Slate’s Culture Gabfest on Mr. Turner, Lee Daniels’ new show Empire, and D’Angelo’s new album Black Messiah.

Is D’Angelo’s Album Worth the 14-Year Wait?

Is D’Angelo’s Album Worth the 14-Year Wait?

Slate's weekly roundtable.
Jan. 7 2015 1:40 PM

The Culture Gabfest “The Brio of the Buoy” Edition

Slate’s Culture Gabfest on Mr. Turner, Lee Daniels’ new show Empire, and D’Angelo’s new album Black Messiah.

The Culture Gabfest has moved! Find new episodes here.

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Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 329 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner with the audio player below.

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This week, Slate Plus listeners will hear the critics talk about Julia’s secret favorite thing about Slate, Dana’s wonderful Movie Club!

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This week on the Slate Culture Gabfest, the critics discuss Mike Leigh’s biopic of the groundbreaking painter J.M.W. Turner, which stars Timothy Spall. Perhaps biopic is the wrong word—portrait is better. Next, Lee Daniels’ new series Empire self-consciously riffs on Shakespeare, but might it actually be something … new? Finally, Carl Wilson joins the critics to discuss the album we have waited 14 years for: D’Angelo and the Vanguard’s Black Messiah. It’s obviously excellent, but can anything match 2000’s Voodoo?

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Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:

Endorsements:

Dana:  The ambient sound site RainyCafe, and intern Josephine’s essay on rain sound at the Awl.

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Julia: The highly alliterative Kenn Kaufman’s birding memoir, Kingbird Highway.

Carl: Shane MacGowan’s “For the Dancing and the Dreaming,” from the How to Train Your Dragon 2 soundtrack.

Steve: Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society.

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Ann Hepperman. Our intern is Josephine Livingstone.

Follow us on Twitter. And please Like the Culture Gabfest on Facebook.

Stephen Metcalf is Slate’s critic at large. He is working on a book about the 1980s.

Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic.

Julia Turner, the former editor in chief of Slate, is a regular on Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast.