I’ve had posthumous albums on my mind lately. Not just because I hate them and everything they stand for, but because I’ve been listening to a whole lot of D’Angelo. The fiercely private neo-soul legend, who passed away on Oct. 14, famously only released three albums during his lifetime, with 2014’s “Black Messiah” taking over a decade to complete, and word of an in-process fourth album only coming in 2024.
To our knowledge, unless it was finished in secret, this fourth album remains a mythological piece of an unknown puzzle. So, as I ask myself anytime a prominent musician dies, what happens next—and why does it even matter?
“I write about eight hours a day,” singer-songwriter Jason Molina told the Chicago Reader in 2006, “and I throw away most of what I write.”
The reason posthumous releases are such a dangerous epidemic is because musicians are complete strangers to their audiences—what we hear every two years or so on an album of 10 to 15 songs, is the smallest snapshot of their work imaginable. In reality, depending on how prolific an artist is, that unheard work can fill up a large “vault”—a term that has become a catchall for an artist’s private collection of work—and, generally speaking, its presence isn’t confirmed until one of two things happens:
A) The artist dies, and the estate gets it in their heads to share unreleased/unfinished music with the public, or B) The artist decides to release it themselves.
Sadly, unless you’re Bob Dylan releasing 18 volumes of bootlegs, or Bruce Springsteen dropping seven previously unheard albums at once, the former usually wins out.
One need not look further than 2010’s “Michael,” a posthumous album of all-new Michael Jackson material, which was released despite disapproval from those close to Jackson—including his father Joe, who said in a statement through his lawyer that Michael never would have wanted “his unfinished material to be released.”
In 2025, Juice WRLD, who put out two mainline studio albums before passing away in 2019, is now credited with five studio albums due to a rush of posthumous releases—a testament to the 3,000 unreleased songs he left behind—but even that well is starting to run dry. While 2020’s “Legends Never Die” and 2021’s “Fighting Demons” saw critical acclaim, 2024’s “The Party Never Ends” scored a whopping 35/100 user score on aggregate site Album of the Year.
One of the album’s tracks, “Goodbye,” isn’t even a Juice WRLD song — it’s a tribute, written and performed by The Kid Laroi.
“This is money-hungry posthumous garbage,” says “Grave,” the top commenter on the Album of the Year page. “I can guarantee you that it is not worth your time, attention, brain cells, or literally anything else you can give it. It’s not funny, it’s certainly not entertaining, it’s an insult to Juice and his fans.”
Still, it’s important to note that not all posthumous releases are lambasted, and one rule of thumb seems to prevail everytime: the more input the artist had in the project’s making, the more critics and fans are likely to embrace it. Take The Beatles’ “Now and Then,” a teary-eyed legacy tune resurrected by Paul and Ringo from an old John Lennon demo, or Mac Miller’s “Circles” and “Balloonerism,” or the works of Prince—who left behind 8,000 songs in an actual Mosler vault, known for its ability to withstand nuclear warfare.
“If Prince indeed wanted it never to be released, one argument could be that he would have discarded and then destroyed it and got rid of the music,” said L. Londell McMillan, Prince’s estate organizer. “It was in a vault for a reason. [Prince] made comments about the vault, saying one day, you will hear the music for a reason.”
Since Prince’s death in 2016, 2010’s previously-shelved “Welcome 2 America,” as well as two demo albums, have escaped their captivity to public applause.
McMillan’s comments, while certainly optimistic, ignore one key factor: Prince made these comments while he was still alive. One could argue that if Prince indeed wanted these private works released, he could have organized them and shared the music at his own discretion. Or, at the very least, he could have locked them in a flimsier safe.
He didn’t. Until we confirm the scientific efficacy of Ouija boards, we’ll never know otherwise.
And so I return to D’Angelo—a man so fiercely protective of his artistic image that being dubbed a sex symbol sent him down an over decade-long personal spiral—and nervously, I eye the obituaries and memorials mentioning that fourth album.
“I get on the stage with the band, and I communicate with my musicians, and the music that we create and all that is coming out of us,” D’Angelo told Interview Magazine in 2013. “The music is making the show and the music is creating the atmosphere, so if you close your eyes and listen and feel what it is that’s coming out of the speakers, that’s the whole point.”
Posthumous albums are grave-robbing music’s feeling and artists’ legacies. If the whole point of music, for musicians like D’Angelo, is to embody that music, how can a posthumous album—regardless of how finished it actually is—ever live up to that electric atmosphere?
How can an artist share their gift with the world if they’re no longer physically able to do so?
If a musician is gone, and they didn’t explicitly give instructions on the contrary, their vaults should be locked forever, and their legacies should be preserved in amber. This would prevent any questions of shady morals, and remove the potential for vampiric commercial opportunism and embarrassing missteps.
In the meantime, if you were one of the millions of fans eagerly anticipating the follow-up to D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah,” I recommend you listen to “Black Messiah” over and over again until your ears hurt, and honor a creative genius the only true way we can: through their earthly creative output.
