Songfacts®:

• Written by D'Angelo and Raphael Saadiq (former lead singer of the R&B trio Tony! Toni! Toné!), "Lady" was the third single from D'Angelo's debut album, Brown Sugar. It's a very romantic song, with D'Angelo celebrating a divine lady in his life. The song, along with the rest of the album, marked an evolution in R&B that came to be known as "neo-soul."
• D'Angelo started dating the singer Angie Stone around the time the song was released, but it's not about her. "I wrote 'Lady' in a Marriott Hotel lobby in Connecticut," his co-writer Raphael Saadiq told Wax Poetics in 2009. "There was a piano sitting there, and I just sat down and started writing this song about a girl I knew who lived in Long Island. I originally played it for the members of Tony! Toni! Toné!, but they didn't like it. I remember them saying, 'Everything you write is not a hit.' So, I put it away."
• D'Angelo confessed that he didn't really like the track while he was recording it because it was too simple. Saadiq explained: "D was trying to be very complex. But when people started telling him how they had made babies to that track, he appreciated it more."
• "Lady" earned D'Angelo a Grammy nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, an award he was nominated the previous year for with "Brown Sugar." He didn't win either of those but got it on his third try with "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" in 2001.
• Like many of director Hype Williams' early videos ("This Is How We Do It"), the clip takes place at a house party. A second video for the remix version, directed by Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Horrible Bosses), shows D'Angelo performing in a white space and features cameo appearances from Faith Evans, Joi, and Erykah Badu.
• D'Angelo and Raphael Saadiq didn't work together very often, but when they did, they spun gold. On his second album, Voodoo (2000), they teamed up on "Untitled (How Does It Feel)," another of D'Angelo's biggest songs.