D’Angelo Announces Verzuz Performance At The Apollo, Teases New Album
The announcement of D’Angelo doing anything is reason for celebration. The reclusive R&B great makes Fiona Apple look like Robert Pollard. D’Angelo has released a grand total of three albums in 26 years. His last live show — a set at the Roots Picnic in New York in 2016 — was more than four years ago. In the past two years, he has only appeared on record a few times — a song for the Red Dead Redemption 2 soundtrack, a collaboration with Rapsody and GZA, another collaboration with Slingbaum and Erykah Badu. So the announcement of D’Angelo doing a Verzuz performance is a very cool thing indeed.
Later this month — the evening of 2/27 — D’Angelo will take over the Apollo Theater, Harlem’s cultural jewel. The event will be broadcast live on Apple Music and Instagram under the Verzuz battle. Unlike most Verzuz battles, D’Angelo won’t take on any of his peers, going song-for-song. (Who could even do that with him, other than maybe Erykah Badu?) Instead, the event is billed as D’Angelo V. Friends. The “Friends” part is being left mysterious for now. Presumably, this won’t be a real Verzuz battle. Instead, it’ll be a D’Angelo performance with special guests. That works just fine! The event goes down 2/27 at 8PM eastern.
D’Angelo announced his Verzuz on Instagram Live with DJ D-Nice. During that conversation, D’Angelo also said that his fourth album was on the way. We heard a lot about the man’s third LP before Black Messiah finally came out in December of 2014, so we probably shouldn’t get too excited about this one. Still, any news that D’Angelo is working on music is welcome news.