Ferguson Protests Inspired D'Angelo to Push Up Release of 'Black Messiah'

Earlier this week, neo-soul pioneer D'Angelo surprised the music world by suddenly releasing his new album Black Messiah, his first new album since his 2000 classic Voodoo, with almost no warning whatsoever. Despite its absurdly long gestation period, however, The New York Times reports that the album's release was somehow still rushed, as D'Angelo's label RCA had originally planned to drop it sometime in early 2015. But following the volatile situation in Ferguson, Missouri, and the grand-jury decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown, D'Angelo decided to push up the album's release to Dec. 15.

According to D'Angelo's manager Kevin Liles, D'Angelo had called him up in distress last month following the Ferguson grand-jury decision.

"He said, 'Do you believe this? Do you believe it?'" Liles recalls. "And then we just sat there in silence. That is when I knew he wanted to say something."

With the famously delayed album put on the fast track for release, D'Angelo and RCA pulled "many all-nighters" to finish the album, which included everything from the artwork and tracklist to the music itself.

"It's pretty much right out of the oven — it's still hot," says studio engineer Russell Elevado, who claims that he finished mixing the album just three weeks ago. The artwork for Black Messiah was handled by the Afropunk arts group who, according to co-founder Jocelyn Cooper, "were able to put six months's worth of work into two weeks."

"It's about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street," D'Angelo said about Black Messiah in a statement, via NME, coinciding with its release, "and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen. It's not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them."

You can read the entire New York Times article on D'Angelo's Black Messiah here.

You can check out D'Angelo's new single "Sugah Daddy" from Black Messiah here:

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D'Angelo, Black Messiah, Ferguson, Michael Brown, Mike Brown, Darren Wilson