Fans have “missed the point” of D’Angelo’s steamy video

As MTV takes its last breath, closing its last music channels in the UK, it’s strange to look back to the days when multiple TV channels broadcast music videos for hours every day, but gave rise to pop as a product in the 2000s and the era of influencers in which we now find ourselves. Artists are meant to be seen while being heard. Not every artist was drawn to gravity at that time. Some made their videos weird or humorous, like Busta Rhymes’ clips or Missy Elliott’s bizarre clips, which had them dressing up like cartoon characters. The sensual and raunchy R&B sets will not be nearly naked, but wearing an open leather jacket, pants and combat boots in the hot desert sun, for some reason. When Untitled dropped and a topless D’Angelo slowly spun around while the camera panned in and out and up and down his torso at a molasses-dripping speed, everyone took notice.

Scientific

“In college, I lived in a house with two other black women who had very different tastes in men,” recalls Fredara Hadley, an author and professor of ethnomusicology at Juilliard University. “But from the first chord, we were all plopping down on the couch to watch the untitled video as if we hadn’t watched it hours earlier.”

Hadley notes that the video was released during a period of female objectification in music videos across genres. Britney Spears’ Oops!… She Did It Again was released that same year, but so were the independent women of Destiny’s Child. While the video vixens pivoted their careers toward empowerment, men were not only explicitly presented to the female gaze. D’Angelo’s video came to prominence, winning a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 2001. Voodoo was named R&B Album of the Year, with love-filled lyrics revealing a more romantic streak. On Lady, D’Angelo sang about loving his girlfriend and wanting to tell everyone about her. The Root is about his love for a woman so much that he seeks help from a doctor.

“It was kind of therapeutic for me [The Root]”…because I’m so pathetic in song,” D’Angelo says in a 1999 documentary filmed about the making of voodoo. “That’s the root. It hit me and I’m in a bad way.”

So the departure was without a destination. Journalist Torre, who interviewed D’Angelo for Rolling Stone in 2000, mentioned in a recent Instagram clip that the video was the brainchild of D’Angelo’s manager, Dominique Trinier. She convinced him to do it, but when he arrived at the set, the singer wouldn’t leave his car. After being convinced to take part, Morgan recalls his girlfriend who was on set that fateful day describing the event as “uncomfortable” because the “exploitation” was obvious. This presence continued with Thompson describing D’Angelo doing push-ups before gigs to ensure his body was in line for the untitled photo.

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