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spiritual and sonic birth of Voodoo coincides with the birth of D'Angelo's
three-year old son. It was shortly after the child's arrival into the world
that D'Angelo entered a studio in Virginia and laid down "Send it
On", a sly slow jam laced with a bluesy afterglow. With "Send it
On" fresh in his mind, D'Angelo felt ready to start the recording
process for real and set up camp at the famed Electric Lady Studios, built
by the late Jimi Hendrix. It was at that studio that D'Angelo said, "we all made a spiritual and
mental musical journey." Joining D'Angelo on this journey were a group of people that he dubs the best musicians he could find. "I love to play," D'Angelo states (he played drums, keyboards, guitar and bass on Voodoo) " and I wanted to work with people who love to play, too." Among the guests on Voodoo are Charlie Hunter (whose guitar forms the crux of the winding grooves of "The Root", jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove, Ahmir (?uestlove) Thompson, Method Man & Redman (who can be heard on the off-kilter bounce "Left and Right") and Grammy Award winning artist Lauryn Hill. "Lauryn is a beautiful spirit," D'Angelo says. "Very warm. When we did 'Nothing Even Matters' (which appears on Hill's Miseducation Of…) it was just a natural thing." Asked how he assembled such a diverse and dynamic crew and D'Angelo answers, "A lot of these people are folks I've been fans of for a long time, like with Ahmir." The first time I saw him was when he was opening for the Fugees, back when I was touring. As soon as I met and heard him it was like I'd found my long lost brother. I knew right then and there this guy was going to play with me and Ahmir's kind of my co-pilot on Voodoo." Voodoo was recorded live with no overdubs, and often what is on the finished project is how it unfolded in the studio. Lyrically, D'Angelo offers that much of Voodoo is personal reflection: touching on subjects like spirituality, sexuality, growth, and in particular, becoming a father. Musically, as he puts it, Voodoo is "definitely groove-based" Sometimes we'd be in the studio and Ahmir would come up with a beat and we'd just jam and things would just happen very spontaneously. Lots of times we'd just go in there and just play and we'd have the tape rolling. It was a different experience than Brown Sugar cause back then I had written all the songs at my house and then came into the studio. This time I wrote in the studio and worked a lot more with other musicians." "My inspiration was just to go farther," D'Angelo says, speaking of Voodoo's mission statement. "To get to that next level. To push it even further. To work against the floss and the grain and to get even deeper into the sound that I'm hearing…and the thing is, I'm just looking at Voodoo as just the beginning. I'm still developing and growing and still listening to that sound I hear inside my head. To take that sound and put it on tape. So this is the first step. It took awhile but I'm on my way now." |