D'Angelo's DUI

R&B singer hit with drunken-driving, drug-possession charges after traffic stop

By Charlie Amter Jan 12, 2005 4:05 PMTags

"How Does It Feel" to get arrested for a DUI?

Just ask D'Angelo.

The Grammy-winning R&B singer, whose real name is Michael Eugene Archer, was busted in a ritzy suburb of Richmond, Virginia, over the weekend for drunken driving.

The 30-year-old Virgina native was also hit with drug possession charges Sunday, after cops pulled him over during a traffic stop around 4 a.m.

Chesterfield Police Captain Karl Leonard said cops searched D'Angelo's ride and turned up "what we believe to be cocaine and marijuana," according to the Richmond Times Dispatch.

The seized substances are being analyzed in a state lab.

Archer was arrested Sunday, taken to the Chesterfield County Jail where he eventually posted $2,100 bail, a jail official told E! Online.

The singer will answer the charges against him in court Tuesday.

D'Angelo, one of R&B's bigger stars in the late 1990s, has been quiet lately.

The singer-songwriter signed a deal with EMI at 18 and went on to release the highly influential 1995 album Brown Sugar, which helped launch the neo-soul movement in the 1990s.

His last release, Voodoo, dropped five years ago. The disc debuted at number one in 2000 and won a Grammy for best R&B Album; its hit single, "Untitled (How Does it Feel)," earned D'Angelo a second Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

While the D'Angelo is the son of a preacher man (his dad is a Pentecostal minister in Richmond), it's actually not his first run-in with Richmond cops.

In 2002, he was picked up by pepper spray-happy cops after an alleged confrontation with a woman who claimed the artist spit on her.

He was hit with misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest, aggressive driving, assault, curse and abuse, and disorderly conduct at the time.

D'Angelo was fined $500 after pleading no contest to obstruction of justice, and he eventually reached a civil settlement with the woman.