“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” This is from Psalms 23:4, a classic prayer about God’s blessed navigating a world full of sin and evil at every turn. Growing up in the church, that’s certainly what you’re told starting from a very young age. The secular world is evil, there’s temptation at every corner, and as a child of God you must do your best to stay away from it all.
But who can stand up to that much temptation? This is a question that seemed to have weighed heavily on the mind of Michael Archer, better known as D’Angelo, who died on Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 51. D’Angelo was a textbook child of the Pentecostal church, a religion based on fire and brimstone. His grandparent’s church was way up in the woods of Richmond, Va., a white tower encasing a hotbox of holy fervor, where people shouted and spoke in tongues and caught the Holy Ghost. And right there leading the choir was a teenaged D’Angelo, then just Michael, with his brother and cousins, as their grandmother preached. When he decided to start his music career, everyone in the church warned him against making secular music–the devil’s music–except for that grandmother, who wanted him to follow what he felt was right. It made sense that he had Psalms 23:4 tattooed onto his arms, a constant reminder as he entered the heart of that valley.
