How D’Angelo wrote ‘Voodoo’ as a tribute to Prince: “The biggest influence”
The music of D’Angelo practically defies any kind of explanation.
As much as people like to fawn over their favourite records for being mind-bending excursions that no one could have dreamed of, every one of D’Angelo’s three records are great pieces of music that invite you into one of the most soulful jams anyone has ever worked on. But beyond the hits and the massive shows, though, the neo-soul icon was always interested in performing with people who enjoyed music the same way he did.
Because for as little albums as he had to his name, every piece of D’Angelo’s catalogue felt like one step forward for him. While a lot of the OG fans will no doubt recognise him from his pre-Brown Sugar days working with Black Men United for the song ‘U Will Know’, Voodoo really is the crown jewel of his catalogue for a reason.
With the help of the Soultronics, every single second of the record is a case study in what the smoothest music is supposed to sound like. Anyone can listen to a record like this for ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel?)’, but every other track on the record feels like accidentally stumbling into one of the greatest R&B clubs known to man. And that’s largely down to how D’Angelo bounced off of Questlove throughout the whole project.
While the Roots already had their work cut out for them, bringing the drummer into Voodoo gave everything a whole different sense of groove. ‘Playa Playa’ was already on the shelf from when D’Angelo was working on the Space Jam soundtrack, but for all of the homages to everyone from Sly Stone to Jimi Hendrix, D’Angelo only had Prince to thank for giving him the desire to work on projects like this.
‘The Purple One’ had been through 13 different genres by the time Voodoo was released, but it’s easy to spot his fingerprints all over D’Angelo’s sound. From the tunes about sex to the perfect distillation of rock, R&B, and funk music, it felt like D’Angelo may as well have been the new version of what Prince was supposed to be doing at the time. And according to him, the whole reason Voodoo existed was to get Prince’s attention.
Speaking with Rolling Stone at the time, Questlove remembered having talks with D’Angelo about making a record Prince would be proud of, saying, “The biggest influence on the record was someone who never came to the studio: Prince. Way after Voodoo was finished, D and I sat down and listened to it, and we both admitted that this was our audition tape for Prince. I think this album was made to show him that we’re capable of collaborating with him.”
D’Angelo even extended the invitation to produce Prince’s next record, nothing ever really materlised between them during their lifetimes. But for anyone with working cochleas, the entire D’Angelo oeuvre is indebted to what Prince did, down to the fantastic cover he did of ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ when his idol passed away, only weeks after Prince played it at his final show.
Even if the world may not have been ready for the rapper and the music legend to work together, neo-soul was already given its own version of musical royalty. Prince was always going to be a one-off in music history, but it was nice to know that there were people carrying on that tradition of living and breathing music.
