Voodoo

About

<b>100 Best Albums</b> Released in early 2000, D’Angelo’s landmark <i>Voodoo</i> was the result of years’ worth of scholarship and soul-searching. In the late 1990, the R&B prodigy began spending time at Jimi Hendrix’s famed Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Working with a collective of innovative jazz, hip-hop, and soul musicians known as the Soulquarian, the singer spent hours studying Black music’s past, while simultaneously paving its future. Numerous friends and guests would drop in along the way, including founding Soulquarians members Questlove, James Poyser, and J Dilla, as well as such artists as Erykah Badu and Bilal. During that time, D’Angelo studied episodes of <i>Soul Train</i>, dug into old performances from legends like Marvin Gaye and James Brown, and—most crucially—created more than 120 hours of music. All of that effort would eventually be whittled down into D’Angelo’s sophomore masterpiece, <i>Voodoo</i>—an album that was far more experimental and free-flowing than his 1995 debut, <i>Brown Sugar</i>, and that felt like a wholesale rejection of “modern” R&B. Tracks like “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” proved that, while flashy R&B tracks were thriving commercially, a slow-burning, seven-minute-long single could possess the power to capture the mainstream for generations to come. It was the standout track on an album that was as daring lyrically as it was sonically, with songs about fatherhood, love, spirituality, and sex. .

via Apple Music

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