[2] The album was produced and mostly written by D'Angelo, who collaborated with musicians including drummer Questlove, bassist Pino Palladino, guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, and horn player Roy Hargrove.

He pursued an entirely analog and murky funk sound for the record, lending it comparisons to the 1971 Sly & the Family Stone album There's a Riot Goin' On.

[4] He became more conscious of and uncomfortable with his status as a sex symbol, and after the tour D'Angelo returned to his home in Richmond, Virginia, disappearing from the public eye.

[5] After a car accident and an arrest on DUI and marijuana possession charges, D'Angelo left Virgin Records in 2005 and checked into the Crossroads Centre rehabilitation clinic in Antigua.

Various mugshots began circulating around the time, showing the singer looking overweight and unhealthy, in stark contrast to the muscular D'Angelo seen in promotion for Voodoo.

[14] In early February 2010, a new track called "1000 Deaths" appeared on the Internet, but was swiftly removed due to a copyright claim by Michael Archer, D'Angelo's legal name.

Around the same time, an article began to circulate on the Internet, which seemed to be an apparent review of "James River", with detailed descriptions of individual songs, track listing, and segments of lyrics.

D'Angelo fans will be extremely happy to know, the wait will be over soon and it will surely be a future classic ..." Russell Elevado updated the status of the album again on his own website.

[25] Two days later, the track "Sugah Daddy", which had been part of D'Angelo's set list since 2012,[26] premiered at 3am EST and 1,000 downloads were available on Red Bull's 20 Before 15 website.

[27] After an exclusive listening party in New York, Black Messiah was released digitally on December 15 through iTunes, Google Play Music, and Spotify.

His band, The Vanguard, comprised drummer Chris Dave, bassist Pino Palladino, guitarists Jesse Johnson and Isaiah Sharkey, vocalist Kendra Foster and keyboardist Cleo "Pookie" Sample.

[34] In a rave review for Rolling Stone, Rob Sheffield hailed the record as an "avant-soul dream palace" and a "warm, expansive masterpiece",[42] while Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune said it delves into unrefined funk and weighty themes without sounding overproduced.

[45] NME magazine's Angus Batey appraised it as one of the year's best albums and a richly detailed, enduring record that "repays a decade and a half's faith and patience".

[40] Slant Magazine's Sam C. Mac said D'Angelo combined funk, R&B, and rock with emotionally varied, socially relevant lyrics on an album "ever-worked, ever-tweaked, and perfected (in its distinctively imperfect way), but soul-bearing [sic] and raw like little else".

[47] In The Guardian, journalist Paul Lester deemed Black Messiah to be as much a socially conscious work as "a restatement of faith in the principles and sounds of the pre-digital era of black music",[48] while Priya Elan of Mojo praised it as "a beaming, single-minded statement of spiritual rebirth and political reckoning" that finds D'Angelo appropriately political amid the 2014 Ferguson unrest.

[3] According to Jon Pareles in The New York Times, it recalled that particular album because of the heavily multitracked vocals, the unpredictable flow of the music, and its roots in funk, rock, jazz, and gospel traditions, all the while highlighting D'Angelo's own musicianship "with all its glorious eccentricities".

[51] Somewhat less impressed, Andy Gill of The Independent said Black Messiah shared the "enervating confusion" of There's a Riot Goin' On, and that it was better at contextualizing questions of individual and political freedom than actually answering them.

[37] The New York Times said that Black Messiah "captured American unrest through the studio murk of Sly Stone, the fervor of Funkadelic and the off-kilter grooves somewhere between J Dilla and Captain Beefheart.

In his own appraisal, published on Cuepoint, Black Messiah's achievement lay instead in the unique, dense jazz-funk highlighted by Palladino and Questlove, who he felt were as musically intuitive and virtuosic as "anyone in the pop sphere".

[53] It was ranked first by Chris Richard of The Washington Post,[54] eighth best by Sheffield from Rolling Stone,[55] seventh best by Pitchfork,[56] and seventeenth best by Christgau in his top-albums list for The Barnes & Noble Review.

[57] It was also named the best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of more than six hundred American critics and music journalists published by The Village Voice.