D’Angelo Working on New Music, Raphael Saadiq Says

Raphael Saadiq recently revealed that he’s learning how to play piano and that D’Angelo is one of his biggest supporters — and that the elusive singer is making new music.

“D’s in a good space right now,” Saadiq said during an appearance on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast. “I talk to him a couple times. He’s excited. We don’t talk much, but when we do talk it’s crazy, like, ‘Oh, you gotta hear this!’ 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.’”

Saadiq added: “He’s working on six pieces right now and he seems super excited. He’s in control of his own destiny at this point. He has a management team, but they can’t make him do anything that he don’t wanna do. He knows it’s on him now and I think that’s a different angle that he’s coming from.”

One of those songs is from their Lynwood Rose days, when they formed a short-lived group with A Tribe Called Quest‘s 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,” Saadiq said. “Lynwood Rose lives. I’m playing bass, D’s playing, me and D is singing backgrounds. It’s funky as hell too. D is a bad boy. … It’s aged well. Good music ages well.”

The singer has popped out here and there since releasing his most recent album, Black Messiah, in 2014. In 2018, he contributed to the Red Dead Redemption 2 soundtrack (he’s a big fan of the series) with the song “May I? Stand Unshaken” after Rockstar Games sent him the game to test. He did a Verzuz at the Apollo in 2021 that was essentially a solo set featuring some of his friends, and he also contributed to another soundtrack alongside Jay-Z on “I Want You Forever” from The Book of Clarence released last year.

You can listen to the entire episode here.