Identity songs

There are at least four good reasons to consider D’Angelo and The Vanguard’s Black Messiah (RCA) and Swamp Dogg’s The White Man Made Me Do It (S.D.E.G.) together.

One is that February is Black History Month, a month in which appreciating the music of African-Americans plays a large role. Another is that, as their titles proclaim, both albums deal with being-black-in-America themes. Still another is that at 41, the R&B superstar D’Angelo (a.k.a. Michael Archer) is young enough to be the 72-year-old soul legend Swamp Dogg’s (a.k.a. Jerry Williams’) son, and generation tends to sharpen generation.

Last, both albums sound good, making up for what their lyrics lack with music that skillfully combines (D’Angelo) or juxtaposes (Swamp Dogg) multiple black-identified genres until depths, widths, and heights emerge that only high-end headphones or speakers can faithfully reproduce.

Audible among D’Angelo’s influences are Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, and Prince. Among Swamp Dogg’s are Sam Cooke (whose “You Send Me” he covers) and Charles Calhoun (“Your Cash Ain’t Nothing but Trash” ditto). Both pay homage to Sly Stone, whose turbulent There’s a Riot Goin’ On is Black Messiah’s most obvious sonic precursor and whose last 40 years of drug-addled wilderness wandering inspired Swamp Dogg’s “Where Is Sly.”

Reception-wise, however, the albums couldn’t be more different. The White Man Made Me Do It has yet to dent Billboard’s Top 200 and seems to be headed for the same commercial oblivion that has been unfairly greeting Swamp Dogg albums since his 1970 debut. Black Messiah, on the other hand, debuted at No. 5. And, despite having been released only 11 days before Christmas as D’Angelo’s last-minute response to the Michael Brown and Eric Garner verdicts, it took top honors in the Village Voice’s annual granddaddy-of-’em-all “Pazz & Jop” critics poll.

Give the critics this much: Whereas their top 1988 selection, Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was mostly sound and fury, signifying black America’s perennial susceptibility to the siren song of the Nation of Islam, Black Messiah cuts a wider cultural swath.

Not that it bypasses the Nation of Islam altogether. “1000 Deaths” samples a fiery 1993 sermon by Khalid Abdul Muhammad in which the one-time Louis Farrakhan assistant proclaims that Jesus was an African. But it also includes a dignified modernization of the Lord’s Prayer (“Prayer”) that concludes, reverently enough, with the Pentecostal-raised D’Angelo imploring God to deliver him from evil and confusion.

Swamp Dogg might well consider seeking deliverance from confusion too. The six-minute “I’m So Happy” joyfully touts Jesus, and the seven-minute, historically comprehensive, hilariously racial-pride-stoking title cut could end welfare. “Through due diligence, perseverance, and hard work,” he proclaims in his undiminished miracle of a voice at the climax, “most of us will rise to the top.” (The funniest bon mot: “Bessie Coleman received an aviation pilot’s license before Amelia Earhart [pause] and she didn’t get lost!”) But he also unnecessarily raunches up Leiber and Stoller’s “Smokey Joe’s Café,” ascribes the prejudice that he decries in “Prejudice Is Alive and Well” exclusively to white people, and comes off unbecomingly smitten by Barack Obama.

Where he gets the balance right is “Let Me Be Wrong.” Sung from the point of view of a cuckold who puts up with his unfaithful wife because he loves her like crazy, it could almost pass for a love song from Hosea to Gomer.