When I showed up to Golden Gate Park on August 7, 2015 for a D'Angelo concert as a part of the Outside Lands music festival, it was unclear if he would even show. Two years prior, the mercurial singer had been booked at the same festival but cancelled due to a medical emergency. Over the prior decade, D’Angelo had garnered a reputation for flakiness and erratic behavior, with several purported comebacks withering away.

But not only did D’Angelo show up that night, he delivered perhaps the greatest musical performance I’ve ever witnessed. He showed off the full range of his virtuosic singing and songwriting, playing sultry R&B ballads, punk-infused protest anthems, and jazz-inflected interludes. He crooned in falsetto like Prince, stomped and shrieked like James Brown, sashayed across th

See Full Page