, writing on X: “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough — now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”
FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!
Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough—now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a… https://t.co/knSZibuMea
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) July 28, 2026
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has already launched an investigation into the FIFA leader’s relationship with the Trump administration, while dozens of European lawmakers — citing concerns about “potential breaches of political neutrality” — have called for the FIFA Ethics Committee to investigate Infantino. This new proposal seems unlikely to assuage those concerns.
But what it does seem likely to do is fuel global anger toward the U.S. — the kind that has been growing since Trump retook office.
And when you consider that, it’s truly remarkable how the same MAGA movement whose members whined for years about politics mixing with sports is now in lockstep with a president who seems dead-set on casting his shadow over every sports event he can.
This post on X basically sums up the foul stench around FIFA’s latest proposal.
Sepp Blatter was Infantino’s predecessor as FIFA president and oversaw the organization amid some of its many scandals. When heof all people, is warning about how Trump and Infantino’s relationship is “deeply damaging” soccer, it’s a sign of how far FIFA has descended into the gutter.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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