D'Angelo was absent from the game for a good fourteen years, so when he returned with his most recent album Black Messiah, it's safe to say the fans were happy. More than that, the album was extremely well-received by both fans and critics, and so we could only hope that the singer wouldn't slip away again in a decade-long hiatus.
During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, D'Angelo quelled our worries, revealing he's already at work on a new project, which is a continuation of sorts of Black Messiah. He also spoke on how the music industry and his own issues contributed to the lengthy break between Voodoo and Black Messiah.
When it comes to the album's delay, the r'n'b singer says, "The shit that happened in my personal life didn't help, but it wasn't just about that. There were moving parts — management changes, record-company changes. Virgin Records went defunct, and before that, they went through personnel changes. Back in the day, the executives actually gave a fuck about music — that's the biggest change. The music business is a crazy game, especially for somebody like me who is really a purist about the art. Trying to balance the pressures of commercialism, it's a tightrope. It's a fine line between sticking to your guns and insanity."
He went on to say this his label was hoping for a second instalment of Voodoo: "The label wanted a Voodoo part two. At one point, after Voodoo, I was early in the process of working on new music that would eventually be on Black Messiah, and I let the label know where I was at with it. The music was pretty ahead of the curve, and they weren't ready for that. They had these young college kids coming in as A&R, trying to tell me, "You should get so-and-so to produce this track, or you should get so-and-so to spit 16 on this." I remember walking out of a meeting like, "Fuck you, fuck this!" The biggest factor in all of it was money. They cut off funding, and I had to go on the road to generate money on my own to fund the recording."
The tidbit of information on a new album comes when D'Angelo answers a question about how Black Messiah was purportedly supposed to be a three-disc album. "What I'm working on now is like a companion piece. I hope people receive it that way. It's part of the same vision," he says.
Are you excited for it?
