Every great career in rhythm and blues leads only to heaven or hell. The path to hell is obvious: From Sam Cooke gunned down to James Brown leading a multi-state police chase to Sly Stone strung out on crack and living in a van to Whitney Houston’s body lying dead as the industry partied a few floors below, our culture’s never treated the shining lights of our most soulful genre with kindness. The archetype of this path is Marvin Gaye, facing his demons at the wrong end of a gun aimed by the man who gave him his name and his life.

But heaven doesn’t look much better. Whether it’s Al Green leading rote singalongs of his greatest hits, or Stevie Wonder’s once-essential annual albums slowing down to a trickle of treacle, or Aretha Franklin being used largely as set decoration to signify which events are deemed Worthy Of A Legend. We start to understand why someone like me who loves Lauryn Hill or D’Angelo (or even Dave Chappelle, a comedian who’s lived the career of a soul singer) often want to tell them “I’ve gotten all I ever need from you; Go take care of yourself.” Even my beloved Prince has taken to generously sprinkling a still-vital and compelling live show with bowdlerized medleys of greatest hits, interpreting his ever-present religious fixation as a compulsion to undo the ferocity and provocation that earned him his audience three decades ago.

I always thought Michael was going to buy his way to heaven, but held a grim conviction that he might meet his end at the hands of a crazed fan. With the hindsight of a few years, it would appear that, in a way, he did. Those on the heavenly path of an R&B legend are of course faced with the constant temptations of fate and fame; Given enough success, you can just keep paying doctors on retainer until you find the one who’s greedy and starstruck enough to not quit in protest when you ask for a lethal dose of anesthetic.

It’s no wonder Questlove’s most recent quest is to encourage himself and others in the world of soul music to do what it takes to live well past 50. A grim goal made even sadder by the humility of its ambitions.

This is a simple audio essay I put together to go alongside the rest of this essay, explaining some of the ideas.

Related Reading

These themes have been fixations here for a while; Here are some variations on the theme:

• D’Angelo and the Demons of the New Minstrel Movement
• A Decade After Aaliyah
• Goodbye, Godfather, on James Brown’s death, and a review of the last live show of his that I got to see