Happy 20th Anniversary to D’Angelo’s second studio album Voodoo, originally released January 25, 2000.
Some time ago, some dear friends asked me to explain to their young son what soul music is. Initially stumped for a suitable analogy, I decided to use the image of a river of musical development flowing downstream through time, picking up the sediment of musical influences before emerging fully formed as the irrepressible glory of soul music.
In 1987, Prince released what I consider the greatest album of all time (Sign O’ The Times) and part of my intense love for that piece of art is the fact that it acts as a summation of all that came before it—a bouillabaisse of every major facet of black music in the 20th Century to that point. A full stop (or period, to my American friends) at the end of the sentence that was soul music. It was the culmination of 45 years or so of musical mastery encapsulated in 16 songs by a diminutive genius in Minneapolis.
Of course the single development that escaped his grasp was hip-hop. Although it was beginning its ascent to worldwide popularity, it had singularly failed, at that point, to persuade Prince of its values. Indeed, his shelved follow-up to Sign O’ The Times, The Black Album, contained a damning indictment of the nascent musical genre in “Dead On It,” in which he lampooned the perceived lack of musicality in the genre, deigning it to be beneath him.
Thus it would fall to someone else, of a younger hip-hop loving generation, to be able to infuse soul music with the DNA of hip-hop. Someone who was just as aware of the balance between the sacred and the profane and the musical family tree they inhabited as Prince (and countless others) had been. Michael “D’Angelo” Archer, from Richmond, Virginia was that person.
Brown Sugar, his 1995 debut LP, helped establish a reinvigorated organic sound for soul and it was given the reasonably accurate, if slightly annoying, epithet of “neo-soul.” Alongside contemporaries such as Erykah Badu and Maxwell, Brown Sugar thrust D’Angelo to the forefront of soul music.
It would, however, transpire that D’Angelo was unhappy with the production of his genre-defining debut. Co-produced by Bob Power, it lacked the raw edge that D’Angelo craved—preferring smoothed off edges to something bolder and rougher. Of course. it was understandable, as the soul scene had been dominated by new jack swing’s metronomic technological beats and it wasn’t obvious a public weaned on that would find anything to love in a rugged 21-year-old novice’s ideals.
Five years later (in the very early weeks of 2000) with the release of his follow-up Voodoo, he set all those production issues right and then some. Aided and abetted by a dazzling array of musicians, producers and engineers, he laid down the 13 songs that took templates of soul music past and fused them to his love of hip-hop. Yet despite the hip-hop influences that permeated his consciousness, the most important ingredient remained: his church background.
Raised in the south, in a Pentecostal community, he felt the full force of the spirit and received his musical education there. The rise and fall, the ebb and flow of sanctified song took hold and became manifest in his work. But like many artists of bygone years, the call of God was counterbalanced by the lure of the flesh. Like Ray Charles, Al Green, Marvin Gaye and countless others, D’Angelo trod the fine line between the sacred and profane—the tension created added dimensions to his work that others simply didn’t have.
Nowhere was that upbringing more apparent than on “Devil’s Pie.” Regardless of the music, the lyrical content strikes a decidedly Old Testament vibe—hell fire and fury await, in lines like, “Who am I to justify / All the evil in our eye/ When I myself, feel the high / From all that I despise / Behind the jail or in the grave / I have to lay, in this bed I made / If I die, before I wake / Hope the Lord don't hesitate / Get 2 heaven, went through hell / Tell my peeps, all is well / All them fools, whose soul's 4 sale / Sitting next to the Jezebel / Demons screaming, in my ear / All my anger, all my fear / If I holler, let them hear / In this spinning sphere.”
The ingredients of the album read like a who’s who of soul music, in part because it was recorded at the center of a whirlwind of epochal albums. As D’Angelo took one studio, so Common (Like Water For Chocolate) took another, whilst his other Soulquarian cohorts Bilal, Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Badu took the final studio and most of them were united by the musical fulcrum and soul brother to D’Angelo, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots.
The smorgasbord of collaborators also notably includes Q-Tip and Raphael Saadiq, who lends his writing and playing skills to a couple of tracks. The beats for the aforementioned “Devil’s Pie” come courtesy of the greatest beatmaker of all time, DJ Premier, and the raps on “Left and Right” come from legends Method Man and Redman.
However, it is the less well-known names (then, at least) that add even more flavor to the album. Welshman Pino Palladino who, according to engineer Russell “The Dragon” Elevado in an interview with Red Bull Music Academy, caught D’Angelo’s ear with his ability to play James Jamerson bass lines “verbatim,” gave the grooves their distinctive fluidity. Charlie Hunter played guitar on three songs and lent his mind-boggling ability to play bass on three strings of his custom guitar and guitar on the other five simultaneously.
Beyond the actual musicians playing the syrupy, lugubrious funk are two details that add a sweet, sticky glaze to an already luscious mix. The decision to record at Electric Ladyland Studios in New York brought with it the ability to use some of the most illustrious equipment in musical history. Nestled in the corner of the studio lurked the Fender Rhodes piano used by Stevie Wonder on Talking Book (1972) and elsewhere were microphones, amps and other recording equipment used by Jimi Hendrix himself.
To read and hear about the influence of both the space and equipment from those involved is to believe that inanimate objects can become sentient beings capable of imbuing proceedings with memories of past glories and echoes of bygone classics.
Every note (and, crucially, every space between the notes) of the album bears the hallmarks of the musical heritage that the studio bore, but capturing them was something else. Taking center stage for that was Elevado, a recording engineer hell bent on maintaining the gifts given, in part, by illustrious forebears. Refusing to record on anything but 2” tape, nothing was recorded over, resulting in around 120 reels of jams, covers of musical greats and improvisations.
All of this steadfast refusal to digitize came courtesy of D’Angelo’s desire to “make it phatter,” as Elevado explained to Red Bull Music Academy, and his desire to see Questlove’s drumming take on a “drunken” quality, whereby he would play on the final millisecond of the beat. This, in itself, lends the grooves an edge of tension—though he would never miss the beat, it seems momentarily as if the whole house of cards will come tumbling down at any given point.
In an interview with Word, D’Angelo was clear about what he’d set out to do with the album. He had deliberately not engaged with current musical trends or watched any recent music videos as he lived his life in preparation for the writing and recording of Voodoo. He wanted something “… really gritty, dirty and raw” and what he wanted, he got.
After the fourth dimension funk of “Playa Playa,” comes the jaw-shattering one-two of the aforementioned “Devil’s Pie” and the sexually charged dynamism of “Left and Right” and they are all filthy in their groove and funk. Yet there is sweetness and light elsewhere—“Send It On” shimmers divinely, while “One Mo’Gin” has such a devastating, understated keyboard line that simply adds to the hypnotic effect of the song.
A further strength of the album is the way that it is sequenced. Nothing dominates. Instead, it vacillates between the slower, mellowed-out ballads and the kind of funk that initiates sweat within the first four bars. “Chicken Grease” is so aptly titled, it’s beyond true and “Spanish Joint” makes clear the influence of Spanish sounds out of New Orleans in the construction of funk music.
It would of course be remiss not to mention the most famed of all the songs here: “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” Elevated somewhat by its startling video featuring a half-naked, finely chiseled D’Angelo, it is often cast as “the greatest song Prince never wrote.” Although that is clearly meant as a compliment of the highest order, it cheapens it slightly. Sure there are unmistakable parts that yell Prince—the beseeching falsetto shriek, the guitar solo and the masterful control of sexual yearning. But “Untitled” deserves to stand as testimony to D’Angelo’s unique artistry.
In the final measure, after the homage to Prince’s Parade era drums on the opening to “Africa” has faded and the muted, sultry sensuality of his cover of Roberta Flack’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love” has enveloped you in a post-coital glow, it is clear that this album has joined the pantheon of great albums and is the greatest soul album since Sign O’ The Times. Taking things a step further while standing on the shoulders of giants, his falsetto joins Curtis Mayfield, Smokey Robinson and Eddie Kendricks in expressing a deeply held sensitivity at the same time as forging a powerfully musical masculinity.
With any luck, as I type, D’Angelo is somewhere humming “Old Ship Of Zion” in preparation for recording material soon to be unleashed on the world. After all, he wouldn’t make us wait, would he?
LISTEN: