While arguably the greatest soul artist of his generation in his own right, D’Angelo has never hidden his desire to follow in Prince’s footsteps. His debut album Brown Sugar was made in the model of the Minneapolis Genius, complete with the trademark ‘written, produced, arranged, composed, and performed by’ credit. Taking a long five years to release his follow-up, Voodoo, D’Angelo transformed his live show from his low-key man-at-the-piano setup to a large stage show modeled after Prince’s seminal Sign O’ the Times tour, and the result was as strong a concert as I’ve ever witnessed, and one I followed across two states to take in twice.

Even being as big a Prince fan as Christians are of Jesus, I admit that D’Angelo clears the bar Prince set in all but one very important way: his debut was fifteen years ago, and his only follow-up was released when the Twin Towers were still standing. When Prince was at the same point in his career he had 17 albums released and a rumored thousand more songs in his infamous vault. Add to that 3 feature films and two theatrically released concert films, and one is reminded of a comment Woody Allen once made: “It’s not the quantity of your sexual relations that counts, it’s the quality. On the other hand if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into it”.

That said, with rumors of an impending double album including a collaboration with Prince himself, D’Angelo is parlaying his lack of output into the sort of hype that preempts a Terrance Malick film or a lunar eclipse, and with the darkly themed “1,000 Deaths” recently leaked, it becomes easy to assume that the album will take some interesting directions and even be worth the long, if not frustrating, wait.

D’Angelo – 1,000 Deaths (right click to download) 6:56 mins/ 192 kbps/ 9.58MB