D'Angelo Launches 'Second Coming' Tour With Mesmerizing Apollo Theater Concert — billboard.com

D'Angelo treated his fans with borderline cruelty by making them wait nearly 15 years for his Black Messiah album, but in many ways New Yorkers had it worst. D'Angelo's 'Black Messiah,' and Why Waiting 14 Years For Music Isn't a Bad Thing Since he first began emerging from musical hibernation in 2012, he's done full-fledged tours of both Europe and the States -- but skipped NYC. And although he's performed within city limits three times in those years, two shows were sloppy covers-heavy sets, and one was a roof-raising but tantalizingly brief two-song romp at the 2013 "Music of Prince" tribute concert at Carnegie Hall. There was even a live Q&A session back in May. But New York hadn't seen a proper D'Angelo concert since his transcendent Voodoo tour hit Radio City Music Hall in March of 2000. Well, as he did with Black Messiah, D'Angelo made sure Saturday night's (Feb. 7) concert at the legendary Apollo Theater was damn near worth the wait. Not only was it the very first date of his "Second Coming" tour (which kicks off a European run on Thursday before coming back to the States in March); and not only is the 1,500-seat Apollo one of the city's most intimate and sonically satisfying theaters. It was also the site of the then-16-year-old Michael Archer's first New York performance, when he won one of the venues' famed Amateur Nights in 1991, long before anyone knew him as D'Angelo. And from the moment he walked onto the dimly lit stage alone Saturday night -- sporting a leather jacket, wide-brimmed hat and long scarf -- and performed the first two verses of "Prayer" solo before being joined by his band, D'Angelo showed that while he's now 40 years old and many pounds heavier, he's lost none of the charisma and vocal agility that made him a star in the first place.

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