What Happened To D’Angelo?

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What Happened To D’Angelo?

Posted at 07/28/2009 by Staff 0 Comment

D'angelo bigger The singer disappeared and has been off the radar for more than a decade now. Rumors have spread that the singer has battled with substance abuse issues and no longer has the lean physique he once did.

Newsweek’s Pop Vox recently spoke to D’Angelo’s manager and was able to confirm that the artist is in fact in studio working on the album, James River. When it will be released and who will be collaborating on it, is increasingly unclear:

In January, talk surfaced about a new album titled James River, presumably named after the river of the same name that runs through D’Angelo’s hometown of Richmond, Va. Potential collaborators included Prince, John Mayer, Cee-Lo Green, and Raphael Saadiq. A tour and an album—in the U.S. and Europe—were announced for the summer, only to be scratched. To be fair, D’Angelo has a proven record of working slowly. Brown Sugar came out in 1995, and it took five years—including delays—to finally finish Voodoo. Maybe James River is only one more musical milestone in the making. Or maybe it’s much ado about nothing.

Here is the most recent update: according to Lindsay Guion, D’Angelo’s manager, no album will be released this summer. No collaborators have been confirmed. The artist is living in Richmond. He’s recording there and in New York City, and he will deliver the tracks to his record company by September. Guion says they have just signed a contract for a U.S. tour that will begin around the holidays. So, the bottom line seems to be that nobody’s going to hear anything from D’Angelo at least well into the fall. That includes NEWSWEEK. After repeated requests for an interview, D’Angelo’s rep finally offered to pass on a list of questions by e-mail with assurances that D’Angelo would actually provide the answers. After a day, however, his management backtracked to say the singer was unavailable until the album was finished.