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 7. Stankonia
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What made Voodoo, arguably, the illest album of the new millenni was that there just was no recent precedent for it. Stankonia had Aquemeni. Mama's Gun had Voodoo. Supreme Clientele had previous Wu-joints. Music had never sounded like Voodoo before (even if some folks were determined to pass it off as a Prince clone). It’s similar to what people must have thought when they first heard Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club or Dirty Mind or 36 Chambers: you search for a linchpin, but nothing is there.
Voodoo was about as close as an album can get to hop, without some dude rapping and doing boom-bap. It was one of the first albums a kat could bang in his truck and not look like a softy, because it was such a mean album. The edges were fatally sharp.
What singing-dude ever made a song like “The Line”? We call that “real talk” these days. D was tellin’ kats that he was coming out after a five-year layoff and his career was on the line. And he did this over his own drums and a nasty guitar lick that he and Raaphael Saadiq prolly stumbled over when they were fiddling with their guit-boxes. It felt like many of these songs were produced to make people scowl because they were so nasty.
Even ballads like “Send It On” had sharp snare kicks and abrupt guitar licks. D'Angelo just doesn’t say that he's falling in love, he says the broad has put “The Root” on him. And he's singing complex poetry, fit with layered harmonies (all his voice) all over live drums and acoustic guitar. Check the last two minutes of “The Root” when D keeps looping the hook and layering vocal adlibs. What album, since 2000, has moments that ambitious, save Madvillainy, Mama's Gun, Stankonia and some of Rza's moments on Supreme? D has SEVERAL similar moments throughout this album.
The Hero said: “A broad once told me that Voodoo literally takes you through
all the emotions of a seduction...to this day, that is by far the most powerful statement about an album that I have ever heard any broad ever say.”
The amount of talent displayed on this album, the places it goes with music, the ground it forges and doors it opens hasn't been rivaled by any album since the turn of the millenni. This is an R&B/Soul album that has several records that last longer than five and a half minutes, which meant radio play was an afterthought during its conception. Yet, it still sold millions because it’s greatness in undeniable. It’s "the" definitive recording by a singer in recent memory.
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 4. Mama's Gun
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 2. Voodoo
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 1. Madvillainy
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