[UPDATE: Black Messiah is hitting iTunes at midnight tonight. Mind = blown.]
D'Angelo has just premiered "Sugah Daddy" via Red Bull's 20 Before 15 countdown thingy tonight--his first official single in some 15 years and, perhaps more importantly, the next sign that he is indeed real and the release of his long-awaited album Black Messiah is imminent. "Sugar Daddy" you may recall was one of the first new tunes we got a taste of back when D famously "Got On The Plane" and brought the funk to Stockholm for that first run of wait, what? pinch-us, is it real?live shows back in 2012. Then the song was reprised in medley form with "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" at the BET Awards two years ago.
But the studio treatment is something stranger and more infectious altogether; deceptively intricate country-funk launched through spacey squalls, scratchy guitars and an onslaught of parlor pianos and phased-out horn licks (Hargrove, is that you?) And if "Sugah Daddy" is any indication as to what we can expect from the long-awaited, ever mythologized project (and man) then it seems like we may very well be in for another generation-defining piece. For all of those nonbelievers, here's 15 years of "I told ya so" rolled into one of the finest (and fawnkiest) sonic specimens you'll come across for ages. Lay your ears on the inaugural cut from D'Angelo's forthcoming Black Messiah LP down below. Stay tuned, folks. We've got a feeling the next few weeks are going to be mighty interesting.
