← Cannonball with Wesley Morris
Cannonball with Wesley Morris
D’Angelo and the Power of Last Albums
00:46:54
The world is different once an artist dies. The same goes for their music. Since D’Angelo’s death, Wesley keeps returning to “Black Messiah” — to him, a perfect final album. What makes an artist’s last record resonate with us long after they’re gone? Wesley invites his friend Alex Pappademas, a senior culture editor at GQ Magazine, to listen back to some last albums that have haunted them both.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:39]
Wesley Morris
I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball Today. What do these three albums have in common? Double Fantasy, In Utero, Back to Black.
- [00:56]
In the weeks since d' Angelo died, I've been doing what people do when they hear that an artist has died. I listened to his music. He has three superb, differently superb albums. Brown Sugar from 1995, You're My Lady.
- [01:16]
You're My Lady.
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Vudu, which came out in 2000.
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This is the one that's considered the masterpiece. It's also the album that's synonymous with what the popular imagination reduced this man to. A six pack. We all know the video.
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It's nothing but a camera inching closer and closer to him and his abs as he sings to us naked.
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It's a miracle that the video didn't actually ruin our appreciation of how good the whole record is. But for me, the album that I keep coming back to is the last one, the one that came out in 2014, 14 years after Vudu. Black Messiah.
- [02:17]
Alex Papademus
Let your day slip away, come with me and.
- [02:24]
Wesley Morris
For one thing, it's a turning point album. The man singing it no longer wants to sound only sexy. He sounds contemplative, in pain, unsure.
- [02:46]
He was thinking about what it means to be a man and a lover, but also an African American and a citizen and a spiritual descendant of the black power movement.
- [03:08]
But Black Messiah also struck me as being a perfect final album. What do I mean by that? It doesn't sound like the work of somebody who wanted to die per se. Certainly not at 51 of pancreatic cancer as DeAngelo did. I mean that it sounds as if existential questions are being posed and emotional quandaries are being, if not resolved, then at least confronted. The music is thick and charged, but also celestial and at times cosmic. And the time I've been spending with Black Messiah got me thinking about other artists last albums and whether or not that's even a thing. Like is finality a sound I knew the person to talk to about? This is my good friend Alex Papademus. Because these are the sorts of things that he's thinking about, too. I actually sent him a text, and it just had 10 albums in it. 10 last albums. And he knew immediately what the assignment was. Alex is the senior culture editor at GQ magazine, and for some of the happiest years of my life, he and I were coworkers at Grantland, where we hosted a show called do youo Like Prince Movies? Alex Papademus, I've been waiting six months to say this to you. Welcome to Cannonball.
- [04:35]
Alex Papademus
It is amazing to be here.
- [04:37]
Wesley Morris
All right, I want to just think about our assignment here today. We're talking about last albums. Like, what even is a last album? Because I think the terminology might be useful to lay out. Like, what do we mean? Or at least, what do I mean? What do you think I mean when I say, quote, last album, unquote.
- [04:59]
Alex Papademus
Right. Because especially today, with those sort of the ability that people have to create. I mean, leaving out AI. Because let's leave it out. But, like, even before that, the technology existed to take sort of posthumous recordings and turn them into new material. So there's a million Tupac albums that came out after the quote, unquote, last. But let's be. I feel like we should be a little pedantic about what makes a last album.
- [05:24]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, we. We should be. Because otherwise, well, there'd be no such thing as a last album. What. What is lastness at that point? We're talking about eternity. I love that you said Tupac, because I don't even. Does. Does he know that he's got a last them. Somebody better tell him.
- [05:40]
Alex Papademus
Right. So the person has to have been alive and sort of the primary creative force behind the making of this album. They have to. It has to be done while they are on this earth. It is their final. Whatever they worked on Final Testament. And it's not. It is not pieced together from what they would have done if they had been here. I think that's probably that. You know, I don't. I think we don't lose too much by sort of imposing that limit.
- [06:07]
Wesley Morris
I mean, that's just it for me. It's period. Like, was the person alive when the album came out? And that, to me, is the. Is the cutoff point. Yeah, that is. That is our. Those are the parameters for last album Hood here.
- [06:22]
Alex Papademus
I agree. They have to have made this and left it when they left this world. So once you narrow it down to that, then you narrow it down to. I mean, there's basically. There's two kinds. There is the record made by someone who knows that they are not going to be here or who suspects that they are not going to be here, or has, you know, like, is preparing for that possibility in the work. And there is the album by people who just died, like, and didn't know they were dying and did not know that this was going to be their last testament as an artist. And I think both of those things are interesting for different reasons, especially when the people who die unexpectedly seem to be speaking to that happening in. In whatever way they are. And I think, like, these two, you know, it's. There's a bleed between these two categories, obviously.
- [07:14]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. They seem like they overlap, and I might even have a complication to offer you, but we'll come to that later. What is the. What is the thing that you'd want to talk about in terms of the last album in which the artist understands that this is probably the last one for them? They've had a long career. They're dealing with an illness.
- [07:38]
Something, and this is the last recording that they've made. And it in some way is correspondent with their life circumstances.
- [07:47]
Alex Papademus
Yeah. I mean, I think there's something about just knowing that the career is done, knowing that this is the bookend that I think for us as listeners changes the way that we experience the entirety of the work and the entirety of the body of work. Right. Like.
- [08:07]
I used to, when I was at Grantland, where we both worked, I was. Mark Lasanti, who's the culture editor at Grantland, used to call me Dr. Death because I wrote a lot of obits. I really liked writing obits.
- [08:21]
Wesley Morris
It wasn't just Mark who said that.
- [08:25]
Alex Papademus
I mean, I didn't go get a doctorate just to be referred to as Mr. Death all the time. You know, it's just that's. It was. That's demeaning.
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Wesley Morris
You earned it.
- [08:33]
Alex Papademus
I. Yeah, I thought a lot. A lot about people who had passed away. And it was like, when I didn't, you know, there was. There was kind of always obviously something to write about. I found it, for some reason, really interesting in a way that I didn't find. You know, because when you write about a living person, you have to pretend that the best work is still ahead of them, even if they're 80, you know, like. Like, you have to pretend that there's still a possibility that something else will happen. But when someone's dead, you can actually sort of look honestly, you know, their entire artistic output. And it's like, okay, here's where the peak was. We know where this happened, like, because there's not. There's. There's no other. The envelope of possibility is closed on those things. And so I really, like, I. You know, I don't want to be like, I enjoyed when people died, but, like, I enjoyed writing about them after they had died because I felt like it sort of like, contextualized everything. And it's like, now you know where the book ends, and so now you know where the third act begins or whatever. Like, you know what?
- [09:27]
Wesley Morris
All right.
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Alex Papademus
And the one that I wanted to talk about is an album from 2003 called the Wind by Warren Zevon. Warren Zevon emerges on the scene sort of roughly contemporary with the. Like the Eagles in Steely Dan. He comes out. His first album comes out in 1970. Nobody listens to it. And then he kind of toils in obscurity for six years as the kind of LA singer songwriter thing is taking off. And he's sort of a. You know, he's. He's known to some of those people, but he's not famous. Nothing happens for him until Linda Ronstadt covers his song Poor, Poor Pitiful Me.
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Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me.
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After that, he becomes, you know, it's weird because he sort of. For a long time, I would have described him as kind of, you know, this underrated kind of cult singer songwriter. He's in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame now. Like, we were speaking, kind of on the other side of him finally being sort of recognized.
- [10:33]
Wesley Morris
When was he inducted again this year? This year? Oh, my God. Yeah. Okay.
- [10:37]
Alex Papademus
Yeah, he just got in. The thing that, weirdly, is like, his kind of, like the high watermark of his sort of cultural. You know, his penetration of the culture is Werewolves of London, which gets played on the radio.
- [10:53]
Werewolves of London, Fantastic song. Really, like every Halloween, it's on the mixture.
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Wesley Morris
I mean, it's funny because I can. Like those chords. I can hear it's. And it's funny, I don't hear it that often, but when you hear a song like that when you're a kid.
- [11:12]
Anyway, it's a great recorded performance, and musically it just sounds wonderful. Yeah, so that's the somebody from Fleetwood Mac is playing.
- [11:21]
Alex Papademus
Yeah, he's always. He's got the, like, heavy friends, like, they're all in sort of. You know, Jackson Brown produced the one that, like, breaks through to the extent that it breaks through and like. Yeah, and he always has sort of. Has had that. And that is also true of the Wind, which is his last album. It's like everybody kind of comes in for Warren to make this record with him and like.
- [11:42]
Wesley Morris
Because they know. What do they know? Do they know he's sick? He's.
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Alex Papademus
Yeah, he's diagnosed with mesothelioma right after his, the. The previous album, which is called My Ride's Here, My Ride's Here.
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My Rides Here.
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What's interesting about him is that, you know, he's always.
- [12:02]
Wesley Morris
Great title.
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Alex Papademus
Yeah. There's. There's this. I mean, he's look and he's been thinking about this, you know, as people who, you know, who use substances often are like they are. He knows that he's flirting with death and he's been kind of talking about it his entire career.
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You said, I believe the seraphim will gather up my Pinto and carry me away Jim across the San Jacinto. My Rides Here.
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Wesley Morris
Wasn'T the previous album before My Rides Here called Life Will Kill you or something like that?
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Alex Papademus
Yeah, that's my favorite of the latter ones from, from 2000. And there's incredible songs on there that are also him sort of thinking about, you know, what's going to happen. But like he, he, I think knew all along that one way or another he was probably not going to, you know, die like, you know, in his 90s in a. In an old folks home like that. He was going to die somehow through the result of his own actions. And so what I think is interesting about Warren's arc in terms of reckoning with your own passing is that, yeah, Life Will Kill you has a very kind of. It is exactly how you would imagine a Warren Zevon type figure, this very musical musician, but then also existed in this kind of seemy singer, songwriter, 70s cocaine world that moved in those same circles. So Life Will Kill you is this very. It's very funny, it's very cynical.
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And then you'll be dead. Life will find you wherever you go.
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The wind kind of like looks it in the face and you can see him really reckoning with something. That's what I, that's what I like about it, that that's what makes it kind of a harrowing experience because he's. Some of the jokes kind of fall away.
- [14:18]
And he's really kind of facing up to what this reality is and the idea of not being here and the idea of like, oh, what have I. What have I wasted? What have I done with my time? And like all of that.
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Please stay.
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Please stay.
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Two words I never thought I'd learn to say.
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And yeah, it's like as you get through this. Like, there's kind of two big knocks that this record gives you. If you're thinking about somebody dying, like, you can. You start listening to it. First two songs, you know, Dirty Life and Times and Disorder in the House are very much in the Warren spirit. It's like, I am. I'm a mess. I've created chaos around me. You know, all of these things. It's like he's reckoning with, like, you know, his kind of literally dirty life and times, his history, like, as a. You know. And then he covers Knocking On Heaven's Door.
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It's getting dark Too dark to see.
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And I feel him knocking on heaven's door Bob Dylan's.
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Bob Dylan's fully covered.
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Wesley Morris
Knocking on heaven's Door.
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Alex Papademus
And you should. I feel like you should be dying if you're going to sing that song. If you're not Bob Dylan, you should be dying or you should have some knowledge that you are going out. There are very beautiful versions of that song by Jerry Garcia.
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Knock, knock, Knocking on heaven's door.
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And it is, I think, informed also by Jerry's understanding that he's not going to be here very long like, that. He, you know, this is someone who is also a drug user and also kind of like, you know, knew that he was there. You know, his number was going to come up.
- [16:13]
Wesley Morris
But this version of Knocking on Heaven's Door, I have to say, he just sounds like he knows what he's singing.
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Alex Papademus
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
And there's something about the, like.
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That backing vocal that, like, is with him as he's sort of thinking through what it means to sing this song.
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Alex Papademus
I feel. Knocking on heaven's door.
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Hey, Knock, knock, Knocking on heaven's door.
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My understanding is that this was a hard one to make for the reason of his, you know, he was dying and he was back on the. On the sauce. And this was. It was supposedly a struggle to get made. And so you feel that. That difficulty. But, yeah. That sense of, like, the backing vocal almost kind of holding him up in a way to, you know, to do this.
- [17:11]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. Support. That's exactly what I was thinking as I said this.
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Alex Papademus
He's leaning on these voices. Yeah. To do it.
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Wesley Morris
Yeah.
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Alex Papademus
And then it lands on pretty much the greatest, I would say, last song on a last album by anyone from at least this milieu. Like, if you're going to go, it's the perfect way. Like, if you're leaving the stage. I would pretty much give it to the song Keep Me in youn Heart.
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Shadows Are Falling and I'm running out of breath Keep me in your heart.
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Wesley Morris
For a while I love how he's recorded on this album. Like, he sounds like a lot of these last albums to me are remarkable for how close to the microphone and alone in the studio, the vocals recorded.
- [18:02]
Alex Papademus
There's a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done.
- [18:09]
Wesley Morris
Yeah.
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Alex Papademus
I mean, what's a vocal, right? It's breath. It's literally like you are listening to, like, the last exhalations that these people will make on, on the planet. And it's, it's such a, you know.
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Wesley Morris
And at least the way that we know them.
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Nick Kristof
Right.
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Alex Papademus
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
As, as singers.
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Alex Papademus
It'll stop you. It'll take you down from whatever you're doing because it's him asking, you know, maybe a lover, maybe a friend. Probably all of the above. Just think about old Warren for a little while after I'm gone. Just if it occurs to you, just give me, give, give a thought here and there. And like, he wants to exist still in some very small way in someone's life. And, you know, it's always, I, I, I'm getting choked up just thinking about it because it is very much. It's the way that it is very true to the way that people who've died live in your, in your existence where you're suddenly like, oh, yeah, I remember that. He would have loved that. You know, like just that weird sort of those little moments where it's like, oh, God, yeah. I can't call this guy to be like, can you believe that? You know, whatever.
- [19:21]
Hold me in your thoughts Take me to your dreams Touch me as I'm flying Fall into view.
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When the winter comes Keep the fires lit and I will be right next to you.
- [19:43]
Wesley Morris
So this is the kind of album where the meaning of it is, you know, what you're listening to as you're listening to it. It's not a secret. And other albums that kind of have this, that sort of operate this way, I would say. I mean, what would you include? I would include David Bowie's Black Star. We could add Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash, we talked about, as well, to that category. But then there's this other category that's like the one B of Knowing. You kind of mentioned it as going under this umbrella, but I would like to create a new umbrella out of this one. And this is the one that is the, this is the Premonition album. This is the, the, like, I don't know. I'm not sick. Nothing's going on with me. But I've Lived a life. I probably could die at some point. This is that album. Like, it's not a. I'm. I've got a terminal illness. This is just like, I've got a feeling, I suspect.
- [20:45]
Alex Papademus
Right.
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Wesley Morris
And I think maybe one of the great examples of this is Notorious B.I.G's Life After Death, his second album, which came out in 1997, I think, 16 days after he died. I mean, the album was done before he left this earth. There was no, you know, they weren't tinkering with it, like, 10 minutes before it came out. And, you know, I don't love this album. It's not a great album. Ready to Die, the album before this, the first Biggie album.
- [21:12]
Alex Papademus
Ready to Die. Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
Masterpiece. Masterpiece, yeah. One of the greatest albums of all time. This one suffers from a lot of things. One is generosity. There are too many people on this record. Biggie isn't an afterthought, but he is. This is. This has some of his. Some very good Biggie performances on it, but it also has some very good performances by a lot of other people.
- [21:34]
Alex Papademus
Yeah.
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Wesley Morris
But anyway, I think that this is. This, to me.
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What is this doing for you in terms of. Of. Of how it is communicating a sense of, like, living with the possibility of dying?
- [21:48]
Alex Papademus
I mean, this one is interesting, right? Cause it's not. It is someone who is, you know, if you are an artist like Biggie, whose work has been suffused with the possibility, with the idea starting with, like, you know, I'm not even supposed to be here. Like, I should not even have gotten to make Ready to Die, like, by, you know, sort of, like, actuarially, you know, sort of like, whatever it is, spiritually. Like, I probably should have not made it to this point. And there's so much of the, you know, the kind of the iconic Biggie songs are about that, you know, that feeling like. Of, like, you know, we. Like, we made it. Like, somehow, like, we made it to the other side. We're rich now, you know, made it out of the hood. Like, whatever. That sort of. That archetypal journey.
- [22:32]
Notorious B.I.G. (lyrics)
I'm blowing up like you thought I would call a Crip. Same number, same hood. It's all good.
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Alex Papademus
But then also Ready to Die ends with him shooting himself. Yep.
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Wesley Morris
Yeah, I reached my peak.
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Notorious B.I.G. (lyrics)
I can't speak Call my cheek Tell him that my will is weak Sick of lying I'm sick of talking matter of fact.
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Alex Papademus
Like, it ends with a certain. Like, it's like, he's like, that's. And, you know, there's a Very dark, you know, kind of turn to that where it's like this always contained within this success is the possibility of doom and like the likelihood of doom. And that there's like sort of that. That's almost in the nature of fame. And you know, it's like there's that song at the end, towards the end of this one. You're nobody till somebody kills you. So it's, it's like, you know, if you are an artist who talks about their own death all the time and the possibility of their own death and of their own violent death, you are the broken clock. That's right. Twice a day. You know, like it's. It's kind of like you're. You've basically sort of, you know, you're going to be right eventually, you know. And it's like it is a. It's. It's partly like a rock and roll kind of like self mythologizing thing to be like people are trying to kill me and like one of these days they're going to succeed. And it's just, it's kind of, it just in that sense it like goes back to the blues. Right. You know that like we're all. We're not going to live long. That, that notion that sort of like worked into all of this music.
- [24:05]
Wesley Morris
Well, right, but I'm. Yes. And there's, I mean from the standpoint of making music during Jim Crow, that is a very like the outcome of life in this country for black people. But especially to be an artist who is building your artistry around these questions of. I would describe it as forced mortality.
- [24:27]
Alex Papademus
Right. Gun culture. You're in a sort of gun world in some way. Like, you know, you have these, you have people around you who are involved with this stuff. Like you kind of know, you know, that's a possibility. It's an. Like I said, it's like an informed guess at that thing.
- [24:44]
Wesley Morris
Right. And then comes his last album, Life After Death. And it's two discs, I gotta say, like discs we. Things came in discs and there was a one disc and a two disc and sometimes they were. Could be dubbed the two different things. And I think that the two discs are really important and at least how I think about this as a last album. Because the first disc is where he's like, you know, I'm probably gonna die after these songs. Something's gonna happen to me. I don't know what it's gonna be. I mean, I can imagine what. I feel like he knows on that first disc that he might not get to make a second record somehow. And let's just spend a second listening to something from the first disc, like A Kick in the Door Biggie.
- [25:28]
Which just sounds like a million dollars. Cause DJ Premier did it.
- [25:35]
But it is also the one where he's sort of thinking about, you know, the life that he has lived and the toll that it will take. And it's just like the violence of it.
- [25:45]
Notorious B.I.G. (lyrics)
When I spark, you're wet look how dark it get when you mark for death Should I start your breath or should I let you die?
- [25:52]
Wesley Morris
Then you get to disc two. And that, to me, is the kind of revelation here, which is that there's a whole other life for this person to wait. What? I'm still here. I still get to make more music.
- [26:08]
Alex Papademus
Yeah.
- [26:09]
Wesley Morris
Disc two is where the adventure really begins. And this category of last album really kind of starts to break your heart a little bit. Because you're just. You can hear this person be like, wait, I just get to keep doing this? Maybe. Okay, well, what can I do? And the thing that he can do is a song. One of my favorite songs on this album is. Is just from the standpoint of Sound is another.
- [26:44]
Which is Kim and Lil Kim sniping at each other. But let's just listen to how hard this beat hits. And, I mean, every time it comes on, I don't know what to do. Am I, like, listening to these two diss the out of each other, or am I. Am I dropping it low? And the answer is both. I'm probably doing both.
- [27:03]
Alex Papademus
I'm probably doing both. You're probably doing the most.
- [27:09]
Notorious B.I.G. (lyrics)
Sex is lethal. I ain't gonna lie Means to get you back. I ain't gonna try like this, y'.
- [27:14]
Alex Papademus
All.
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Wesley Morris
But I would say that this album has this tension between, like, which of the roads do I want to go down?
- [27:22]
Alex Papademus
It's all in there. Yeah.
- [27:23]
Wesley Morris
I'm not dead yet. The world is my oyster.
- [27:28]
Alex Papademus
Yeah. It's interesting because I didn't like what's going on in this record as much as sort of, you know, you can't think about it without thinking about his death. And you can. It's contextualized by death, but it has so much life in it. Has so much creative life and so much kind of like just ornery life. And like, it's. You know, it's. He's. He's. He's brought in Lil Kim.
- [27:49]
Wesley Morris
He's the king of sex rap. I mean, yeah, nobody wrote better sex songs.
- [27:54]
Alex Papademus
It's all of that. It's all of that. Is is in there. But then you also have the things that, in the manner of the sort of I Didn't Know I Was Going to die album, the things that become kind of inadvertently tragic. And, I mean, I would go with Sky's the Limit for the ultimate version of that, which is, you know, this song about we made it.
- [28:16]
Notorious B.I.G. (lyrics)
If the game shakes me or breaks me I hope it makes me a better man Take a better stand Put money in my mom's hands get my daughter this college plan so she don't need no men Stay far from timid Only make moves when your heart's in it and live to pray Sky's the.
- [28:30]
Wesley Morris
Limit this is a person who, as far as I'm concerned, was really ready to, like, go to Bangerville.
- [28:40]
Like, I don't know what the future would have held for him and Puffy as musical collaborators. It seemed to me like Biggie was really curious about all the other ways he could sound. And the sad part to me is.
- [28:56]
You can hear him getting these tastes and. And maybe wanting more.
- [29:03]
Alex Papademus
I think that's what's interesting. But listening to this is like, oh, he would have done. Who knows what he would have done? Like, and who would. Would he have kind of, you know, would he have been Jay Z instead of Jay Z? Like, would he have been that guy who sort of goes on to make, like, six or seven giant albums and sort of explores, like, different avenues of his own.
- [29:22]
Talking about his life in different terms and, like, talking about, like, each of the stages of life, you know, like, what sort of that vacuum sort of was filled by other people in the 90s and beyond?
- [29:33]
Wesley Morris
Okay, so we're gonna take a break, and when we come back, I want to stay in this world of, like, what if gone too soon cut short and just think about, like, what it sounds like to lose an artist who just. Just wasn't even thinking. Like, death wasn't even on their mind. But something terrible happened.
- [29:53]
Alex Papademus
And this.
- [29:53]
Wesley Morris
This is the last record that we have of this person being the artist they were. So we're gonna take a break, and we'll be right back.
- [30:17]
Isabella Rossellini
What does beauty have to do with winning a tennis Grand Slam? Or empowering communities or tracking jaguars through the wild heart of South America? Hi there. I'm Isabella Rossellini, and I'm back with season two of this is Not a Beauty Podcast, where I uncover stories that get to the heart of how beauty is woven through every facet of our lives. Listen to this Is Not a Beauty Podcast from l' Oreal Group on Your favorite podcast platform.
- [30:47]
Wesley Morris
Hey, it's Vaughn Vreeland from New York Times Cooking. And if I could hit a whistle tone, I would do a Mariah. It's time.
- [30:55]
Cause Cookie Week is here. It is the best time all year when we unveil seven days of new cookie recipes from some of your favorite bakers.
- [31:03]
Alex Papademus
This looks like a little pink poodle.
- [31:05]
Wesley Morris
They look huggable. What if I took Vietnamese coffee and made that into a cookie? These are deluxe cookies. The sour candy is crazy.
- [31:14]
Alex Papademus
What? It's absolutely unhinged, but completely delicious.
- [31:18]
Wesley Morris
It smells so good.
- [31:20]
Betterment Advertiser
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- [31:34]
Wesley Morris
Okay, we're back. We're talking about last albums. Alex, before we left, I flagged that I wanted to sort of think a little bit more, almost purely about the last album by a person who did not in any way expect it to be their last album. And I think a very clean, terrible, for example of that is Aaliyah's self titled third and final album from 2001.
- [32:14]
It is just talk about going to Bangerville for sure.
- [32:25]
Alex Papademus
I mean, this is the third category. It's people who just were living their life and making their albums and like, sort of thinking that this is going to be, you know, part of a long career. And so there's no attempt to reckon with that possibility except in the sense of like, you know, just like in the sense of purely, like anybody who, like, makes a mark is saying, I'm putting something down for when I'm not here anymore. So, like, everything you do is that in some ways, like, you are sort of always contributing to the posthumous understanding of your work by. By doing any work. But these songs are not about death. You're not thinking about death when you're listening to Rock the Boat.
- [33:08]
Wesley Morris
No, you were thinking about, like, making more life. I don't know. There's just such a wonderful sensualization of herself here where, like, it's coming from her as opposed to, like a production.
- [33:22]
Alex Papademus
Well, she was some. Yeah, she was someone who was always very much, you know, like, aside from the, you know, her accidental death, like a, you know, tragic death, like the tragedy of Aaliyah is the degree to which she was sort of under the thumb of various producers and kind of Svengali like people. Obviously R. Kelly being the most sort of like, odious example, like, you know, who produced her first album. And they were also wed for a while. And, you know, it's a very sort of strange, dark history there. But this one is where she's beginning to come into her own.
- [34:03]
And, you know, I certainly, like, she missed all the events of the 2000s, but I think she. She missed like, a sort of the, you know, a climate in which she could have maybe taken more control of her work and in which people would have wanted to hear that.
- [34:20]
Wesley Morris
Because also her singing got really beautiful, like, even more beautiful on this album.
- [34:36]
Alex Papademus
I mean, it's the great kind of what if for Missy and Timbaland as producers as well. Like, if this person had continued to make records with them, what would they have done together? I think that's really the. You know, with Biggie, too, it's like, this. The same thing. It's like, what would. What we are mourning is possibility in the future and the things that would have happened. We're mourning the things we will not get in a way that we're not with. With a David Bowie or, like, you know, somebody like that. It's like this person would have not lived that much longer. They probably would have still made more records. But it's like, with this, it's the discography that we were robbed of and, like, you know, we didn't get enough.
- [35:18]
Wesley Morris
I think we should just sit in what Possibility sounded like. This is. We should listen to More Than a Woman, which every time I see it, I'm like, oh, there's also the Bee Gees. More than a woman.
- [35:34]
Anyway. More than a woman.
- [35:38]
Alex Papademus
Passion.
- [35:40]
Wesley Morris
Instant Sweat Beam.
- [35:44]
I love this. I love this song.
- [35:51]
Oh, man, it just.
- [35:55]
Killer.
- [36:04]
But, I mean, so I think that this category of albums is interesting because.
- [36:11]
It also has the possibility of being starter for a whole universe of music that happens in its wake. Aaliyah, by Aaliyah being a last album. Right. It's her last album, but it also feels like it's the beginning of something or near the beginning of something, which is, you know, I don't know. Do we have Ciara without Aaliyah? Do we. You know, there. Do we have FKA Twigs without Aaliyah? There's just like a whole class of. Setting aside what Timbaland and Missy would go on to do, the kind of singer that I think she would have evolved beyond in some way.
- [36:55]
Alex Papademus
Yes. No, she'd be.
- [36:56]
Betterment Advertiser
She'd.
- [36:57]
Alex Papademus
She'd be working with Tame Impala or something. Like, she would be in that zone. It's like, that's what Rihanna wound up.
- [37:02]
Wesley Morris
There a little bit.
- [37:03]
Alex Papademus
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And just literally singing on a. On the track, like, just kind of like, that's. I want it. I Want that exact track. She just, like, used to sang over the instrumental, like. But, yeah, it's like those. Those. You know, she would have gone. This is what it is about, like, the posthumous thing. We don't know what choices she would have made later. So we only have people kind of like, operating in, you know, with. Based on what she could, you know, do to this point. Which is a, you know, fairly obvious point, I guess.
- [37:33]
Wesley Morris
But, no, I think it's worth saying because, you know, one of the things that we're talking about here is the inarguability of a last album. Like, we know that this is the album that the artist wanted to have made. And, I mean, I think this kind of makes me want to talk about Black Messiah a little bit, because I just feel like it's a really great thing to think about in terms of how we've been trying to taxonomize what a last album even is. I mean, you know, they are talking about there being a fourth d' Angelo album that he had been working on, you know, in these last years of his life. But for our purposes today, Black Messiah is the last album. And, you know, I don't think he had any idea he was Gonna die at 51 when he released this thing when it came out in 2014.
- [38:28]
Alex Papademus
No, I mean, I think he was probably further away from that feeling than he'd been in a while. Cause I think he had sort of. This was someone who had struggled with addiction. He had a car wreck that, you know, he surv survived, you know, and that, like. And it was only after all of that, like, I guess the. The making of Black Messiah is What it's like 2007, I think, is like, you know, around there. And then he's making it for, like, seven years on and off.
- [38:54]
Wesley Morris
Yes. There were 14 years between Voodoo, which came out in 2000, and the release of Black Messiah.
- [38:59]
Alex Papademus
And I feel like that's one of the things that I always think about when I listen to it is like, oh, this sounds like somebody who. I don't know, maybe these were, like, done at the end or something, like, you know, but, like, there's all these layers to it. And it's like, yeah, he's. There' a palimpsest. There's like he's piling layer upon layer of vocals and guitars and all of that.
- [39:32]
So that's part of it. It's like, you know, he's been working on this. So it's. It's both a last album and a comeback album, because they're basically Everything is a comeback album for him.
- [39:41]
Wesley Morris
I think that the. The reason I love this album as a last album as. As.
- [39:52]
Like, heartbreaking as it is to, like, accept that that is true is that it is doing all of the last album work that you and I are talking about, right? This is a person who should have had a fourth album. This is a person who is sort of thinking through what it means to possibly die, but also knowing in the most existential, like, Cradle to Grave sort of way, that he's gonna die eventually. And what would it mean if it happened tomorrow? What if this is the thing that stands as the last thing I do?
- [40:25]
Alex Papademus
Right? It's asking something bigger of yourself if you are looking at your whole legacy and looking at your whole life when you turn to do these. But I mean, this is my point, too, about the back read that we do when somebody has died is like, now we're hearing this, like, is this here or are we just. Cause, like, I'm like, now I'm like, oh, yeah, of course. Like, it's sort of a. It's called Black Messiah. But, like, a messiah has to die. Like, that's sort of. That's what happens. Like, you go, you know, so you're not really the messiah until you're killed on some level.
- [40:55]
Wesley Morris
And there is, like, parenthetically, just to interrupt you for one second. I mean, he was like a thinking through J. Edgar Hoover's, you know, paranoid suspicion that there was a black messiah of the streets who was gonna foment revolution for black people in this country. And therefore, like, someone like Fred Hampton and the other black nationalists from that period needed to be taken out.
- [41:16]
Alex Papademus
And do you see? You know, and it's like, is it his death that causes us to see this? But I do. I do kind of feel like he has some of the sort of the certainty that you see in people who kind of knew they were going to be martyred. And, like, of course he didn't. He wasn't martyred. He. He passed away. D'. Angelo. But, like, that feeling of I have done. I know that what, like, when it's my time, I will have done the thing that I was meant to do. And I was doing the thing that I was meant to do. And, like, I was sort of like, I was exactly where. Where God wanted me from moment to moment. I knew God was working through me.
- [41:52]
Wesley Morris
Alex. That's it, right? He was ready, right? I mean. Cause think about the way this works versus something like Voodoo, right? Vudu is a great album as an album, and is a great second album in a lot of ways. Right. It is promising that something is gonna happen. Even if it takes me, you know, 14 years to tell you what it is. Something is brewing in me, and I am undergoing a change. Black Messiah, to me, is the change.
- [42:20]
Nick Kristof
Right.
- [42:21]
Wesley Morris
Is the thing he underw.
- [42:29]
And I love.
- [42:33]
Alex Papademus
I want you to wanna go.
- [42:39]
Wesley Morris
I mean, I think part of it for me is that we are surrounded by death all the time. I think that there's a real human curiosity.
- [42:52]
To experience or to hear other people.
- [42:57]
Think through what it is going to mean to not be here anymore. And so, for me, I think there's real legitimacy in thinking about, you know, albums as just one zone in which that relaying of an experience is happening. And when you can hear a person accepting that this is out there, or also just understanding, in Dangelo's case, how mortality functions, I don't know. I feel like what we're talking about is the meaning that we're giving something because.
- [43:36]
The fact of it corresponds with questions that we as human beings have about what it means to be here. And these albums, in some way, are a guide, like an index of having lived.
- [43:50]
Alex Papademus
Yeah. With d', Angelo, maybe it's like, the best you can do is sort of like, all of our time is limited. Right. And so you have to think about your time as limited. And if you think about your time as limited, then that's going to contextualize things. If you don't pretend that you have nothing but time, you're gonna make different choices, and it's gonna frame. It's like, it. You know, it's a weird thing. It's like, we think of it as morbid to think about your own death all the time, but, like, if you think about your death all the time, you're gonna be like. Like, is this worth. These are some of my last hours on Earth. Like, it's the. The. The sand is going one direction through the hourglass. What am I going to do? And what am I not going to do? And so in d' Angelo's case, it's like, I'm not going to. I'm not going to do crunches and come out with Voodoo two, you know, and, like, make a workout tape or something. Like, I'm going to go into my, you know, zone and, like, kind of try to create something that can stand next to the sort of the work that has inspired me and motivated me, like, while I have the chance. And I think that that's just. It might be the difference between.
- [44:58]
I Don't know, just a certain kind of person, a certain kind of artist, like, just has that thing. And maybe that is why they are motivated to leave a mark while they can is that they know that they're not. They have some sense that they're like, yeah, this is not. I'm not here for a good time. Not a long. Like, I'm going to. There's. I have a limited amount of space in which to do what I'm going to do. And it gets to the essence of art, which is like, you know, it's this. It's like going back to, like, cave paintings. It's like, I'm going to put my handprint on the wall so that you'll know that, like, I existed. And I don't even, you know, those guys who did that, those people, those ancient people may have not even thought about it in those terms, but that's the sort of. That's, you know, it's the romance that we attach to it is that somebody is like, I was here.
- [45:53]
Wesley Morris
Alex, thanks for talking about last albums with me.
- [45:59]
Alex Papademus
There's no way that I would rather spend some of my last hours, because they're all our last hours. We don't know. God, it's. I know. See, now it's heavy. Now it's heavy. We made it heavy.
- [46:12]
Wesley Morris
I. I receive it. I receive it and I'm. I send it back to you. I send it back to you. There's nobody else.
- [46:27]
Nick Kristof
This is Nick Kristof. I'm an opinion columnist for the New York Times. And I'm proud that for more than 100 years, the Times has conducted an annual appeal to raise money for charitable organizations. Times journalism is fundamentally about vetting the truth, and in this case, about vetting organizations and selecting some of the best to help create opportunity and overcome hardship. I hope you'll consider donating to the New York Times Communities Fund. To learn more, go to nytimes.com nytfund thank you.
- [47:06]
Wesley Morris
Okay, that's it. We did it. We made another cannonball, by the way, a couple weeks ago, we did this covers episode. Me and Cecile McLaurin Savant were talking about covers, and I mentioned that there was this countdown that was happening of the greatest covers of all time, 885 of them. Well, that's because the radio station that is responsible for this, the number is 88.5 out of Philadelphia. And guess what? Today the countdown starts on Thursday. So xpn.org I believe. Help yourself. It will be fun. You will scream at your radio. You will cry because you know you'll hear some song you love being covered or you'll hear a cover you love. But anyway starts today. This episode of Cannonball was produced by Elissa Dudley, Janelle Anderson, John White and Austin Mitchell. It was edited by Lisa Tobin. Daniel Ramirez engineered this episode. It was recorded by Matty Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman, Dan Powell and Diane Wong. They did the original music. They always do. Our theme music, as always, is by Justin Ellington. Bobby do took the photo for our show art. Our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarappa, Lauren Pruitt and Dave Mayers. It was edited by Jeremy Rocklin and Mark zemel. We're on YouTube, you know.
- [48:33]
Nick Kristof
We are.
- [48:33]
Wesley Morris
We always are. That's one place we live. Watch and subscribe. Thanks for listening. Next week it's list time. I didn't make a list but I got a bunch of things I like liked. Come back.