Brown Sugar (EMI ’95) Rating: A-
Fusing a hip-hop attitude (for example, one song is called “Jonz In My Bonz”) with a classic soul style (school of Marvin Gaye), D’Angelo is a soul brother I can get on board with, and along with perhaps Lauryn Hill and Mary J. Blige he figures to lead r&b into the new millennium. A little slow, repetitive, and even boring at first, D’Angelo’s funky yet sexy voodoo soul is chill out mood music that gets much better with repeat listens. Highlights include the excellent title track, a groovy love letter to marijuana, a great cover of Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’” that includes vocal acrobatics galore, and “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker,” an unforgettable tale of betrayal and its tragic aftermath. You can really feel D’Angelo’s disorientation and anguish on this track, and when he snaps completely it comes as no great surprise. The songs on this album usually develop slowly, and are musically anchored by organic late night organ and a groovy mid-tempo beat, with the icing on the cake being supplied by the voice of one of the finest soul singers around today (then again, the current competition is pretty scarce, unfortunately). Some optimistic and uplifting love lyrics are a nice surprise, too, and the albums relaxed vibe makes me feel good. Despite his modest protestations on “Smooth” ("when I'm around you, I can't keep my cool"), D’Angelo is one cool customer, and almost all of these songs offer something to recommend them by. That said, rather than the songs themselves, it’s the album’s groovy overall mood that will keep you coming back.
Voodoo (EMI ’00) Rating: A-
At 79 minutes long Voodoo is definitely too much of a good thing, and there’s some credence to the complaint that “there’s no songs.” But if you treat this album as one long listening experience and spend some time with it, the rewards are well worth it, for the aptly titled Voodoo sets and maintains a seductively sexy and funky mood while also unleashing arguably modern soul’s finest falsetto vocalist. Prince is probably D’Angelo’s primary influence here, but he’s not the only one – there’s also Marvin, Al, Curtis, Stevie, Smokey, Sly - all the right ones, basically. Most of these songs settle into loose mid-tempo grooves, with D’Angelo again playing many of the instruments himself while other top notch musicians such as drummer Amir Thompson and horn player Roy Hargrove also assist. As for the lyrics, I’ll quote the liner notes (“his vocal collaging intrigues me”) and simply say that that goes likewise for me, and that on Voodoo D’Angelo has nailed his head-bobbin’ late late sound. However, now that he’s mastered his sound, the challenge for D’Angelo is to write more songs as great as “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (this album’s superlative cover song) and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” (the album's breakout single, in large part due to its racy video which made D'Angelo a major sex symbol). Then and only then will he truly be able to join the legendary ranks of his inspirations. Alas, for a variety of reasons, as of early 2010 D'Angelo has yet to follow up on this album, which has really grown on me over the years, as it creates its own self-contained world that you can get lost within like few albums in recent memory. True, many of these songs blend together, and I could live without the Method Man and Redmond rap cameos, but this is arguably the most acclaimed soul album of the 2000s for good reason. I sincerely hope that D'Angelo conquers his demons and returns shortly (that also goes for Lauryn Hill; boy was I wrong about my prediction in the previous review), for modern music sorely lacks such singular and charismatic talents.
