D’Angelo Talks About The Frustrations Of Fame And Why He Hates The Term Neo-Soul

We recently shared parts of D’Angelo’s first interview in 12 years, and loved it so much that we were thrilled to find out GQ had published more outtakes from the interview online that didn’t make the print issue.

Here are a few excerpts below:

On fighting fame after Brown Sugar and hating the term ‘neo soul’:

D’Angelo looks back on that time with some discomfort. A perfectionist, he wishes he’d had more of an active interplay with the audience. But it all took off so fast, he says. He was confused, he says, by his sudden notoriety, even as he, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and others were credited with launching the “neo-soul” movement (a label he hates). “It counteracts the very fawking idea of what it was in the first place,” he says. “It’s black music thinking — it’s black music manifested outside of the box. And when you label it neo soul, you’re putting it right back in the box. How about you just call me soul music?”

That argument was just one of many D was having in his own head. “I tried to fight, I guess, what typically fame quote-unquote does to people,” he says. “I didn’t want to stop being, you know, the rambunctious mug that I was, because that’s what made my music what it was. It happens to the best of them, you know: At some point in everyone’s career, it was like the music lost its bite. I’m like, ‘Well, how do you avoid that?’”

On what it was like for D to perform in Stockholm in January, his first concert in more than a decade:

“It was scary,” D will tell me later, reflecting on playing the guitar in public for the first time. “I would feel comfortable when I was by myself, but actually getting onstage and playing was a different thing. My friend Raphael Saadiq was like, ‘Yo, man, you’ve just got to jump in. Start swimming. Just jump in the pool, you know?’ It was good advice. I was nervous up until the point where we started playing and singing, and then it just felt—it felt cool.”

On D’s upcoming third album:

Despite assurances that it’s 97-percent done, D hasn’t locked his third. Not yet. In Europe, he unveiled several songs he thinks will be on it. In addition to “Ain’t That Easy” and the irresistible dance number, “Sugar Daddy,” there is a song Questlove compares to Herbie Hancock called “The Charade.” “Crawling through a systematic maze to demise,” it begins, and D sings the line with a seething fury. When I catch a reference to “the deceiver,” I can’t help but think: this song—twisted, almost atonal, multi-layered—is about that forked-tongued devil, Fame.

D says I’m wrong. “It’s about the disenfranchised,” he says. “It’s telling the powers that be, ‘This is why we are justified in our stance.’ There’s another song on the album called ‘A Thousand Deaths’ that is the flip side of the coin. ‘A Thousand Deaths’ is just a fucking war cry. You know what I mean? The beheadings have commenced.” It occurs to me that the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, in which slaves rose up and killed more than 50 white people, the only sustained slave rebellion in the South’s history, took place in D’s home state of Virginia. “Ain’t no justice/It’s just us/Ash to ashes/Dust to dust,” D sang so insistently on Voodoo. I am beginning to get what he means.

I ask someone who has a closely-guarded copy to let me hear “1000 Deaths.” It is dark, dense and mysterious and makes the most of D’s newfound prowess on the guitar. The lead vocal is so distorted—like the moans and groans of a Negro spiritual—that D could almost be speaking in tongues. The song is compelling, maybe even profound, but it is the opposite of catchy. That’s just fine with D. He tells me art, not commerce, is his fuel.

This sounds so dope. We can’t wait to hear D’s new album!

Photo credit: Gregory Harris/GQ

Can you believe this is his first interview in 12 years??? D’Angelo has cleaned up his act and is preparing to finally release another album and he talks about his past struggles with fame and the road to his return with GQ.

We’ve got some excerpts for you here:

R&B Singer And Mother Of D’Angelo’s Son Angie Stone Recalls When Fame Started To Take Over:

Stone remembers an event in Manhattan in September 1996 that was billed as Giorgio Armani’s tribute to D’Angelo. Stone—thirteen years older than D—was three months pregnant with their son. They headed to the event together in a limo, but as they neared the venue where D was going to perform, it suddenly pulled over. “He was asked to get into another car, where he would be escorted by Vivica Fox,” Stone says, her voice breaking slightly. The lissome Fox had just appeared with Will Smith in the blockbuster Independence Day. “It was a Hollywood moment. They wanted a trophy girl. I had to walk in behind them to flashing cameras. It started the wheels turning of what was yet to come.”

D’Angelo Turned Down Madonna:

When Madonna turned 39, she asked him to sing “Happy Birthday” at her party. One press report had her sitting on his lap and French-kissing him. In fact, two sources say that ultimately D rebuffed her advances at another gathering not long after. At that event, the sources say, Madonna walked over and told a woman sitting next to D, “I think you’re in my seat.” The woman got up. Madonna sat down and told him, “I’d like to know what you’re thinking.” To which D replied, “I’m thinking you’re rude.”

Sorry but we love that one!

The Energy Behind “Untitled” Was Less About Sex Than Food:

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.”

I’ve stopped by Hunter’s office in Culver City, California, to hear how D’Angelo came to be filmed bare-chested (but for a gold cross on a chain around his neck), wearing only a pair of precariously low-slung pajama bottoms, looking like a wolf circling a b!tch in heat. Illuminated from every angle, he spins very slowly as the camera fetishizes his every ripple and drop of sweat. I’ve imagined a lot of things that inspired the song’s rousing lyrics (Love to make you wet / In between your thighs cause / I love when it comes inside of you), but collard greens weren’t among them. Hunter is quick to explain that he, like D, was raised in the Pentecostal church.

“When I used to sing in the choir,” Hunter says, “after the rehearsal, you go in to eat. I remembered seeing the preacher looking at a lady’s skirt one week and then, the next Sunday, talking about how fornication is wrong.” Such mixed messages about the pleasures of the flesh were intertwined with the pleasures of the palate—part of the same sensual stew. “So I was like, ‘Think of your grandmother’s greens, how it smelled in the kitchen. What did the yams and 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.”

That’s interesting right?

Hit the flip for more D’Angelo quotes about the cost of fame and how he self destructed…

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We’ve been waiting for the return of D’Angelo for eons now but word on the skreets is his long awaited third album is near completion.

Roots drummer ?uestlove opened up to Billboard.com about the project in a recent interview:

While Questo spoke of the many jobs he has, he revealed some work on a more elusive artist’s highly-anticipated album: D’Angelo. “I’m on his [D'Angelo's] record as well,” he said. “He’s in the home stretch right now. I know that Fred Wesley and the JB Horns just did a cut that Q-Tip did; I know he’s doing his vocals right now.”

Hells yes! We’ve been waiting for this day to come for so long…

In the meantime we want to extend a big congratulations to The Roots on wrapping up their 13th album! Quest had this to say about their latest effort:

“We actually completed [the album] at five [o'clock] this morning, so it’s officially done,” ?uestlove tells Billboard.com’s The Juice of “Undun.” “It’s essentially a biographical narrative about Redford Stephens. Stephens [is] a composite of four or five people that we’ve known over the past few years from Philadelphia.” The album, which features Big K.R.I.T. and Phonte from Little Brother, tells Steven’s story backwards from his death to his birth.

When asked about The Roots’ incredible schedule, he took it all as just another day on the job. “It’s really not that hard. People are always amazed with the amount of projects and events that we’re involved in and the hardest thing about it is just staying the course and concentrating,” ?uestlove said. “I’ve just seen so many examples of people who take it for granted. You dream of being in a certain position and once you approach it you manage to sabotage it or you get off course. For us, that’s really not an option.”

Despite the hectic schedule, ?uestlove brings it into perspective with hard work. “We’re really highly responsible and very disciplined,” he said. “I take pride in the fact that this is our 13th record; not many hip-hop groups can even get to their 8th record.”

True True. Props to them!

But uh… back to this D’Angelo business. Can whoever is handling his affairs make sure they bring in celebrity trainer Mark Jenkins to get D looking like this again???

After years of hiding from the media and his fans, except when doing perp walks and getting popped for random ridiculousness, D’Angelo is finally trying to get his sh*t together.

After just one interview in the U.S. over the summer, seems like D’Angelo headed over to the U.K. to start plotting his come back. This track from Mark Ronson’s forthcoming album “Record Collection” leaked in London and online a couple of months ago, but somehow didn’t register a bleep on U.S. radars.

The lyrics sound like they could be about a breakup:

I look up on this mountain and marvel it seems so tall
so tragically its fragile I’m waiting for it to fall
enormous mass it’s made of glass instead of with a substance that’s stronger
you thought that it would hold me I can’t take it any longer

[Chorus]
I’m gonna break out, i’m gonna break out
I’m gonna take all of my love back on the way out

We think he’s talking about his breakup with the pipe.

D’Angelo was arrested yesterday after he offered an undercover cop all cash for oral sex on an NYC street.  The worst part of it all is how much he was willing to pay for the service.

Pop the top to find out.

D’Angelo was offering to pay an undercover cop a measly $40 for a blow job. D’Angelo who was in Greenwich Village riding around town in his Range Rover, mistook the cop for a prostitute and was later arrested after offering her money for a sexual favor. Cops found $12,000 in his SUV and charged him with solicitation.

Damn D’Angelo was holding 12 stacks and only wanted pay a woman 40 bucks?? SMH.

Apparently, fallen R&B star D’Angelo needs as much help as he can get to restart his music career:

D’Angelo’s long anticipated album received a title and a surprising collaboration with ‘the purple one’ this week — Prince ! According to a statement from his manager, D’Angelo will sit down with Prince to record a song for his comeback album, now titled “James River,” soon.

“James River,” D’Angelo’s first studio effort in nearly 9 years, is also sporting a collaboration with Gnarls Barkley’s Cee-Lo Green. Green joins Raphael Saadiq, Mark Ronson, and Roy Hargrove, who have already contributed to D’Angelo’s forthcoming album.

In addition to “James River,” D’Angelo is plotting a return to the stage with a summer tour. D’Angelo’s last album, “Vodoo” featuring the single “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” reached no.1 on several charts.

This ought to be interesting, but he better not bring that fat frame back on the scene. He better get down with Jenny Craig and a trainer if he wants to be taken seriously. Butterball.

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