I get the impression that people feel that him (and Lauryn) were some sort of musical leaders that would have led a scene that battled auto-tune and oontz or whatever. Honestly, I don't think their presence would have changed shit.

There's a reason why certain music becomes popular in certain eras and D'angelo's approach in retrospect did not feel 00's at all to me and I'm not saying that because he didn't release anything...

Now he can come back as some sort of elder stateman and the thing is that the fans he had actually4 remembers him which is a luxury many artists don't have. All you really need as an artist is a faithful audience who don't abandon you regardless of trends (assuming of course that you don't break their trust by releasing music uncharacteristic of their vision of you)