12 years since his hiatus, D’Angelo is preparing to get back into the music scene. He recently sat down with GQ and discussed his past drug issue, his up bringing and whether or not will be hearing new music from him. Here some excerpts from the interview:
Not wanting to die young:
What finally made him see, he says, was the passing of J Dilla, the revered hip-hop producer, on February 10, 2006. They’d just talked on the phone, D’Angelo says, when suddenly, J Dilla was gone at 32 after a long battle with lupus. It was like a blinding light had been switched on. Why did so many black artists die so young? He’d been haunted by this thought for years. Marvin. Jimi. Biggie. “I felt like I was going to be next. I ain’t bullshitting. I was scared then,” he says, recalling how shame engulfed him, preventing him from attending the funeral. “I was so fucked-up, I couldn’t go.”
Growing up in the Pentecostal Church:
To say that he was raised religious doesn’t begin to capture it. He’s the son and the grandson of Pentecostal preachers. To D’Angelo, good and evil are not abstract concepts but tangible forces he reckons with every day. In his life and in his music, he has always felt the tension between the sacred and the profane, the darkness and the light. “You know what they say about Lucifer, right, before he was cast out?” D’Angelo asks me now. “Every angel has their specialty, and his was praise. They say that he could play every instrument with one finger and that the music was just awesome. And he was exceptionally beautiful, Lucifer—as an angel, he was.”
Unseen forces going on:
“There are forces that are going on that I don’t think a lot of motherfuckers that make music today are aware of,” he says. “It’s deep. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt other forces pulling at me”. “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 that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”
Dreaming about Marvin Gaye:
That night Marvin Gaye died, D’Angelo had the first of many dreams about him. It was in black and white and took place at Hitsville U.S.A., Motown’s Detroitheadquarters. D was playing piano while a bunch of famous Motown stars milled about, waiting for Gaye. “When he finally showed up, he was young, very handsome, the thin Marvin. Clean-shaven. Very debonair,” he told an interviewer back in 2000. “He came straight to me and shook my hand and looked me dead in the eyes, and he said, ‘Very nice to meet you.’& He grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go.” Not long after his first record deal, D’Angelo dreamed his last Marvin dream, this one in color. “I was following him as a grown man,” he tells me. “He was a bit heavier, and he had the beard. He was naked, and all I could see was his back and that cap he used to wear all the time. And he got into this whirlpool Jacuzzi with his wife and his daughter and his little son, and that’s when he turns around and looks at me. And he goes, ‘I know you’re wondering why you keep dreaming about me.’ And I woke
Inspiration behind the “Untitled” video:
Paul Hunter, the director hired to make the video, says his work was 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.” 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.”
Releasing the New Album:
D’Angelo can’t say for sure. His managers and his label are pushing hard for September, before the Grammy deadline. But nobody’s banking on it. Sounding like a man who’s all too familiar with D-time, Tom Corson, RCA’s president and COO, says simply, “This year would be nice.” In mid-April, D and his band are back in the studio, this time in Los Angeles, supposedly adding the final touches. But everything hinges on D letting the music go
Read the rest of the Article at GQ.com
