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D’Angelo! D’Angelo! D’Angelo!

It looks as though D’Angelo is back and looking better than ever!  He’s currently featured in a 6 page feature in GQ Magazine’s June Issue, complete with new photos and news that he may drop a new album this September (just in time for The Grammy deadline).  However, the article is quick to note that he has over 50 songs in the works and he is working at his own pace which could possibly mean, ‘don’t get your hopes up’. This will be his first album in 12 years. 12 YEARS!!!

In the article, D’Angelo addresses everything from rumors surrounding his departure from the music scene (which somehow had everything to do with D’Angelo’s ‘Untitled’ video) to his constant dreams about the late artist Marvin Gaye. There’s also commentary from Quest Love, Chris Rock, (who thinks that D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill, Chris Tucker and Dave Chapelle are all hanging out on the island of, ‘What do we do with all of this talent’), D’Angelo’s ex Angie Stone and his former music director who claims the ‘Untitled’ video wasn’t about sex, but instead, his grandmother’s cooking.

Check out a few interesting excerpts below:

D’Angelo on the evil in music

There’s forces that are going on that I don’t think a lot of motherf-ckers that make music today are aware of,” he says. “It’s deep. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt other forces puling at me.” He stubs out his cigarette and leans toward me, taking my hand. “This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” he says gravely.” “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of the energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”

Paul Hunter (Director of Untitled) on the video being 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. Think of your grandmother’s greens, how it smelled in the kitchen. What did the yams and the 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.

D’Angelo on the effects of the ‘Untitled’ video

One time I got mad when a female threw money at me onstage, and that made me feel like f-cked-up, and I threw the money back at her. I was like, ‘I’m not a stripper.’

On the last day of the eight-month tour, Questlove says D’Angelo told him, “Yo, man, I cannot wait until this f-cking tour is over. I’m going to go in the woods, drink some hooch, grow a beard, and get fat.” Questlove thought he was joking. “I was like, ‘You’re a funny guy.’ And then it started to happen.That’s how much he wanted to distance himself.”

Angie Stone, the mother of one of D’Angelo’s kids detailed a time that she had to wait in the wings while he walked in an awards show with actress Vivica Fox.

Stone remembers an event in Manhatten 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.

The magazine also cited past reports of Madonna wanting a piece of D

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.”

Read the rest of the article in the June 2012 issue of GQ Magazine which is on news stands now!

 Via “necolebitchie.com”