Voodoo

Voodoo is D'Angelo’s critically acclaimed sophomore album, released nearly five years after his breakthrough July 1995 debut, Brown Sugar. The album was recorded at Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York City and sees D'Angelo flexing his producing and songwriting skills, writing on every song except the cover of “Feel Like Makin' Love,” and producing the entire album, along with co-production from DJ Premier (“Devil’s Pie”) and Raphael Saadiq (“Africa” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”).

Voodoo features elements of neo-soul, funk, hip-hop, salsa, blues, and jazz courtesy of The Roots‘ ?uestlove and the Soulquarians crew, who were also working on the critically acclaimed albums by Erykah Badu (Mama’s Gun) and Common (Like Water For Chocolate) at Electric Lady Studios around the same time.

In a July 2000 interview with Jet magazine, D'Angelo revealed the inspiration behind the album’s title:

I named the album Voodoo because I really was trying to give a notion to how powerful music is and how we as artists, when we cross over, need to respect the power of music. Voodoo is ancient African tradition. We use ‘voodoo’ in the drums or whatever, the cadences and call-out to our ancestors and that in itself will invoke spirits. And music has the power to do that, to evoke emotions, evoke spirit. That’s something I learned in the church when I was very young and that’s what I wanted to get across.

Voodoo was also inspired by D'Angelo’s frustration with R&B music becoming more pop and club-oriented. He wanted to bring back the soul sounds of Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, George Clinton, Fela Kuti, Prince, and Jimi Hendrix among other influences. Engineer Russell Elevado helped maintain the old school sound by utilizing analog equipment along with the live instrumentation.

Five singles were released from Voodoo: “Devil’s Pie” from the Belly soundtrack, “Left & Right” with Redman and Method Man, “Send It On,” “Feel Like Makin' Love,” and “Untited (How Does It Feel),” which peaked at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100, #2 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, and won a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 2001—all in part due to the popularity of D'Angelo’s revealing music video.

Voodoo debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 320,000 copies in its first week. The album remained on the charts for 33 weeks and was certified Platinum by the RIAA less than two months after its release.

Voodoo won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album in 2001, and was named by several publications as one of the Albums of the Year/Decade. it was also featured on Rolling Stone’s lists of the 100 Best Albums of the Decade and the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.