Voodoo – D’Angelo (2000) – Album Review

Album: Voodoo 

Artist: D’Angelo

Release Date: January 25, 2000

It’s the year 2000. The hangover of Y2K was in the air and for all the hype the year 2000 had in our minds in the 90s leading up to the new millennium, it arrived like a wet cigarette. I remember exactly where I was on that day in January 2000: MTV flickering on the tube, the faint smell of cinnamon in the air left over from the holidays, and pine trees bent under ice outside my living room window. Every branch leaned toward collapse. The world felt fragile in a way that had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the strange sense that we’d crossed into a century we didn’t deserve.

That’s when I heard it – the opening notes of Untitled (also know as How Does It Feel). D’Angelo’s voice cut right through that cinnamon and I felt it … it was something other than melancholy. It’s the kind of music that makes you stop breathing for a second and makes you realize how numb everything else had become. Voodoo is such a splendid listening experience. The instrumentation breathes around D’Angelo’s smooth voice and everything feels wonderfully nostalgic. I get hints of The Isley Brothers, Troop (link for the uninitiated) and even Stevie Wonder which is good enough on it’s own, but above all else D’Angelo made a great R&B record. Side note: for me the real stand out tracks on this album are The Line and Send It On. Those are songs I played on repeat for hours and hours.

Editor Note: Why are we covering D’Angelo on a website that covers microgenres? 1) because I believe that true R&B and Soul are becoming microgenres due to the shape of the current music industry and culture we live and 2) to highlight the fact that Burial used an uncleared sample of D’Angelo’s vocals from the song “Cruisin'” on the track “Shell of Light” and never gave D’Angelo credit. Is that relevant enough?

The news came yesterday: D’Angelo is gone.

His passing now makes Voodoo feel like kind of a lived covenant. Re-listening to this became kind of vigil for me today. D’Angelo’s musical contributions shouldn’t be lost on us – he embodied musical risk, vulnerability, and fidelity to soul in an era that often demanded gloss. His influence threads through genres and now generations.

His passing leaves a gap, yes – but also a space that his sound continues to occupy. Definitely check this album out.