d'angelo - voodoo - classic or dud?

(Then again I don't really look to music for sexiness. I only bring up all this sexiness stuff because of the way Tracer Hand and some others have talked about this album on other threads.)

maybe not obvious but the songwriting isnt as great as everything else on the record.

I could never get hugely into this record though everytime i read something by Tracer saying how magnificent it is i go back to it and WANT to love it but it never works.

right. in a way, voodoo is a little over laboured and thus hard to penetrate. difficult listening isnt always as great as it sounds in concept.

I'd definitely say Classic.

The S.E.X question

i prefer having sex to rock music or jazz like in a silent way than R&B.

totally disagree with shakey about the buried tracks/muddiness. that's exactly what I like about the album, and the fact that most modern rnb is brightshinyclean turns me off of it.
nick, you should know that the trick to getting those details to surface is to inhale drugas.

I think in that other thread I talked about this as non-climax sex music, which still sounds about right to me.

I won $5 on a bet with my roomy not too long ago on the fact that, yes Kevin, Charlie Hunter does play on this album. A lot.

This album on the boombox guarantees I will get something done around my house, be it the dishes or cunnilingus.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, March 1, 2005 2:20 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^thats a pretty good recommendation

i like voodoo but i get a sense it was dangelo really trying to make an album he thought he 'should' make, and be the type of artist he was trying to be, rather than just be him...

this album has a crazy detailed wikipedia page btw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_(album)

this thread is a bit sad

pretty much my favourite album of all time, the slow release hooks and choruses are masterful. So many fantastic tunes

Just listening to this today for the first time in years while cleaning the house. Great album.

i like voodoo but i get a sense it was dangelo really trying to make an album he thought he 'should' make, and be the type of artist he was trying to be, rather than just be him...

― uk grime faggot (titchyschneiderMk2), Monday, January 26, 2009 2:03 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha such a titchy post

maybe the single best album i've listened to due to ILM enthusiasm. heard it for the first time only a couple years back (smdh).

2nd best album ever.

dunno, maybe best album ever

These 'slow release hooks' must be really subtle because this album still washes over me. Must try harder (I loved Brown Sugar fwiw).

Geez, maybe I need to revisit. Bought it used three or four years back a looong time after I'd first considered purchasing it, and it just didn't connect for me. It might have something to do with D'Angelo's tic of singing every line a little more than hair behind the beat, a neat idea in theory which ends up ratcheting everything up another order of difficulty (it's forbidding enough to begin with with). Chances are that I just don't get it, but something Dave Marsh said in an interview a few years back stuck with me - he suggested that "Voodoo" was basically a failed attempt to capture the vibe of "There's A Riot Goin' On." Generally I don't trust Marsh on music after the 1980's, but I'm a giant "Riot" fan and "Voodoo" still kinda leaves me cold.

It took a long time to connect with me and Marsh is wrong.

i mostly see it as a successful attempt to capture the vibe of a d'angelo album

Ha, well I'll check it out again, then. Does he do that behind-the-beat thing on "Brown Sugar" too?

its a 'vibe' album largely, not a song one (though yes, it does have a few great songs on it).

its not really trying to recreate the riot atmosphere exactly, but it is something similar, that same sort of very slurred, hazy, drunken kind of vocals and ambience, though the clarity of the sonics are far too good to = riot. the main prob with voodoo is that cos it took so long to make and nothing has come after it you can throw a million things at it (fair and unfair) and it has to stack up to all of them, rather than simply be an evolutionary, feeling-my-way-around-for-something-new album which is what it seemed to be.

this album is so much more about sex than 'riot'

True true

Quit thinking about it so much and just vibe out to it.

That was the only full versh of that track I could find plz ignore the hprrible student film

Omg I just watched the whole thing

meth & red are great on "left and right" any other opinion is objectively wrong

I look back at this thread and can't believe I still missed this record in 2011. Granted, I didn't actually pick it up until a coupla years before that after having it on my list for maybe half a decade, but it sure feels like Voodoo clicked with me more than three years ago. One of the pleasures of listening is that some of the best records can sneak up on you like that, and then, holy shit, so that's what everybody was talking about. I think digging into Dilla's oeuvre helped, too - at some point you come to the realization of just how epochal it was for these guys to actually devise a new way to swing, 2 decades after "Rapper's Delight" no less. But that realization isn't just academic - it actually changes the way you hear rhythm, until you wonder how you ever heard the asymmetrical lope of, say, "The Root," as anything but funkier than shit. Once you learn to listen to D's music on its own terms, I don't think you leave that headspace - the new one took about two listens to click.

Yeah, it clicked for me a few years earlier but I had a similar experience with Voodoo. It took me years to wrap my head around it. I'm pretty sure there's some thread here with me going into detail about why it's so overrated but now it's probably one of my top 5 albums ever.

btw I am a fan of both MCs but both were well past their prime by this point

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Saturday, December 20, 2014 5:11 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Left & Right" single dropped weeks after Blackout!, which is basically a classic (albeit the last classic either of them would make). the song has a bit of a sore thumb quality in the context of the album, though, i go back and forth about how much i like it.

xp Great post, Futuristic.

some dude, I'm one of those guys who believes Red never lived up to his potential. You'd have thought after the Hit Squad posse cuts and the singles from Whut...Thee Album that dude was on his way to legendary status (see also: Jeru). Maybe he was never gonna be a Rakim or a Nas or a Biggie, but he was definitely primed to be part of that conversation. At least that's how it seemed back then.

Meth lost me at Tical. That's ground zero for the clownish personality he's cultivated ever since. I don't know, some people watch Seinfeld for Kramer though, what do I know.

yeah they both had kind of already changed the tone from their earlier careers at that point. i just think Blackout! is great for what it is.

Redman's career is so many lightyears beyond jeru's! I realize that wasn't the point but it needed saying.

Blackout is really fun. Def a personal classic

redman was basically dope from 1990-2000, not too many dudes can spin off a decade of consistent work, if anything i think his rep is underrated now

but he was also huge when i was in high school, like if you were a head or if you were a pop fan he was a big deal

Yeah otm

fuckin' love red, left and right is great, it's a bummer that he's so unconsidered these days
meth/red have quietly been dropping four tracks a year for half a decade feels like; this was the last thing that i got heavy into
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaGX6-tnKU4

Blackout! is easily my favorite Meth album and narrowly my favorite Redman album.

If it is better than Whut or Dare Iz A Darkside it must be good! Never heard it tbh.

man the hi-hats on that track

any thigh slaps on this one?

serviceable thigh slapping, nothing virtuosic tho

ok not interested in this album

blackout is a classic, not the best redman imo but still amazing

Futuristic OTM up there- after a solid week of Black Messiah, put on Voodoo and it sounds like Kind of Blue after Bitches' Brew.

Good analogy. I did that exact thing yesterday, and yes it does. In both cases I think I might prefer the gnarlier, abstracted later work. But there's no denying the classicness of the earlier one.

Just realised the gap between Voodoo and BM is 2 years longer than between KoB and Bitches Brew - damn.

what is that even supposed to mean

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZd_YyFzPD0

It doesn't mean anything except that it took D'Angelo a really long time to release another album. (Not that we're really comparing the two, but Miles released 11 albums, almost all classics, between KoB and BB.)

Sorry, meant that it's sort of strange that, in this age of supposed hyper -compressed attention spans, it's possible for an artist to remain in some way 'current' even with such a protracted absence, whereas, in the time between KoB and BB, as noted, Miles released 11 records, the Beatles had their entire career etc. It's nearly impossible to imagine any artist in popular music disappearing in 1959 and returning with a record in 1973 without it being a big 'comeback/ rediscovery' story (Art Pepper?) whereas with D'Angelo, it's acknowledged in every story that he's been away for a while, but there's no sense of him being an anachronism, a being landed from another era.

It has been 12 years since the last Peter Gabriel album of original material. If anything, I bet the work habits of D'Angelo and PG are surprisingly similar.

well, Peter Gabriel was 40 and had almost a dozen studio albums under his belt before he started releasing music more sporadically (like a lot of rich, middle-aged rock stars do). D'Angelo just turned 40 before releasing his 3rd album.

Well, tbf, there was also the matter of the drugs and whatnot. Been a few distractions at work. Kind of a shame he wasted so much time.

Just realized D'Angelo and I share a birthday. Same day, at least; he's a year older.

the flipside of hyper-compressed attention spans is that there is no narrative of general progress or development

anyway though i just wanted to cosign this

meth & red are great on "left and right" any other opinion is objectively wrong

― J0rdan S., Monday, 22 December 2014 00:01 (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like makin love is just so absolutely perfect

Has a single song ever sunk an otherwise 'perfect 10' album like "Left & Right?" Lordy, what a vibe-annihilator.

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Saturday, December 20, 2014 11:25 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and yea otm, such a bummer, it is just meth & red otherwise it is a great tune, "liar liar set your pussy on fire" smh

fuckin dweebs

iirc D himself wasn't too enthused about their input (and tried to replace them with Q-Tip but was even less satisfied with his efforts),

― Dej & the Fommly Loaf (The Reverend), Saturday, 20 December 2014 18:40 Bookmark

with all due respect to d this only makes me love it more

every song on this perfect album is perfect

Watch D’Angelo & The Roots Rehearse A Very Funky Take Of “The Line” For Roots Picnic NYC

D'artist list.

Is this the best album of the 21st century so far? Maybe.

It’s a contender for sure

this is my favourite album of all time and i can't fathom being someone who thinks of it as a dud

this album only really opened up for me earlier this year but it's truly incredible

It can take some time to open up to you, yeah - take a look at my first comment in this thread and laugh

every song on this perfect album is perfect

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 22 December 2015 19:28 (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

correct

(Tracer is never going to want to make out with us!)

― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Tuesday, 1 March 2005 15:06 (thirteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

..rong?

uhmm. . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2ihpqq4wKE

https://www.discogs.com/Amerigo-Gazaway-DAngelo-Variation-Of-Voodoo-A-Tribute-To-DAngelo/release/15096894

anyone watching the verzuz? anyone else watching experiencing some connectivity issues?

This album sounds incredible. The production is superb. I think he was still growing as a writer though. Still learning about songwriting dynamics as opposed to great grooves and mood, ambience, musicianship, etc. Weird fact I learned in an Eddie Kramer interview was that electric lady went very quiet after the period that all the soulauarian guys recorded all their albums there.

this is a joy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyeUDsckMho
Chicken Grease (D'Angelo) - Bass and Drums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ytLiEHuk0