Voodoo (D'Angelo Album) - Composition

Composition

Voodoo incorporates musical elements of jazz, funk, hip hop, blues, and soul, as well as ambient music with a musical layer shaped by guitar-based funk. It features vintage influences and a looser, more improvisational structure, which contrasts the more conventional song structure of Brown Sugar. Music writer Greg Kot has considered the album a production of the Soulquarians, calling it "the most radical of the many fine records" conceived by the collective's members. In an interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune's Shawn Rhea, D'Angelo attributed the album's experimental and jam-like atmosphere to the fact that most of Voodoo was recorded "live and it's first take". On its eclectic and conceptual style, Rhea commented " seems to have channeled the brilliance of his musical forefathers, living and dead, during the crafting of this album. It is a complex, intricate collection of songs that, like voodoo, is simultaneously secular and spiritual, sensual and sacred, earthbound and ethereal". Recording engineer Russell Elevado's analog mixing and old school production techniques contributed to the album's jazz element and vintage sound. On its jazz influence, D'Angelo stated "because a lot of the album was cut live and has free playing on it, it was hard not to go in a jazz direction".

While most musical compositions rely on tension and release, which can be produced by factors such as soft verses and loud choruses, gradual buildup, subtle tension within verses or over the course of the bridge, or harmonic tension in chords that provides space for improvisation, D'Angelo's arrangements for Voodoo subdivide the tension into each of the songs' moments. According to music critic Steve McPherson, the concept results in "no linear way to measure how far off things slide before they pull themselves back ... can't be measured in beats or fractions of beats in a meaningful way. For lack of a less cliched word, it's entirely 'feel'". This type of syncopation serves as the center for Voodoo, rather than the more conventional method of using it as flavoring or departure from the center. According to New York Daily News music journalist Jim Farber, "In order to counter the slickness of modern R&B, D'Angelo's album reconfigured – and updated – the adventurous song structures and lowdown grooves of early-'70s works like Curtis Mayfield's 'Move On Up', Isaac Hayes' 'Hot Buttered Soul' and Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On'."

The album features aggressive multi-tracking of D'Angelo's voice, a technique similar to the production of Sly & the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On (1971) and Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On (1973). The multi-tracking on Voodoo significantly affected the clarity of D'Angelo's vocals. In Voodoo's liner notes, Saul Williams wrote of its heavy use of multi-tracking, stating "You might respond, 'Lyrics? Yo, I can't even understand half the shit that D'Angelo be saying. That nigga sounds like Bobby McFerrin on opium'. And I'd say, 'You're right. Neither can I. But I am drawn to figure out what it is that he's saying. His vocal collaging intrigues me'". Music writers have also noted the production style and sound of Voodoo as reminiscent of the sound of the P-Funk opus Mothership Connection (1975), Gaye's downtempo disco-soul record I Want You (1976), and Miles Davis's jazz fusion works In a Silent Way (1969) and Bitches Brew (1970).

D'Angelo and his crew also utilized a hip hop production style, which often subordinates song structure to a stable foundation for a rapper's delivery and flow. This was familiar to D'Angelo, as his first original recordings were rap demos. Subsequently, most of the songs were performed without a definitive structure, settling into a mid-tempo groove with minimal verse-chorus-bridge progression. This also resulted in an emphasis on texture over both structure and hooks. New York writer Ethan Smith noted this occurrence, stating "most of the songs aren't really songs at all -- at least, not in the traditional sense". While not predominant on the album, some tracks incorporate sampling. Most of its production was influenced by hip hop producer J Dilla's input. On J Dilla's influence, Questlove stated "He's the zenith of hip-hop to us. Jay Dee helped to bring out the album's dirty sound and encouraged the false starts and the nonquantized sound of the record".