Hi, everyone. Bigthony Rushtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's another classic week review of D'Angelo's Voodoo.

Released originally on January 25th, 2000, this is the second full-length studio album masterminded by multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, D'Angelo, which dropped five years after his debut in 1995, Brown Sugar, and would be the last record he would drop before making a triumphant return 14 years later with the Black Messiah album.

More than a decade after that, fans would be shocked to hear that on October 14th, 2025, D'Angelo tragically passed away from pancreatic cancer. The response to this news was interesting. A mix of understandable grief, but also a lot of people learning who D'Angelo was for the first time.

And considering those who were loudest and boldest with their tributes to him and his artistry, the reaction really proved his impact as a musician's musician, an 'if you know, you know' type of artist. And that's despite the fact that Voodoo here is a No.1 platinum-selling album. But by that same token, D'Angelo has always been an artist who has worked at his own pace and has also never shown himself to be desperate for the limelight.

The man's devotion to his craft is truly what drove his popularity and I think that bares out in the profound influence he has had on musicians that not just came after him, but even some who came before and recognized his artistry and success. Because D'Angelo was nothing, if not a unique talent with buttery smooth vocals, an undying devotion to groove, and impeccable varied taste that allowed him to seamlessly blend elements of funk, and jazz, and soul, and hip-hop, and RnB into a game-changing style that defined so many records through the late '90s and 2000s. Hell, even albums that have dropped over the last 10 years. And that DNA can not only be heard within D'Angelo's core solo records, but also various projects he took part in over the years, either as a guest or as one of the many cogs turning in the massive music collective, the Soulquarians, a pretty far-reaching group of artists that were behind such records as The Roots' Things Fall Apart, Q-Tips' Amplified, Common's Like Water for Chocolate, Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun, and of course, also Voodoo.

And this sophomore record here is widely considered to be D'Angelo's master work and follows what's said to have been a pretty gnarly stint of writer's block for him, coming shortly after the release and tour behind his first album.

And D'Angelo's solution to finding inspiration for this new batch of songs was just to live life. He became a dad. He collaborated on a myriad of different covers and songs and soundtrack pieces. But more importantly, he began extensively jamming and experimenting with Questlove of The Roots fame, writing, recording, and diving into some of the great records and performances of greats such as James Brown as well as Marvin Gaye. D'Angelo, Quest, and their engineers were also super picky about the instrumentation that went into this record and wanted to make sure they utilized real instruments as well as mixing on older boards and recording to tape too where they could.

while sure, there's a debate to be had there in terms of what's the sound quality of digital versus analog, so on and so forth, the extra effort and care that D'Angelo and company put into the way the instrumentation on Voodoo sounds definitely shows. They knew what they were going for, and the result is a series of very crisp, beefy, detailed, and well-balanced mixes.

Now, as I said, the release of this project was a massive success, went number one on the Billboard 200. Its popularity also being buoyed by the massive, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" single. And the whole record kicks off with "Playa Playa", a track that lays out the magic of this project pretty plainly and forecasts an experience that isn't necessarily going to be night and day with Brown Sugar, really more of an extremely great fine-tuning of the ideas on that album. The opening layers of odd down-pitched vocals and drones on this track create a surreal start before all of these looping bits of bass and kick drum grooves and snaps slowly creep in. Then we start getting these really subtle but undeniable head nodding grooves. When I say a head nod, I don't mean maybe a very passive head nod that you might have while listening to a bland Spotify playlist. I mean, your whole spine is getting into it. Your shoulders are moving. You're getting a stank face.

And that's how the track goes for seven minutes and change. With no massive changes in momentum or composition. And yet the track stays fresh and interesting the entire time. It is the slowest and funkiest of burns, with little flourishes of horns and funk guitar, bass embellishments too, which all melt away eventually into the same mix of sounds that the song arrived in on.

The rest of this record is like a series of variations on the same very functional and simple, but great formula, whether it is "Devil's Pie", which stands out for its boom bap drums, and reflections on temptation as D'Angelo references in his lyrics all of these different ways one could do evil or essentially sell their soul. There's also "Left And Right", which features some pretty punchy and prominent guest rap verses from Method Man and Redman who were pretty inseparable around this time in the music industry.

"Send It On", features some super classic soul chord changes and has an almost Al Green type of swagger to it. Then the funky "Chicken Grease", as well as the gospel-tinged "One Mo'Gin", are a few of many moments here that blur the lines between rapping and singing in a way that I feel like we just accept as normalized and standard in the music industry today. Again, this was years before Kanye or Drake were perceived as being ahead of the curve for doing it.

"Spanish Joint" definitely lives up to its promise of Latin vibes in the title, with some phasered vocals and a lot of very tight, precise, zesty little bits of guitar licks and hand drums. Meanwhile, "Feel Like Makin' Love" is a totally carefree sex jam, but one that's actually pretty endearing, not a freak off in any way, with D'Angelo's lyrics being inspired by the changing seasons, hanging out together, holding hands at a candle-lit dinner. Awwww.

We also see D'Angelo encouraging himself and others to move on through the highs and lows of life, with a lot of earworm refrains on "Greatdayndamornin'", all of which work like these little manifestations of , always looking for great days, even as you move through good days, bad days, and halfway days.

Then "Untitled", which I mentioned earlier, has all the classic makings of a slow jam, even that 3/4 time signature, but it reaches such an incredible peak toward its finish, with incomparable sensuality. I just love the way all of these amazing, rich bursts of instrumentation, keys, bass, guitar, and the like, all ride along this very simple, very bare, very skeletal hi-hat groove. The whole track really feels like being on an ocean and just everything is coming in these waves of intensity.

The whole record closes out with "Africa", which is a pretty fitting finish with its dreamy electric piano passages. It's the most entrancing song on the record by far. Again, an amazing note to end off on a project that is so alluring, so casual, yet skilled, so intuitive, so off-the-cuff, but yet also so methodically executed.

But yeah, stellar record, classic record, really a Bible-type of album when it comes to modern groove. That's essentially what I have to say about D'Angelo's Voodoo.

Anthony Fantano, D'Angelo, Voodoo, forever.