D’Angelo’s musical copilot, keyboardist James Poyser, guitarist Charlie Hunter, and trumpeter Roy Hargrove.

“What was cool about it,” Thompson remembers, “was D had the A room [of the studio] on lockdown, and Common had the B room. Then Common brought [producer] Jay Dee inside, and next thing you know, both camps are working in each other’s studio.” Others like Badu, Talib Kweli, and Mos Def visited frequently, creating a ground zero for what Thompson called “a left-of-center black music renaissance.”

As Common puts it: “It was one of those time periods that you don’t even realize when you’re going through it that it’s powerful. What came out of that period was Voodoo, [Common’s] Like Water for Chocolate, [Badu’s] Mama’s Gun, and [the Roots’] Things Fall Apart.”

Voodoo itself seemed to spring up from the ether. The historical reference points—Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Miles Davis, Prince—breathe organically from the album’s dark, grimy funk. If Brown Sugar was the sound of a bright-eyed young man flush with love’s first blush, Voodoo tracks such as “Left & Right” and “The Root” suggest a guy who’s seen love’s nasty side, for better (“Smack yo’ ass, pull yo’ hair / Even kiss you way down there”) and worse (“My blood is cold and I can’t feel my legs”). “Devil’s Pie,” the album’s centerpiece, is a sweaty, head-nodding sermon against the evil seduction of hip-hop materialism.

Following the album’s release, D’Angelo put together a crack touring band called the Soultronics that included some of the Voodoo crew (with Thompson as the musical director), then hit the road with a startling three-hour nightly extravaganza that ran for eight months. Tour manager Alan Leeds, who previously helmed James Brown’s classic late-’60s/early-’70s outings and Prince’s Purple Rain tour, calls the Voodoo run his most memorable. During these frenzied live shows, D’Angelo’s songs grew into entirely new animals, and the singer himself into an electrifying, charismatic frontman. But for those who’d discovered him via the “Untitled” video, that wasn’t necessarily what they came to see and hear.

“We couldn’t get through one song before women would start to scream for him to take off something,” says Hargrove. “It wasn’t about the music. All they wanted him to do was take off his clothes.”

The catcalls had an undeniable effect on D’Angelo. “He’d get angry and start breaking shit,” Thompson remembers. “The audience thinking, ‘Fuck your art, I wanna see your ass!’ made him angry.”

For D’Angelo, who, as Trenier puts it, “isn’t a sexy dude” but a “real musician who wears glasses and plays video games,”

the objectification appeared to do lasting damage.

“I didn’t realize how vulnerable he was and how deep his issues ran,” says Leeds. “He’s cursed now with fretting over how much of

“The audience thinking,
‘F--k your art, I wanna see
your ass!’ made him angry.”

?UESTLOVE

 

his fan base is because of how he looked as opposed to the music. It took away his confidence, because he’s not convinced why any given fan is supporting him.”

D’Angelo, born Michael Eugene Archer, the son of a Pentecostal preacher, also struggled, like Marvin Gaye and Al Green before him, to reconcile his sexed-up musical persona with deeply embedded religious convictions. “The whole idea that you’d sold your soul because you’re playing devil’s music instead of playing in the church,” says Leeds, “that’s very much part of his issues deep down.”

Nonetheless, when the tour ended in late 2000, there were ambitious plans that included a live album, a Soultronics studio album, and a new D’Angelo full-length in relatively short order. Leeds, who by this time was comanaging along with Trenier, recalls, “The whole industry was saying, ‘This next album will turn you into a superstar. The table is set.’”

But things didn’t go as planned. Initially, D’Angelo took time off and returned to Virginia. Then, in April 2001, Fred Jordan, a close friend of D’Angelo’s who worked at MTV, killed himself, which reportedly left the singer reeling. “We weren’t even thinking about making a record,” Trenier says. The hopes for the live album and the Soultronics project fizzled.

Eventually, D’Angelo did begin working, mostly in New York and at a home studio in Richmond. Sessions proceeded in fits and starts for the better part of two years. “It was a slow process,” says Leeds. “He’s the kind of guy who will book the studio and then come in, not feel inspired, and play video games for three hours with the meter running.”

According to Russ Elevado, who’s been D’Angelo’s recording engineer and close friend since they first hooked up midway through the Brown Sugar sessions, there were other forces at work, too.

“He started getting really involved with alcohol, which led to other things,” Elevado says. “It was horrible to see him that way, but there was no talking to him. I tried, and then big stars like Eric Clapton were trying to talk to him. He was very hard to work with.”

Through it all and in sharp contrast to the Voodoo sessions’ communal vibe, D’Angelo was working mostly alone, trying to play every instrument himself, while Elevado worked the board.

“That’s partly the reason it’s been taking so long,” says Elevado. “The deeper he got into the drinking, he was embarrassed for people to see him in that state.” And although D’Angelo was showered with praise for Voodoo, a significant amount of the credit publicly went to his collaborators, particularly Thompson. “There’s an element of D just wanting this album for himself. There are egos involved. Maybe once he feels he’s expressed himself enough, he can get other musicians in.”

“D’Angelo’s goal,” Leeds adds, “was to record like Prince: complete creative control. ‘I don’t even want the label to hear this until it’s absolutely finished.’”

Unsurprisingly, this didn’t sit well with Virgin, his label. Jason Jackson, Virgin’s head of urban music from 2001 to 2004 (and Lauryn Hill’s ex-manager) felt caught

From left: D’Angelo dodges tossed panties alongside fellow smooth operator Tom Jones in 2000; with Giorgio Armani in 2000