D’Angelo may have done the first Verzuz solo – I mean, who would want to fight him? – but he brought in a very special guest musician to start his Apollo performance on Saturday night.
That would be Keyon Harrold, the veteran trumpeter and D’Angelo’s band member whose 14-year-old black son, Keyon Harrold Jr., was falsely accused of stealing an iPhone from a white woman at the Hotel Arlo in Soho last September.
No explanation was needed, as it happened live at the Apollo Theater – the mecca for African-American artists. This was a time – when Black History Month is coming to an end – to remind you of how far we have yet to go, with this illustrious musician, Harrold, presented with a “very, very dear friend of mine” for the fourth time Winner Grammy Awards on the most historic stages of black music.
As he continued to present “my brother, a great musician”, it became very clear that this was a moment that the recluse star was taking to reintroduce himself to the masses, showing the humanity that exists in all of us – including the father of a boy from 14 years old who would have been attacked by Miya Ponsetto, 22, nicknamed “Soho Karen”, for not doing anything wrong.
Even before singing a note, D’Angelo had already spoken.
Then, they started what appeared to be a song in progress, with D’Angelo declaring that “love is something that makes the world go round”. And while Harrold vibrated on his horn with the neo-soul man on the keys – Lena Waithe described it very accurately as MTV “’Unplugged’ vibes,” in the comments – it was a moment that dissolved any “Verzuz” among people.
The battle, it seems, ended even before it really started in this last episode of the Verzuz series, which has been one of the most popular virtual series of the COVID era.
After DJ Scratch stirred the party – with the presence of stars like Common, Timbaland, Snoop Dogg and Babyface – D’AngeIo took the stage at around 10 pm.
But although this Verzuz was labeled “D’Angelo & Friends”, he was not really playing against anyone. It was all about him.
And who could argue with that? Just seeing D’Angelo – swinging a brown hat and matching cloth to match his black faux fur coat – was a sufficient gift for fans who have been waiting since he released his album “Black Messiah” in the final days of 2014 .
ED managed to bring some “Friends”: Redman and Method Man appeared to drop rhymes in “Left & Right”, from D’Angelo’s 2000 masterpiece, “Voodoo”. And she appeared to do the Lauryn Hill part of “Nothing Even Matters”, from the 1998 classic “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”.
But in the end, he didn’t look like a real Verzuz, with no one for D’Angelo to really fight. The obvious choice would have been Maxwell. Just as Erykah Badu and Jill Scott turned from diva to diva at the beginning of Verzuz last year, it would have been great to see D’Angelo do his best against his main neo-soul-man competition.
Still, it’s hard to argue with anything that leaves you feeling all the sweetness of “brown sugar” in a COVID on Saturday night.