D’Angelo’s “Really Love”: A Love Letter to Love…Really
“Si, me amas? Yo te quiero mucho. Todo el tiempo que pasamos. Lo que te quería decir es que… tu estas jodiendome la vida. Yo no quería pelear contigo. Yo solamente te quería amar. Pero tu eres muy celoso. Querías ser mi dueño. Pero yo soy libre. Quieres ser mi rey? Yo tu reina? No sé si confío en ti. Pero yo te quiero mucho.”
So many of us understand romance as transactional, fleeting, and commodified, especially in modern times. We swipe and type and identify others based on the perceived emotional, physical and mental satisfaction that we glean from a carefully curated highlight reel on their dating app / social media profiles. Yet, time and time again, I see tweets like "can we bring back real male yearning in R&B🥺" all the time, especially in the age of 4batz, d4vd and other short-form video stars. The supposed intensity, pain, regret and tears behind these newer conveyor-belt records don’t all quite hit the same when they're designed to be heard on your iPhone speaker. We all want "real love" in theory, but in practice, the media that should be helping us understand it just isn't scratching that itch. We just don't have as many musicians like Jill Scott musing about a past lover turning her from a "woman of substance into a brick-flying, calling too damn much…crying, crying, spying [chick]” anymore. There's plenty of artists out there – like SZA, Lucky Daye, Steve Lacy and their respective clones – capturing that feeling well enough, but have we had a "Kiss of Life" this decade? Have we had an "Ex-Factor"? Maybe it's too early to tell, but it's just so much easier to take a look back into the songs that defined relationships, weddings, marriages and lives throughout the world for the past several decades.
Highway drives with family where I would always be on the AUX – much to my parents' dismay – were some of my favorite memories growing up. I first heard D’Angelo’s famed comeback album Black Messiah in one of these moments, in the winter of 2015. We were back in California, driving upstate to see the snow in a alongside a smattering of family friends also on their way there in their own cars. In many ways, these rides really encapsulated my family life. Between us stopping to get cherries, keeping my sister engaged/disengaged, my mom singing along to Bollywood classics or my dad and I bickering about where to stop for food, there was never a dull moment. I put Black Messiah on for the first time, loved it, and kept cranking up the volume, but D'Angelo's signature crackle and heavenly voice were unintelligible to my Indian parents. They told me to turn it off several times, but I didn’t care. It was 10 years ago, so maybe I just threw on headphones and enjoyed the rest of the ride. I don't really remember the details, but that memory endures. On that day, I heard a song that would carry me through my whole life.
actually managed to find a pic i took from that trip - matches the black messiah vibe FR
Reflecting on my life in that moment, I had not yet fallen in love – I had never had a girlfriend or even a crush at that point. I was a young, angsty teen who had just discovered “music” as a “hobby” because I thought it would be “cool” to "get into music" and create my own taste. I didn't even know who D'Angelo was or how significant he was — the album had been out for a year at that point and I wasn't even hip yet. I didn't even know Richmond, VA – where D'Angelo is from – existed until 2020. But upon hearing "Really Love,” with its slow-burn intro, angelic vocals, layered instrumentation and extraterrestrial atmosphere, I was transported into another dimension. I couldn't relate to or even decipher a lot of the lyrics at the time, but something about it really moved me.
Every moment of love and loss, every hearbreak, retread, and every time D’Angelo’s heart has stirred can be found in this song’s composition. From the simple guitar-driven melody, the flushing strings and orchestration, plucky bassline, impeccable drums/snaps/claps on every fourth beat, to the refrain “I’m in really love with you,” it evoked something in me then that became so amplified with personal context. Ten years later, having gone through love and loss and repetition (and also having evidently leaned way too far into the “music lover” persona), I can now comfortably understand and appreciate the meaning behind each element. The spoken-word intro alone (reproduced at the top) is some of the most powerful audial imagery I’ve ever heard.
Yearning — that's what this song is all about. That Spanish intro was from D'Angelo's past lover and fellow musician Gina Figueroa. They met in 1995, and her relationship with D’Angelo seemed to burn bright as the sun, at least from secondhand accounts. He dedicated several past songs to her, including “Spanish Joint” (about their heartbreak) and “One Mo’Gin” off of Voodoo. She was his muse, his life, his everything. She inspired some of the best music of all time. That’s generational love and desire if I’ve ever seen it.
And what makes it so powerful is that in this intro, she’s clearly so done with his shit, but her love for him was and is eternal regardless of how sour things got. Within these few short seconds, she covers their entanglement, heartbreak, longing, trust issues, power games, and the all-consuming, disruptive, destructive power of their true love. Here’s that intro in English:
“Yes, do you love me? I love you very much. All the time we spend. What I wanted to tell you is that... you’re screwing up my life. I didn’t want to fight with you. I just wanted to love you. But you are very jealous. You wanted to be my owner. But I’m free. Do you want to be my king? Am I your queen? I don’t know if I trust you. But I love you very much.”
D’Angelo proceeds to follow this sultry, heady passage with some of the most beautiful music ever made, underpinned by simple lyrics like “When you’re walking near me…I’m in really love with you”; “All night, beside you I lay/I love you deep when you come to my bed”; “I’m not an easy man/Over-stand, you feel me?/But girl you’re patient with me”; and “Lay your head side of my hip.” But just reading these, as you’re doing now, doesn’t do them justice. It’s the way they’re delivered. How they tie together and melt into the strings. The rasp and pain and love in his voice all swells and rises and falls so often, sometimes over the course of a single bar. It’s a masterclass in songwriting, melody, and instrumental prowess (shout out to The Vanguard) that rarely comes by in modern music, or music in general. In the endless internet ocean, I sadly feel these classics aren’t as relevant to younger people like myself who desperately need to hear them.
And it would be disingenuous to leave out the context. D’Angelo was one of the biggest musical acts and talents of the 90s and the 2000s. His debut Brown Sugar came out in 1994, when he was only 21 years old. Go listen to that and tell me it isn’t grown man music – it’s ridiculous. And his 2000 follow-up Voodoo was somehow even better. These albums catapulted him to stardom, along with being so good-looking that all the fame and attention of being a sex-symbol got to his head to the point where he had to disappear for 14 years.
one of the best discographies of all time - go listen after this -
one of the best discographies of all time - go listen after this -
The time passed, and D’Angelo’s life was marked by controversy and trouble from the fallout of his explosive rise to stardom and dazzling burnout. He had just given the world two albums that shifted the conversation on music period, been adored by fans of his music and his body, but decided to disappear from public life altogether. There’s even an Atlanta episode about it.
Then, some time between Voodoo and Black Messiah, Gina and D’Angelo reconnected to work on this song. Demos and leaks of early versions track back to 2007. And maybe I’m looking too much into it, but the fact that Gina co-wrote on this song is so symbolic to me. These past lovers — scorned by immaturity, jealousy, a need for control, and being young — came together post-mortem to write something that reflects a love that might not be in practice, but will always exist in spirit. To me it feels like an ode to each other and an ode to the craft alike. D’Angelo clearly loves making music — even in the fourteen years between his past two albums, he collaborated with a helping of other artists here and there to make some incredible records. But this song — Really Love — being his big comeback single, his first-ever SNL performance, his first time really being back in the public eye, feels so special to me. It makes the song even better.
Altogether, there’s so much artistry, careful arrangement, meaning, background and memory behind this song that it really gives me that raw, instinctive feeling of heartache and pure, unbridled love every time I hit rewind and hear D’Angelo cry out for his ex-girl. There’s an unlimited amount of ways to relate, no matter who you are, what experiences you’ve had and how you might feel. It’s a vicarious, generational classic of a song that I’ll definitely be playing for my grandkids one day. Who knows, maybe this essay will still be up so they can read along too. But until then, it’s something I continue to listen to regularly all those years after I first heard it with my family. I hope my parents appreciate it more and take a look after reading this — y’all have clearly been missing out! I can go on about this song forever, but if you haven’t already put it on after having read this far, please do so now.
Here’s the link below for your convenience (also my favorite SNL performance ever):
