D’Angelo talks to Tavis Smiley in first TV interview in over a decade

The mercurial soul singer D'Angelo has long eluded the TV spotlight. He's never confessed to Oprah, danced on Ellen's couch or jousted with Jon Stewart about race and politics. In fact, until last year's surprise release of his searing, politically charged album "Black Messiah," the Virginia-born artist hadn't issued a new album since "Voodoo" in 2000.

His TV silence ends on Wednesday night, when the first of D'Angelo's two-part conversation with Tavis Smiley will air on PBS. Teased by "The Tavis Smiley Show" as "his first television conversation in over a decade," the Grammy-winning artist talked "Black Messiah" with Smiley, a thoughtful, penetrating interviewer whose conversations with musicians can be particularly illuminating.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter >>

In advance of Wednesday's interview, the show released a teaser clip in which Smiley elicits laughs and lightness from D'Angelo regarding his swoon-worthy breakout video for the "Voodoo" track "Untitled (How Does It Feel)."

Asked Smiley: "How did videos — one video in particular — change your life, for the better or worse?"

D'Angelo, chuckling, replied that the whole thing was blown out of proportion. "Well, in particular, let's talk about 'Untitled,' because that was the one that kind of took it there," he said in the clip. "It was all good. I think a lot has been made about me reacting to, or me being negative to the reaction of that video. And it really wasn't that. Too big of a deal has been made out of that."

See the most-read stories this hour >>

The artist did acknowledge, though, that the attention got annoying, telling Smiley, "A lot of times live when we were touring for 'Voodoo' and I had this amazing band, the Soultronics. Questlove was the drummer, [bassist] Pino [Palladino], of course I had the incomparable Roy Hargrove on trumpet, Frank Lacy on trombone. Just this outstanding band, and we were doing some amazing stuff musically. And a lot of times the crowd — or a lot of the ladies were just screaming, 'Take it off!' And I kind of felt like, for lack of a better thing, a male stripper, you know? Or I [was] expected to be that, you know what I mean?"

"You felt objectified," Smiley said. "Women feel it every day."

You can watch his response below.

The first of two consecutive episodes of D'Angelo's interview on "The Tavis Smiley Show" airs nationally on PBS on Wednesday.

Follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit