D’Angelo is back and this time it’s for real!! He appears in the latest GQ magazine getting back to business.   After a 8-year hiatus and some run ins with law, along with some weight gain; D’Angelo has turned it back around, gearing up to release his much anticipated album.  He will also make a return to the U.S. stages when he performs and debut new material from the upcoming album.  He recently have been seen around Europe touring and familiarizing himself with his fans again.  I know I’ve been patiently waiting for an album.  D’Angelo inspired me when I was a teenager loving and experimenting with music.  I’m sure he will be bringing back that classic soul that we so need in the game right now!!

From GQ

D’Angelo on the evil in music
There’s forces that are going on that I don’t think a lot of motherf-ckers that make music today are aware of,” he says. “It’s deep. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt other forces puling at me.” He stubs out his cigarette and leans toward me, taking my hand. “This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” he says gravely.” “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of the energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”

Paul Hunter (Director of Untitled) on the video being misunderstood
Most people think the ‘Untitled’ video was about sex, but my direction was completely opposite of that. It was about his grandmother’s cooking. Think of your grandmother’s greens, how it smelled in the kitchen. What did the yams and the fried chicken taste like? That’s what I want you to express.” The video may have looked like foreplay, but it was actually about family, Hunter insists-about intimacy.

Later when I tell D’Angelo this, he says, “It’s so true: We talked about the Holy Ghost and the church before that take. The veil is the nudity and the sexuality. But what they’re really getting is the spirit.

D’Angelo on the effects of the ‘Untitled’ video

One time I got mad when a female threw money at me onstage, and that made me feel like f-cked-up, and I threw the money back at her. I was like, ‘I’m not a stripper.’

On the last day of the eight-month tour, Questlove says D’Angelo told him, “Yo, man, I cannot wait until this f-cking tour is over. I’m going to go in the woods, drink some hooch, grow a beard, and get fat.” Questlove thought he was joking. “I was like, ‘You’re a funny guy.’ And then it started to happen.That’s how much he wanted to distance himself.”