Voodoo — 2000

Background

Voodoo was released in 2000, D'Angelo's long-awaited follow-up to his acclaimed debut Brown Sugar, recorded over several years at Electric Lady Studios with an unusually loose, live-band approach involving a rotating cast of top-tier musicians including Questlove, drawing heavily on the rhythmic feel and looseness of J Dilla's production style as a direct influence on the album's groove.

Sound

'Untitled (How Does It Feel)' became the album's most commercially prominent moment, its accompanying music video generating significant attention, built around a slow-burning, intensely intimate arrangement that showcased D'Angelo's falsetto at its most vulnerable. 'Devil's Pie' and 'Chicken Grease' both lean into the album's deliberately loose, behind-the-beat rhythmic pocket, a groove feel that prized human imprecision over the tighter, quantised rhythms common in contemporary R&B production.

Musicianship

The album's defining quality is its rhythmic looseness — deliberately unquantised, slightly behind-the-beat playing that gives the record a warm, human, almost lurching groove distinct from the more precisely programmed R&B dominating the charts at the time. This approach, directly inspired by hip-hop producer J Dilla's beat-making style, helped define what would become known as the neo-soul movement's rhythmic signature.

Legacy

Voodoo is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential R&B albums of its era, its loose, deeply musical groove and uncompromising artistic vision helping establish neo-soul as a major creative movement within Black music at the turn of the millennium. Its influence on the sound and rhythmic feel of subsequent R&B and hip-hop production has been considerable and lasting.