Raphael Saadiq Reveals D’Angelo Is Working On New Music

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Ten years ago D’Angelo’s third album Black Messiah came out, and after doing some touring he disappeared back into the rich soil of his Richmond, Virginia hometown – or wherever his genius led him – and hadn’t been seen in public much since.

But his frequent collaborator Raphael Saadiq says that new music may be coming soon. In an interview with the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast , the Tony, Toni, Toné frontman said that D is in the studio hashing out songs for a new project and that the two will ultimately link up for it.

“We definitely [going to] work together,” Saadiq said. “But he hates when people go like, ‘you’re going to work with your boy, Ray?’ He’s like, he said, we just laugh. And he said, ‘man, everybody acts like you’re responsible for my damn career.’ Like laughing. He said, ‘I’m tired of everybody asking me, you’re going to work with your boy?”

Saadiq continued, “I said, but I’m tired of everybody asking me, where the hell you at? I’m like, ‘I don’t know where the hell he at.’ He ain’t in my back pocket either. But that’s our understanding. We’re definitely going to work together. But he’s like I said, he’s a cat who’s his own self. He’s his own writer. He’s amazing by himself. Everybody knows that.”

When they have worked together, they’ve won awards together, as Saadiq noted in the podcast. In 2001, they won a Grammy for “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” It happened organically, as much as their work together often does, he says.

Saadiq told Okayplayer in 2019 that the song came about because he was in New York City and wanted a joint. So he went to Electric Lady Studios where D was recording Voodoo and asked for him, figuring he might have one.

“I rung the bell, ‘Is D’Angelo here?’ He opens the door,” Saadiq said. “He’s like, ‘What’s Up?’ I ask him, ‘You got a joint?’ ‘Hell yeah I got a joint!’ He’s like, ‘Can we do a song?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, whatever, yeah.’ We walk in and we do ‘Untitled’ in maybe, like, two hours.”

“The tape runs out…we were gonna add more tape and make an ending and I was like, ‘Nah, don’t do that. Just leave it like that,” Saadiq added.

That song and its sultry video has often been compared to the kind of music that Prince made and D’Angelo has acknowledged his influence. But Saadiq says that D’s influence was based in the Pentecostal church that he grew up in.

“I think more of his soul came from his gospel roots, not Prince,” says Saadiq. “But Prince had a huge gospel background, too. He was able to camouflage it a lot in his songwriting. And I think D’Angelo is the same way, too.”

Saadiq says that D has a good six songs in the mix and one of them is from a collaboration that has yet to release a track. Linwood Rose, the supergroup that was briefly together featuring Q-Tip, Saadiq and D’Angelo may be back, if just for a song they recorded that D may add to the new project.

“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,” says Saadiq. “Linwood 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.”

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