D’Angelo, Acclaimed and Reclusive R&B Innovator, Dies at 51

Music|D’Angelo, Acclaimed and Reclusive R&B Innovator, Dies at 51

D’Angelo, the acclaimed neo-soul singer who found fame in the 1990s and early 2000s with an innovative and sensuous take on 1970s R&B, as well as with a risqué music video that briefly made him a pop culture phenomenon but drove him into nearly a decade of seclusion, died on Tuesday. He was 51.

His death was confirmed in a statement by his family, which did not say where he died but gave the cause as cancer.

In the years leading up to his triumph with the 2000 album “Voodoo,” D’Angelo, who was born Michael Eugene Archer, was a leading light of the era’s revolution in soul music, melding the sweetly seductive melodies of classic singers like Al Green and Marvin Gaye with the beats and urgency of hip-hop.

His biggest songs, like “Lady,” “Brown Sugar” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” were hailed as supreme examples of the trend, which sought not a revival of Black pop traditions but a transformation of them. Those tracks all became Top 10 hits on Billboard’s R&B chart, and D’Angelo was in heavy rotation on Black radio stations, along with artists like Erykah Badu, Mos Def and Common, with whom he collaborated as part of a loose collective known as the Soulquarians.

D’Angelo’s signature vocal style was a delicately expressive falsetto that, like Prince’s, could build to an ecstatic wail that led critics to hail him as a worthy successor to the greatest traditions of Black pop.

“He is R&B Jesus, and I’m a believer,” Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice in 2000.

“Untitled,” set to an erotically slow pace, also crossed over to the wider pop market, reaching No. 10 on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 chart, thanks in no small part to its music video. In the video, D’Angelo stood as a Black Adonis in cornrows, apparently naked — the video framed its lower edge just below his waist — except for a gold crucifix. The camera scanned D’Angelo’s muscled, sweat-drenched physique as he brought the song to an orgasmic climax.

The video for “Untitled” established D’Angelo as an unabashed sex symbol — The New York Times called it “pure beefcake” — and bolstered his commercial power, sending “Voodoo,” the album it was released on, to No. 1 for two weeks.

But D’Angelo grew uncomfortable with the attention, and with being characterized as a sex symbol. After a breakdown on tour, he fell into a deep depression and struggled with alcohol and drug abuse before going to rehab.

“‘Untitled’ wasn’t supposed to be his mission statement for ‘Voodoo,’” his former manager, Dominique Trenier, told Spin magazine in 2008.

“I’m glad the video did what it did,” Mr. Trenier added, “but he and I were both disappointed because, to this day, in the general populace’s memory, he’s the naked dude.”

D’Angelo also chafed at the description of his music as simply neo-soul. “I never claimed I do neo-soul,” he said in a Red Bull Music Academy interview in 2014. “When I first came out, I used to always say, ‘I do Black music. I make Black music.’”

For much of the rest of his career, D’Angelo would vanish from the music world — and from the public eye — for years at a time. After “Voodoo,” he did not release another album until “Black Messiah,” which he produced himself, in 2014.

His absences further cultivated his mystique among his fans, as well as concern. In May he withdrew from a festival performance in Philadelphia, citing a recent surgery.

A full obituary will follow.