D’Angelo Rushed to Release Black Messiah Following Police Protests

D’Angelo‘s Black Messiah wasn’t intended to be released in 2014—his label RCA had planned to release it in 2015. The New York Times reports that D’Angelo made the label rush to release the album following nationwide protests of police killing unarmed black men.

The Times interviewed D’Angelo’s friends and collaborators about the days surrounding the album’s release. His co-manager Kevin Liles said that after a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown, he received a call from D’Angelo. “He said: ‘Do you believe this? Do you believe it?’ And then we just sat there in silence. That is when I knew he wanted to say something.”

He told the label that he wouldn’t wait any longer to release the album. “The one way I do speak out is through music,” he reportedly told his tour manager Alan Leeds. “I want to speak out.”

D’Angelo and the label apparently pulled all-nighters for a month to finalize the album’s details, including the tracklist and artwork. Russell Elevado, D’Angelo’s longtime studio collaborator, told the Times that he only finished working on the album three weeks ago. “It’s pretty much right out of the oven—it’s still hot.”

Another revelation from the Times article: Some RCA employees only heard the album for the first time at the Manhattan listening party on Sunday night.

Read the entire article here.

Here’s “Sugah Daddy”:

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