FEATURE:
After the Writer’s Block…
D’Angelo’s Voodoo at Twenty
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AS we are in a new decade…
PHOTO CREDIT: Jonathan Mannion
we are, inevitably, looking back to see how other decades started. I have done some playlists of the best music from 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010. I think 2000 was a phenomenal year for music, and we saw some terrific albums arrive. On 25th January, D’Angelo brought out his second album, Voodoo. Released by Virgin Records, D’Angelo recorded the album during 1998 and 1999 at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. D’Angelo produced most of the album himself and worked with musicians of the Soulquarians collective. I will talk more about the album’s legacy later on but, compared with Brown Sugar in 1995, Voodoo is a looser album that is not as conventional as his debut. The album investigates fatherhood and spirituality in addition to love and maturation. Voodoo was a huge success and, following huge promotion, it debuted at number-one on the U.S. Billboard 200. Singles such as Untitled (How Does It Feel) were met with huge praise – although its video did garner some controversy! When you release a debut as successful as Brown Sugar, there is that pressure regarding a follow-up. That album was toured for over two years and, when the dust had settled, D’Angelo found himself unable to conjure new ideas. I am not sure what caused this block, but it is something every songwriter faces in their career. New material was a struggle, so D’Angelo put out some cover versions and remarks; flexing his creative muscles and trying to get the juice flowing.
D’Angelo eventually rediscovered his mojo and began work on his second album. Whilst his debut album is a remarkable thing, Voodoo throws together everything from Jazz, Funk and Hip-Hop. It is the way the contrasts work together that makes Voodoo so arresting. You get vintage sounds and influences stacked alongside fresh sounds and layers. D’Angelo is a lot more improvisational on Voodoo; I think these changes and evolutions make a big different. Whether you feel it is solely a D’Angelo record or more of a Soulquarians production, one cannot refute the genius throughout. A lot of Voodoo was recorded straight in one take, and one can imagine the musicians jamming in the studio and the vibe at the time. I am not sure what compelled this breakthrough and resurrection from D’Angelo, but he took his music to a new plain on Voodoo. There are Jazz elements and that sort of vibe, but one can nod to pioneers like Jimi Hendrix and many of D’Angelo’s heroes. There is a lot to unpack when it comes to D’Angelo’s staggering sophomore release. It could have gone wrong or not happened at all: instead, what we get is an album that is like nothing out there. You would struggle to find a review that is anything less than gushing and mind-blown. In this Pitchfork review, we learn more about a stunning album:
“But Voodoo is more than a fetish object for analog geeks and old-soul collectors. It's peppered with hip-hop inflections largely informed by the singular work of J Dilla, the record's biggest modern influence. D'Angelo probably had Dilla's beats in mind when he wanted ?uestlove to dirty his impeccable timing to drum like he had just "drank some moonshine behind a chuckwagon," as ?uest once put it. In GQ, D cited the Detroit producer's 2006 death as the moment he decided to wake up from his booze-and-cocaine fueled lost years. "I felt like I was going to be next," he said. And when he played this year's Made in America festival in Philadelphia, he stepped out to the strains of obscure Canadian band Motherlode's "When I Die", which Dilla flipped on the finale of his last true album, Donuts.
The song's hook: "When I die, I hope to be a better man than you thought I'd be." Voodoo's element of sampling is crucial and varied as well, whether through flawless interpolations (as on "Send It On", which borrows its horn-laden lilt from Kool and the Gang's "Sea of Tranquility"), or sly cut-ups (like when DJ Premier drops in a line of Fat Joe's materialistic "Success" into the anti-materialism screed "Devil's Pie"), or well-chosen covers (the slowed-down brilliance of "Feel Like Makin' Love", a #1 for Roberta Flack in 1974)”.
Voodoo, like other albums from 2000, does not feel dated or of its time. Because there are so many classic elements to the production and sound, there is something instantly vintage; the modernity and urgency of the music means Voodoo sounds remarkable twenty years down the tracks. It is an album without a conventional structure, and there is so much nuance and depth. In this Entertainment Weekly review, they talk about D’Angelo’s growth between albums:
“On his long-anticipated follow-up, Voodoo, we find D’Angelo growing as an artist, as well as The Artist. His Purple Majesty’s influence looms over Voodoo even more than Gaye’s. (Not Prince the hitmaker but Prince the bandleader of endless late-night funk workouts.) Voodoo is less like an album and more like an intimate jam session, each song bleeding into another. Cut almost entirely live, nearly every track is over five minutes, and all ride the same mid-tempo groove. Piled high with squelchy, sinuous keyboards, syncopated rhythm guitar, horny horns, and harmonies that overlap gloriously like they came from a vintage Parliament-Funkadelic album, D’Angelo creates a (Sly) stoned soul picnic bar none.
Such advances don’t negate the romance stance that made him a star — his falsetto just may serve as women’s answer to Viagra. ”Send It On” is a stately soul ballad like they just don’t make anymore, while his cover of Roberta Flack’s ”Feel Like Makin’ Love” remains a sweet, sticky delight. Only a crudely misogynistic rap from guests Method Man and Redman on ”Left & Right” upsets the organically sensual vibe. Still, what’s most thrilling about Voodoo is that D’Angelo is unafraid to tamper with his successful formula: This is elastic, impressionistic music that doesn’t cater to radio formats. If you’re looking for an antidote to the processed-cheese disease that’s infected today’s pop, a little bit o’ Voodoo is just what the witch doctor ordered”.
There will be some big album anniversaries this year, but I think Voodoo is one that deserves a lot of focus. D’Angelo and the Vanguard’s Black Messiah came out in 2014, and I wonder whether we will get another album from him – the man does take his time but, on all occasions, the results are spellbinding! Maybe we will see a new D’Angelo album this year – there are rumblings -, but it is amazing to listen to Voodoo twenty years after it came into the world. If you have not heard the album, check it out on Spotify, and prepare to have your senses altered.
It still, as I said, sounds brilliant today, and it makes me hungry for another D’Angelo record. I will wrap things up but, before that, I want to bring in a feature from early last year that looked back on a remarkable work:
“Once hailed as the next Marvin Gaye, D’Angelo become the harbinger of hip-hop soul with his first release Brown Sugar in 1995. At the ripe young age of 21, he was responsible for rethinking an entire genre and had laid the path for Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite (‘96), Erykah Badu’s Baduizm (’97), The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (‘98) and the neo-soul movement. But on the dawn of Y2K, contemporary R&B had morphed into a slick, club-friendly state. Voodoo emerged as a response to this, bringing back earthy 70s production powered by experimental, hip-hop-influenced rhythms.
After its release, Voodoo topped the Billboard albums chart just two weeks later, won two Grammy’s, achieved platinum status and produced a hit that would turn D’Angelo into a pin-up for ages. The album made an arresting statement, not just musically but visually. With its cover and provocative video for ‘Untitled (How Does it Feel)’, D’Angelo bared more than his soul. What perhaps meant to be a vulnerable statement looked more like an illicit invitation.
Sampling takes on an important role throughout the album, a practice that had been honed over the past decade, but D’Angelo does so with care, whether it’s Kool & the Gang‘s ‘Sea of Tranquility’ on ‘Send it On’ or the drums from Prince’s ‘I Wonder U’ on ‘Africa’. Every track serves a purpose, there is no filler here. His cover of Roberta Flack’s ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ is turned into a breezy song of seduction, while the Latin jazz infused ‘Spanish Joint’ hints at the heat to come.
But none of these songs fully prepare you for the ultimate slow-burn ballad that is ‘Untitled (How Does it Feel)’. Co-written by Raphael Saadiq, it shall gown down in the annals of makeout music history and even cuts off in the middle, leaving you wanting more. Whether consciously or subconsciously inspired by the “Purple One’, it was ironic that Prince seemed be inspired as well, after releasing ‘Call My Name’ just a few years later”.
There are other great articles that are worth checking out. Voodoo is an amazing album, and its twentieth anniversary, I would have thought, should have been met with a reissue or special edition – again, I can find now word of that. No matter, as the original is out in the world and it demands your attention. I hope Voodoo gets a lot of coverage today (on its twentieth), as it a classic album that will still be talked about decades from now. Spend some time today so you can…
SPIN this masterpiece.