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As we posted yesterday, D’Angelo is officially back with an in-depth profile running in the current issue of GQ accompanied by a lavish spread, and he appears to be doing good for himself. He’s also reminding us that there is a huge void right now for true musicians in the game.

During his almost 12-year hiatus from the music scene, D’Angelo has dedicated himself to learning to play the guitar. Questlove, who’s been working with D’Angelo for years, says that D is really serious about being great at it and practices for about five to six hours a day.

“The one benefit of this eleven-year sabbatical was he used 10,000 Gladwellian hours to master the guitar,” says Questlove, who compares D to Frank Zappa. “He can play the sh-t out of it, and I don’t mean no Lil Wayne sh-t.”

During his GQ shoot, D’Angelo played some funky soul on his custom-made Minarik Diablo guitar while giving us a taste of what his voice still has to offer.

Check it out below:

 

http://www.gq.com/video/videos/dangelo-video

Sounding good!

Interesting enough, in his recent GQ feature, it’s alluded that D’Angelo’s desire to learn the guitar may have been his way of pushing beyond being just a nice face and beautiful body to his female audience. During the ‘Untitled’ video era, he was bothered that women would come to his shows in hopes that he would ‘take it all off’ instead of appreciating the music he had to offer. His tour manager tells the mag:

“I wonder if that isn’t partially a way to take the attention away from that Chippendales sh-t, because when you’re standing up playing guitar, there’s a little less attention to what you’re wearing and whether it’s on or off and having to choreograph your moves. It prevents you from having to calculate that sh-t.”

In other news, fans of D’Angelo will be pleased to know that he is scheduled to perform at the Essence Music Festival in July as well as Jay-z and Budweiser’s ‘Made In America’ festival during Labor Day Weekend.

Via GQ Magazine

 Via “necolebitchie.com”