Is D'Angelo finally making his return, thanks to producer Mark Ronson? The man who helmed Amy Winehouse's Back to Black and Adele's 19 is working with one of the most acclaimed – and absent – R&B singers of the last 20 years. After years of rumours, D'Angelo's third album is reportedly looking at a 2010 street date, with Ronson claiming the singer has, "been working non-stop".
Let's put it this way: the release of a new D'Angelo album would justify taking a week off work and booking a cabin with your sweetie by the beach. Brown Sugar, released in 1995, and Voodoo, from 2000, might be the best baby-making records since Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. But D'Angelo's white-hot bump and grind has been missing for more than a decade, sideswiped, it is understood, by drugs. Earlier this year, the singer pleaded not guilty to soliciting an undercover police officer.
Yet, according to Ronson, D'Angelo has not been idle. "It's not like they've been sitting on their asses," he told Rolling Stone. D'Angelo explained to the magazine that he wants the new record "to be complete". Tentatively titled James River, the album will be inspired by his recent crate-digging, including Ronson's records with Winehouse and Gnarls Barkley. "I don't really listen to new shit," D'Angelo said, praising obscure 60s rockers Black Merda. "[And] I don't get out much!"
D'Angelo's last song was I Found My Smile Again, which featured on a 2008 greatest hits compilation.
