D'Angelo New Album Excitement Sparked By Raphael Saadiq: '[He's] In A Good Space'

D’Angelo is hard at work on a new album, according to friend and collaborator Raphael Saadiq.

The R&B legend shared the news while appearing on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, where he revealed that D is back in the studio and excitedly crafting new material.

“D’s in a good space,” said Saadiq, who began working with D’Angelo almost 30 years ago. “He’s excited. He’s like, ‘You gotta play bass. I’ve got this track. I’m telling you, you got to get on it. It got your name all over it.’”

He added: “He’s working on six pieces right now and he seems super excited.”

One of the songs D’Angelo is working on, according to Saadiq, is a track recorded years ago by Lynwood Rose, the short-lived supergroup comprised of D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq and Q-Tip.

“I think it’s going to be a record on D’Angelo’s new album when it comes out, a record that we all did together,” the former Tony! Toni! Toné! singer added. “Lynwood Rose lives. I’m playing bass, D’s playing, me and D is singing backgrounds.

“It’s funky as hell, too. It’s like, D is a bad boy. … It’s aged well. Good music ages well.”

D’Angelo’s last album Black Messiah arrived in 2014 following a 14-year wait since his magnum opus Voodoo, which itself arrived half a decade after his breakthrough debut Brown Sugar.

The Grammy-winning star has largely retreated back into the shadows since then, releasing only one song — “Unshaken” from the soundtrack to the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2 — and making a handful of guest appearances.

The most recent came on “I Want You Forever,” a collaboration with JAY-Z that appeared on the soundtrack to the 2023 movie The Book of Clarence, which Hov executive produced.

In an interview ahead of the film’s release, director Jeymes Samuel described the song as “9 minutes, 33 seconds of absolute soulful biblical bliss.”

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D’Angelo also delivered a rare performance at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 2021 for Swizz Beatz and Timbaland‘s Verzuz series.

Breaking the traditional battle format, the Virginia native took to the stage on his own and ran through his classic hits with help from Method Man, Redman, H.E.R. and trumpeter Keyon Harrold.

The intimate set was only available to watch online due to the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in place at the time.