Busta Rhymes delivered an emotional homage to D’Angelo with a new track titled “Magic,” released through Okayplayer, honoring the late neo-soul luminary who died earlier this month after a private fight with cancer.
The seven-minute tribute finds Busta Rhymes pouring his heart out over the haunting instrumental of “One Mo’Gin,” a standout from D’Angelo’s revered 2000 album Voodoo.
The song opens with Busta’s reverent words: “D’Angelo — that man is a godsend. He is truly a godsend. Not was truly, but is truly a godsend.”
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The track, more eulogy than freestyle, walks listeners through their 34-year friendship, beginning with their first encounter in the studio with A Tribe Called Quest.
Busta paints D’Angelo as a once-in-a-generation artist: “The man never needed a co-sign, he never needed a voucher/He touched them keys like Escobar in the Medellín/And he touched the souls of the people and everything between/We gotta feel it/And embrace all of his spirit/From the music, whenever we hear it.”
Released via the platform co-founded by Questlove, a longtime collaborator of D’Angelo, “Magic” serves as both a personal farewell and a cultural salute.
Speaking to Okayplayer, Busta said, “That was my friend for 34 years. Acknowledging him as a friend first, as a genius second, and as one of the most significant contributors to this culture.”
He went on to reflect on D’Angelo’s legacy, saying, “I feel like the Earth shifted when D came to do music. He was the embodiment of some s### that was a complete balance of what our ancestors created, to where he took it. There have been a lot of soulful artists who played and sang that came before him and came after him. But the impact was nowhere near the level that he was able to do it on just three albums across 34 years.”
D’Angelo, born Michael Eugene Archer, died at 51. His death came as a surprise to many, as he had kept his cancer diagnosis out of the public eye.
Known for his genre-defining work in neo-soul, he leaves behind a compact but powerful discography: Brown Sugar (1995), Voodoo (2000), and Black Messiah (2014).
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