Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Silver Liner Notes is our series where we celebrate the 25th anniversary of game changing albums and we take your calls. Now to a record that defined an era of R&B in the 2000s, Voodoo by D'Angelo.

[MUSIC- D'Angelo: Untitled (How Does It Feel)]

Alison Stewart: D'Angelo releases album, Voodoo, which was released 25 years ago this month. The album is considered a classic. It combines influence of jazz, R&B, gospel, hip hop, funk and rock, and it was created just a few blocks north of where we broadcast at Jimi Hendrix Electric Lady Studios. With me now to reflect on the anniversary is Naima Cochrane. She's a music journalist, NYU assistance art professor, and creator of #musicsermon. Nice to talk to you.

Naima Cochrane: Nice to be here, Alison.

Alison Stewart: She's written about Voodoo and most recently, the latest Vibe magazine cover story about Questlove, who is one of D'Angelo's closest Voodoo collaborators. From your perspective, why is Voodoo considered to be such a classic?

Naima Cochrane: There's a few reasons, but I think one of the primary things that's significant about Voodoo is that it was the anchor of this change in the sound of R&B music at the time. What we now call the neo soul era had been building. It started with the first D'Angelo album, and then the Maxwell album, and then the Lauren album, and the Love Jones album and Erica, which is the album that gave it the name. Then you have Voodoo come and declare it was number 1, Billboard Top 200 Charts. It had hits spanning weeks and weeks at a time. Obviously, Untitled, which you guys just played, broke the internet when we didn't even have the internet to break.

I think that it just cemented this change in sound and course, a reclamation of soul. It cemented D'Angelo as a superstar, for better or for worse. It also was the pinnacle of this collection of albums that were done during those Electric Lady sessions that have become lore in terms of Black music in that era.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, are you a fan of D'Angelo and Voodoo? Give us a call, 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. Why do you think the album is such a classic? What memories do you associate with the album? How does it sound to you today versus when you first heard it in 2002. 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. Let's do a little bit of backstory. Where's D'Angelo from?

Naima Cochrane: Michael Archer, AKA D'Angelo, is from Virginia, and I want to say the Hampton Roads area, but I might be making that up, but he is from Virginia. Common story in R&B, churchbred. No, grow up with his grandma. Young prodigy in terms of producing, playing, multi instrumentalist, et cetera. He had actually done some background work, some writing, some composing with his partner, Angie Stone, who is another neo soul artist, and in some other spaces, when finally before he releases his 1996 debut, Brown Sugar. What was unique about him then-- again, we didn't have the name "neo soul."

I think maybe we called it like an alternative soul or like a jazzy soul. He looked like a rapper. He had cornrows, he wore a big Avirex jacket, Timberlands, oversized jeans, would have a blunt clearly be high, but he had this beautiful sound, like of someone from the '70s or the '60s. He sounded like a traditional soul crooner and clearly had this beautiful musicality. His lead single was this love song to weed. He crossed these generational lines. I was in college, me and my friends loved it, but my parents could also jam to it because of the musicality of it. Little did we know he was part of an emerging trend.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. This is Andrew calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Andrew, thank you so much for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Andrew: Hey, I was so excited you guys are talking about this album today. I just wanted to say, when Untitled came on, all I could think about was the music video. As someone who grew up in the rural south without an R&B station, without a lot of people that were advocating for R&B music, that's a video that broke through through MTV and was really eye opening to someone like me and I think to a lot of other people.

Alison Stewart: Andrew, thank you for calling in. Let's talk about the music video.

Naima Cochrane: Let's talk about the music video.

Alison Stewart: Why was the music video such a hit?

Naima Cochrane: Because he's gorgeous. The music video obviously has become a sore point for D'Angelo, sadly, because his intention was to grab attention, but it almost backfired. The D'Angelo that came out in 1996 was still kind of young boy-ish, baby face-ish, very baggy clothes. Then we have this visual of him, and I think even the still from Voodoo itself is from-- from the album cover is from the same shoot. It is a continuous pan shot of just him and these cut abs, and cornrows, and a chain, and sweats. It was hypnotizing because he's just looking right at the camera. I think what I wrote was like, "He's looking into our souls from the video," and you couldn't look away.

Straight, queer, whatever, you could not look away, and it's all anybody talks about. People in my office made copies of the video on VHS and sent it out to people, or maybe it was DV-- I don't remember whatever it was at the time, but you could not look away. It turned him into a reluctant sex symbol. That was not his intention at all, but that's what happened. He was a little bit of a sex symbol with the first album. He had a kind of off the block lick lipping thing happening. That took it in a whole other direction, but it overshadowed the music to an extent where he ended up cutting the tour early because he was just so self conscious because women throwing draws on stage and trying to rip his clothes and scream and take his shirt off.

He's such an artist. He is such a consummate artist and he's a perfectionist that for somebody to be so distracted by something that really wasn't about the art, really ended up messing with him a little bit.

Alison Stewart: My guest, Naima Cochrane, she's a journalist and NYU assistant arts professor. She's here to talk about D'Angelo's Voodoo. It's this edition of our Silver Liner Notes. It's celebrating the 25th anniversary of the album. If you are a fan of D'Angelo or Voodoo, what do you remember from the album? 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. This text says, "The album really celebrated the African diaspora by including African Latin rhythms. The music felt very welcoming and expansive. Definitely a masterpiece." Thanks for sending that text. One of your favorite songs is Send It On. Before we listen to it, what is special about Send It On?

Naima Cochrane: First of all, the live instrumentation, I love it. The horns, the everything. I love the pacing of it. It's very unhurried, it's very mellow, and it is D'Angelo in that soul pocket. Voodoo is a little bit experimental. It feels a little unfinished on purpose, which was part of the whole Electric Lady thing. It's very analog in a space that was increasingly digital, but this song is him right in that soul crooner pocket and that kind of sensual soul crooner pocket at that.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen. This is Send It On by D'Angelo.

[MUSIC- D'Angelo: Send It On]

Send it up

Send it through

Send it back to you

Send it up

Send it through

Send it back to you

Your inner view, to me

Is something that I, do desire

Struggling to see a new something that I

Fantasize

So I'm sending

Send it up

Send it through

Send it back to you

Alison Stewart: D'Angelo said while he was making this record, he was really inspired, especially by Prince. Where do we hear Prince's influence on Voodoo?

Naima Cochrane: Well, definitely in Untitled (How Does It Feel) That was kind of the Prince tribute. You can actually hear where he and Ahmir and everybody else were trying to channel that feel. I think whenever D'Angelo goes into Falsettos, you get that Prince feel. The other thing, I think, that-- D'Angelo and Ahmir have these-- Questlove, they call their music idols Yodas. Prince is one of their Yodas.

Alison Stewart: Yodas. That's so good.

Naima Cochrane: They all have something similar in that all of them are rooted in funk and multi-instrumentation and also obsessive with live performance. There's an essence of really staying in the music moment instead of trying to get to a specific end.

Alison Stewart: He used to talk about the music being like a long jam session.

Naima Cochrane: Yes. That's what this album sounds like. There actually, I think, were some songs that maybe weren't meant to be songs or some songs that started one way and turned into something else. Even if you listen to it, it doesn't sound like somebody was at a board punching things in. They were in a room, like this album was made with everybody together, which doesn't happen almost at all anymore now in 2025. You sense that. You sense that togetherness and like a going where the music takes you, which I think is part of the Prince inspiration.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Silver Liner Notes. This edition, D'Angelo's Voodoo, it was released this month. Our guest is Naima Cochrane. She's a journalist, NYU assistant arts professor. Let's listen to Chicken Grease and we can talk about it on the other side.

[MUSIC- D'Angelo: Chicken Grease]

Let me tell you 'bout the

Let me, let me tell you 'bout the chicken grease

Oh, oh, stuffs and things to make the people get out their seat

Ooh-ah, everybody, it's cool if you wanna clap your hands and stomp your feet

Come on down to the front where you can feel the beat, oh-oh-oh

Well, from the left to right, to the back, the middle and the front

Don't be uptight, shake it off and do what you want

But let me pump it in the club and get a little bit a rub-a-dub (yeah)

Oh-oh, I know you love me 'cause I'm funky

'Cause I just wanna show you some love

Oh-oh-oh, to my brothers on the avenue

Huh, chicken grease

If you see us in the streets

Good God, chicken greaseUh-oh, to get to the other side, y'all cross the road

But not the kid, see I'm like that old bucket of crisco

That's sittin' on top of the stove

Simmer, simmer to a sizzle like the days of old

Alison Stewart: That's called Chicken Grease by D'Angelo. We got an interesting text here, says, "I always thought it was so telling that D'Angelo couldn't handle the sexualization that girls, women experience every day of our lives, let alone what female musical artists experience out in the world and in pop culture once they're sexualized." I thought that was a really interesting. You mentioned that-- you mentioned, but you know that he fell on hard times. What happened?

Naima Cochrane: I think you mentioned that I did a cover story on Questlove, which is about the Sly Stone documentary that premieres--

Alison Stewart: Premiered at Sundance. Right?

Naima Cochrane: Yes. It premiered at Sundance and it premieres on Hulu in a couple weeks. The lens of that story is not just about Sly, but about these artists, these once in a lifetime artist and the pressure that they go through and how they go through self destructive behavior because of that pressure. D'Angelo's in it obviously, because he can speak to this. Obviously I don't know deeply and personally about his mental health or anything like that, but what I imagine is you're a certain caliber of artist and there's all this expectation on you and you do so well and you've broken these records and you've hit these heights and people think you're the savior of music or of culture. It's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure and there is imposter syndrome and there is guilt for having to leave parts of yourself behind, and there is uncertainty because what happens when they stop rocking with you? I feel like that was-- also, he was thrust into all of this at a relatively young age.

Alison Stewart: Yes, he was.

Naima Cochrane: I feel like that combination of things, if you don't have a group around you that's actually saying, "Hey, let it go. It's okay," whatever. I don't know that we as Black people really were in that place yet in 2000, in that era. It can drive you to say like, "I actually subconsciously don't want all of this right now," or you want to numb yourself to it, or you want to self medicate or you need something to make things feel differently and you end up spiraling.

Alison Stewart: J Dilla. Where do we hear J Dilla on the album?

Naima Cochrane: Dilla is part of Soulquarian production collective. All of these Aquarians, I used to say Aquariuses. All these Aquarians, including D'Angelo and Questlove and James Poyser of The Roots, who are producing. Dilla's on the back. Here's the thing about Dilla. You don't hear him unless you know Dilla, which is his magic. You don't. He just gets in there and does his alchemy and changes things. For people who are students of Dilla, they can pick that up where it is. Which I think is his magic. He's on several tracks on the album on the on the production side, but they are samples that have been flipped to an extent that you don't recognize them as samples, which is his magic.

Alison Stewart: Let's check out The Root.

[MUSIC- D'Angelo: The Root]

She done worked a root, done worked a root

That will not be reversed, yeah, no

Then I go on, go on my role in her play

With no rehearsalSaid, I left my mojo left my mojo

In my favorite suit, yes I did,

Alison Stewart: Naima, we listen to Voodoo 25 years after its release, how do you take it in differently?

Naima Cochrane: That's a good question. I think that now I'll listen to it more from a point of view of what it inspired, but I also at-- I'm almost 50, so I still live with a lot of my music from high school and my 20s, and now I really listen to how it aged, because as someone who is a music executive and I now teach about music and look at how music is evolving, I'm really interested in what stays timeless and what doesn't sound like or what sounds like it needed to have been left somewhere, what aged well and what differently, and what didn't and why. I think now when I listen to an album, when it hits a 20-year mark or 25-year mark, that's one of the things like, "How fresh does this still sound and could this come out today and how resonant is it still and how crisp is it still?"

Alison Stewart: Voodoo is one of?

Naima Cochrane: Yes. It aged really well. It aged really, really well. Which is just a testament to all the people who worked on it and their intentionality.

Alison Stewart: Silver Liner Notes. Today's it was about D'Angelo's Voodoo. My guest has been Naima Cochrane. Thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate.

Naima Cochrane: Thank you for having me.