One of the most mythologized unreleased D’Angelo tracks has made its way to the internet.
When D’Angelo sat for a lengthy Red Bull Music Academy interview in 2014, Questlove popped in to chat a couple times. Near the end of the talk, the Roots bandleader talked up an unreleased song called “Bitch,” recorded in 1996 during the same sessions that yielded the Illadelph Halflife collaboration “The Hypnotic.” Questlove called “Bitch,” originally intended for the Set It Off soundtrack, the start of the Voodoo era — an early instance of honing in on the off-kilter, groovy, J Dilla-influenced vibe the Soulquarians team would perfect for D’Angelo’s 2000 sophomore album.
This weekend, just a couple months after D’Angelo’s death, a treasure trove of archival material hit the internet. (Reddit can show you where.) That data dump includes the first publicly available recording of “Bitch.” It turns out the vocal vamping from the beginning of D’Angelo’s “Me And Those Dreamin’ Eyes Of Mine” video was taken from “Bitch,” a little glimpse of the song that’s been sitting there all along. Yet the real attraction here is the groove, one of the rhythms that forced Questlove to forgo the rigid “quantized” sound he’d been pursuing in favor of the “drunk,” “sloppy,” erratic rhythmic pulse pioneered by Dilla. “It was drunk, but it was perfect,” the drummer recalled of “Bitch.”
Below, hear “Bitch,” check out the “Me And Those Dreamin’ Eyes Of Mine” video, and revisit the Red Bull Music Academy interview. (The whole thing is great, but the “Bitch” section begins at about the 1 hour, 12 minute mark.)
