When D’Angelo finished his debut album, ‘Brown Sugar,’ he was proud, but something nagged at him: it sounded a little too polished. He later confessed that the studio process had made some of his raw home demos “a little homogenized.”
For his next venture, his vision was clear: to capture his pure creative energy, “straight from the cow to the glass,” as he put it.
‘Brown Sugar’ put D’Angelo on the map, but it was ‘Voodoo,’ released in January 2000, that cemented his status as a truly groundbreaking musical force. As a singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, he led a movement blending raw gospel emotion, soulful R&B, improvisational jazz, and undeniable hip-hop grooves into something both earthy and cutting-edge.
The secret to this magic was a free-spirited studio environment fostered by a collective of musicians known as the Soulquarians. This name paid tribute to the Aquarius birth sign shared by its four core members: D’Angelo himself, The Roots’ drummer Questlove, prolific producer and multi-instrumentalist James Poyser, and the influential rapper-producer J Dilla.
From 1996 to 2002, this foundational group, alongside collaborators like Common, Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, and jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove, made Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village their home. Deeply inspired by Jimi Hendrix, who originally commissioned the studio, D’Angelo insisted they channel all their creative energy within its walls.
Questlove later recalled D’Angelo saying the place was “so blessed,” adding, “Yo, man. It has the blessings of the spirits. We have to go there. It’s only right.”
The “Voodoo” sessions often blurred into recordings for other era-defining classics like Common’s “Like Water for Chocolate” and Badu’s “Mama’s Gun.” They involved extensive, free-form jams, frequently inspired by what the collective called “treats”—rare live recordings of their musical idols such as James Brown, Prince, George Clinton, Sly Stone, Michael Jackson, and Fela Kuti.
Questlove famously told Rolling Stone, “We got bootleg concert connects like fiends got drug dealer connects… During ‘Voodoo,’ there was at least 13 people providing us with stuff.”
While Questlove often worked with Common during the day, D’Angelo’s typical session would kick off around 6 p.m. after his gym workout. Following a high-protein, low-carb snack, he and Questlove would spend a couple of hours dissecting their “treats” in the break room. Then, they’d move to Studio A for improvisation. D’Angelo remembered how they’d play for hours “like kids,” embracing spontaneous musical moments, with engineer Russ Elevado meticulously recording everything.
D’Angelo described the process: “We would just keep the tape rolling, and we’d be in that live room with absolutely, really no intent of writing or recording anything.” Then, amidst the rolling tape, Questlove might exclaim, “‘Whoa! What’s that? Yo, Russ! Rewind the tape.’ Russ Elevado would rewind it and listen to it again and boom, there’s a new song.”
These improvisational sessions eventually grew to include other top-tier musicians, such as Pino Palladino, a seasoned Welsh session bassist known for his work with Elton John and Phil Collins, and the incredibly skilled jazz and funk guitarist Charlie Hunter.
The sheer volume of creative output at Electric Lady meant musicians were often reluctant to leave. Questlove recounted, “Sometimes I would go home and then D would call me and say, ‘Yo. You have to listen to what Charlie and I did last night.’” He added, “He would play me something, and I would be seething with jealousy because I wasn’t there for the magic.”
While drawing inspiration from their musical predecessors, D’Angelo, Questlove, and their peers also keenly observed their contemporaries, particularly J Dilla. Dilla was celebrated for crafting tracks with a uniquely “drunken” — or wonderfully off-kilter and slippery — rhythmic feel. D’Angelo aimed to infuse this same aesthetic, already present in his demos, into the sound of ‘Voodoo.’
The group’s careful balance of raw spontaneity and tight execution resulted in truly brilliant music. Tracks like “Chicken Grease” — which D’Angelo “borrowed” from Common’s album, proclaiming to Questlove, “you know and I know that funk belong to me” — and the opening track “Playa Playa” felt like timeless grooves, perfectly preserving the essence of the long, improvisational jams where they originated. Other songs such as “Send It On,” “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” expertly reinvented the classic R&B slow jam for a new era.
Beyond its incredible sonic landscape, ‘Voodoo’ served to redefine D’Angelo as an artist. Its deeply intuitive, exploratory creative process ultimately led him back to his fundamental passion for music.
He revealed to Rolling Stone, “It was a return to what we love about music.” He explained how, after ‘Brown Sugar,’ he “lost [his] enthusiasm to do all this,” referring to the intense fan attention. “I had to reiterate why I was doin’ that in the first place,” he concluded, “and the reason was the love for the music.”