D’Angelo is hard at work on his fourth album and was in the studio recently, according to the director of Devil’s Pie: D’Angelo, the documentary about the elusive R&B performer that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday night (April 27).
The film closes with a vague, but promising, note indicating that the follow-up to 2014’s Black Messiah is on its way, though no release date was mentioned. (Billboard has reached out to D’Angelo’s representative at RCA Records for comment.)
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Devil’s Pie — named after the lead single off D’Angelo’s 2000 album, Voodoo — was shot over the course of two years and followed D’Angelo, born Michael Archer, as he toured in support of Black Messiah, his third studio album.
In a Q&A following the documentary’s premiere, director Carine Bijlsma elaborated that she had been in contact with D’Angelo recently enough to share that he was in the studio working on new music.
“He’s actually doing really well, and he’s very excited,” she said when asked about whether or not she knew where his head was at in regards to the new material. (Devil’s Pie delves into the long break D’Angelo took between Voodoo and Black Messiah, and carefully handles the personal matters — such as a terrible car crash, three rehab stays and the deaths of loved ones — that deeply affected him during that time.) “He was in the studio these past weeks. He has big plans for the future, so you’ll definitely be seeing more of him.”