My friend and I were supposed to see D’Angelo at the Roots Picnic this summer. When he cancelled a few weeks out, I was disappointed, but not aggrieved. I figured I had time to see him live, and he had time to release another album someday. We had time.

His death last week really knocked me sideways. Both his death and my grief over it came as enough of a surprise to me that I talked to my therapist about it. I realized that his music is so knitted into my life that I can’t imagine the artist behind it being gone. To me, he’s a griot, capable of conjuring the past and the future and commingling it with the immediate present. His is music that simultaneously sounds like it’s existed for decades before he was born, and like it came from the future, and like it’s being written in the exact moment that I’m listening to it. It’s entirely organic, yet almost comically fussed over. It’s bound up in earthly and otherworldly pleasure, so I feel transported and entirely in my body at the same time.

The only ways I know how to process D’Angelo’s death is by listening to his music and writing about it. The grief and the joy feed each other, and together they feed me, so it feels like the right way to go. With that, here are the songs I’ve had on repeat for the past week (and lifetime).

I feel like I was born with this song’s baseline strumming in my marrow; meanwhile, the man released it when I was 7 years old. I truly can’t remember the first time I heard it. Maybe it was in a Brooklyn jazz club in 1962, or maybe I haven’t heard it yet. It’s just always been there, and I’m always discovering it. I love the way the rhythm and repetition make it into a horny lullaby, too—I’m soothed and turned on at the same time.

The Space Jam soundtrack has some obvious bangers on it: “Space Jam” itself still fucking goes; Seal’s “Fly Like an Eagle” cover is still smooth as silk. But I did not know until last week that “I Found My Smile Again” was originally released on said Space Jam soundtrack. Not that it matters—the song sounds like a Brown Sugar B-side, and that’s essentially what it is. And it’s one of those songs that sounds exactly like its title. It sounds exactly like rediscovered joy. It radiates gratitude, rejuvenation, bliss; the kind that you only get when you weren’t expecting it, when you’d perhaps given up on it. It always makes me smile, and sing, and dance, for the entire song.

It’s perhaps strange to single out one song in D’Angelo’s catalogue as slutty. Frank, unapologetic sexuality is a central part of his music, even when it’s not explicit. But the guitar riff on this Prince cover is so fucking slutty (laudatory). I can’t listen to it without sneering, so I can’t imagine him playing it without sneering. This is sweat-dripping, headboard-banging fucking in music form.

Probably the D’Angelo song I listen to the most, because it’s on my yoga playlist. Specifically, it’s the soundtrack to my tree pose—> one-legged chair pose—> sun salutations sequence, which means I associate it with finding my balance. This is always the song that triggers me to harmonize my body and my mind; if I’m off-balance internally, I can’t find my footing physically. So, balance and peace. That’s what this song does for me.

I was flagrantly guilty of over-relating to songs before I was grown enough. I’d be singing along to “I Have Nothing” and “Against All Odds” like I was rounding the corner on Divorce Number Three; whole time I’m in fifth grade and entirely undateable. But, despite my premature melodramatics, “One Mo’Gin” is one song that I knew I’d have to grow into. The depth of the yearning, the anticipatory regret of letting yourself back into someone’s orbit because of the narcotizing sway they have over you—this was so grown that it let me know I was too young for grown folks’ business. At the same time, I knew I’d catch up to it. I’m a born yearner, after all.

Black Messiah was the only D’Angelo album that I listened to and processed consciously in real time. I was finally grown! But again, it felt like the whole album already existed. I knew all the songs by heart, because they were already in my heart. “Really Love” is, to me, a song of promises—spoken and unspoken, made and fulfilled. It’s falling asleep while spooning on Sunday afternoon with no other plans, nobody else to see but each other, nothing else to do but each other. It feels like forever.

This is my favourite track on the album. The guitar emerging from the shimmer of percussion right at the top is what sealed the deal. Oddly enough, it’s also my cat’s favourite song.1 It’s the only song that will stop her crying in the car, and the song that will summon her from wherever she is to come curl up with me. The end of 2014/beginning of 2015 was a turbulent time for me, and this song was a much-needed balm for my soul. I would have healed differently without it. And this cat was beside me for most of that, so I guess she was lucky and discerning enough to imprint on it. Whatever the reason, she and I both feel held when this song is on.

Another song about promises—the promise of finding someone lifetime after lifetime, having a connection that reverberates across the ages, recognizing each other no matter how the two of you show up. It’s a tantalizing way to end an album, leaving us longing to experience the next lifetime with him, too. And what an ending to a catalogue of music, this assurance that D’Angelo has existed before and will exist again, in another lifetime. It’s such a welcome comfort right now, when he didn’t have enough time in this one, to feel quite sure that he’ll keep existing in some form. That a piece of his soul is woven into all of his music, so we can conjure part of him whenever we need it. We’ve got time.

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