D’Angelo showed us what the 21st century should sound like

On the first day of the century, the sun decided to come up. Everyone’s computers blinked on, and the end-times hadn’t come. But we still couldn’t shake the question mark hanging over America, if not earthly existence: What happens to us now? Twenty-four days later, D’Angelo proposed some kind of answer with “Voodoo,” a star map of an R&B album that felt ancient and futuristic, capacious and intimate, immaculate and filthy, fragile and full of desire — music that, even 25 years later, still fulfills our busted nation’s collective idea of musical greatness. Real greatness, true greatness, total greatness. Not the flattering kind that means best, or even the beautiful kind that means loved. The indisputable kind that means more to understand, forever.