D'ANGELO *VOODOO* SURVIVOR -

well u know this survivor game...check your d'angelo's voodoo album.listen to all the tracks and Vote off your least favourite.

1. Playa Playa
2. Devil's Pie
3. Left & Right
4. The Line
5. Send It On
6. Chicken Grease
7. One Mo Gin
8. Root
9. Spanish Joint
10. Feel Like Makin' Love
11. Greatdayindamornin' / Booty
12. Untitled (How Does It Feel)
13. Africa

well, "left & right" doesn't fit the album for its (exlicit) raps.

and "devil's pie" doesn't fit the album for the lack of live instrumentation.

ooh, this is hard.. i'll pick..

LEFT & RIGHT.

I'll start with One Mo' Gin.

One Mo Gin - the only track that I've ever skipped on the album - its a goo track, but the rest of the album is a different level

Left & Right.

See ya "Devil's Pie" and "Playa Playa"..sorry y'all gotta go!

my turn...
my least favorite of VOODOO:
THE LINE...u gotta go!

I personally really love "Devil's Pie" even though it's 1 song with different production, but it's by the best... DJ Premier!

psykosoul said:

what!?

purpleone said:

I know, I know... Out of all of the tracks, that's the one I'm most likely to skip. Otherwise, I'd let it play all the way through.

Are we just gonna do every album ever now? Do we need a separate forum for this?

Left and Right

CinisterCee said:

Co-sign. Love the track, but agree that it doesn't fit with the rest of the album. Speaking of D'Angelo does anyone know if "Feel Like Makin' Love" was ever recorded with Lauryn Hill?
[Edited 10/4/04 13:01pm]

I know I'm not playing this correctly, but I have to say that Africa is my favourite song and it better come out the winner!!!

okaypimpn said:[quote]

CinisterCee said:

yes. she was supposed to feature on that track. d and lauryn were also working on another
track produced by jaydee. according to questlove in an early "voodoo" review for the
okayplayer website: "..and the lauryn song isn't quite done yet. (...) jaydee did the lauryn
track. and it has an al green feel to it mixed with a little ''got til it's gone'' (jaydee did that
too...)."

in an interview for vibe magazine in 2000, d and quest speak of the lauryn hill matter. this is
an excerpt from that vibe magazine interview (?=questlove=interviewer; d=d'angelo):

? : "..Well, this seems like a good chance to lead into another 'family matter', Princess Leia
(Lauryn Hill)."

d : "Awww, here you go. See man , I knew they (Vibe) wanted you to ask these questions."

? : "No, no, no. I'm not sensationalizing anything."

d : "(Mumbling something).... Well the last thing I heard is what you told me (while doing an
interview for D'angelo for Time magazine, John Christopher Farley told me that the Hill camp
was still waiting for a phone call from D'angelo concerning her involvement on "That's The
Time I Feel Like Making Love".)"

? : "See, I could see how this got messed up. I too belong to a large organization with
assistants and managers, but I always make sure that I'm accessible. I talk to my agent,
A&R, publicist, anybody about..."

d : "(Interrupts) But whoa, that's how I do it too. I called her crib early in the morning and she
would call me sometimes. But most of the times, her assistant would call and I understand
that with kids and all, you can be tired. I just felt, we were coming from...I mean...we were
totally coming from a place that had nothing but genuine love and respect for her. Absolute
admiration for the sister."

? : "Yeah, we gave her the title Princess Leia."

d : "And...."

? : "Well, when they asked you to knock off "Nothing Even Matters" (The Miseducation of
Lauryn Hill, Columbia, 1998) how cooperative were you?"

d : "I knocked it off in an hour or two."

? : "Did you even know that you were doing "Nothing Even Matters"?"

d : "Yeah, she gave me a tape at our session."

? : "Cause the first day when she came to The Lady (Electric Lady Studios) y'all were
working on...(both start enthusiastically singing melody to the initial song for D and Lauryn's
Voodoo duet)"

d : "The situation was I did it out of love. I didn't even charge. She would sing on my album
and I would sing on her album.... Man, we got to skip this.... (Ponders some more)"

? : "Look man, I just ask the questions. If you don't want to answer, you're well within your
rights."

d : "Man, this is hard. You got to be careful cause you don't know how bad people want me to
be on some 'Aw fuck that bitch', or something negative. And they probably want her to say the
same about me."

? : "For the record, we are not coming from a derogatory place, but gimme the dirt! ( Laughs)
Alright so, if the opportunity should arise again, do you two think you could get it together and
try again?"

d : "Man, I love Lauryn, but (pause) man, you know me. I can't do anything that's musically
forced. And I'm not trying to do that at all. I can't force a situation."

? : "But you two really sound good together."

d : "She didn't even want to come to Electric Lady, dawg. C'mon man, Eric Clapton will come to
The Lady, all the cats would come to the Millennium Falcon..."

? : "Man, what is up with all this Star Wars metaphorical bullshit? I feel stupid cause I only
seen the first Star Wars and already I've earned the title of Chewy (laughs). Seriously, you two
have very genuine voices..."

d : "Alright, let me tell you, "Nothing Even Matters" (ponders some mo')..."

? : "No, you don't have to explain no more."

d : "Nah, I'll say it."

? : "Nah, you don't have to."

d : "Nah, I'm a say it (laughs). You don't have to protect me. "Nothing..." was a song that was
supposed to sound like me. She got James (Poyser, keyboard player and part of the collective
known as the Soulquarians of which D, Jaydee and me are members of) to play keyboards.
The whole feel of the song sounds like what I was doing in '95. And it was cool, but what we
doing now is something totally different. More edgier, more dirtier and I just don't think that
she's there."

? : "But what is there?"

d : "She's there, but she's in her own...(ponders) Well, when I went to her spot, and not to
take anything away from her work because it's beautiful, but that's just it. It's beautiful. I
mean it's a very Stevie Wonderish love type of thing. Y'know, Stevie. And we just on some
dark, dirty..."

purpleone said:[quote]

okaypimpn said:

Thanks man, I've been looking for that interview for a while now.

purpleone said:[quote]

okaypimpn said:

So this is the infamous interview!

Voodoo is a beautiful album, I love just about every song on it. Left & Right doesn't seem to fit to me, so that's my vote!

okaypimpn said:

for the complete vibe magazine interview go here:
http://www.okayplayer.com...erface.htm (it's in the d'bonics section)

for quest's complete "voodoo" review go here:
http://www.okayplayer.com....jsp?rid=6

okaypimpn said:[quote]

CinisterCee said:

to show how close we were to having a "voodoo" duet between d and lauryn:

lauryn does get sorta mentioned in the "voodoo" cd booklet. in the back of the booklet you
can see the production credits. in the background there, you can see an earlier draft of those
production credits. one credit does not end up amongst the final credits. you can make out:
"..s courtesy of ruffhouse/columbia records".

this obviously should be: "lauryn hill appears courtesy of ruffhouse/columbia records"--

funny, right?

purpleone said:[quote]

okaypimpn said:

Yeah, I've always noticed that...it's scribbled or blacked out. I've seen that review ?uesto posted on "Voodoo" before.

I have the XXL article of D'Angelo from '98 when he was "supposedly" preparing for the release of Voodoo and mentioning songs like "Say A Prayer" and "Talk S#!t 2 U" being included, but clearly they never were.

okaypimpn said:

hey, i never read that article. could you post it here? or mail it to me or something?

EDIT:
oh, btw, "say a prayer" was supposed to be included on that never released "voodoo" live
album. together with a song called "betray my heart". according to you those songs would've
already been at least two or three years old by then. just like "fair but so uncool" and
"everybody loves the sunshine" were first put out in 1996. it's not that there's a point to this
story though. lol.
[Edited 10/5/04 11:30am]

purpleone said:

Let's not get carried away, purpleone! I only have one original copy! J/P!

Anyway, when I get home this evening I'll see if I can re-post it.

okaypimpn said:

haha.. i didn't actually mean "mail".. more like "email"..

D'ANGELO AND LAURYN HILL INTERVIEW
(a pretty nice read--old interview of course)

There’s something about Lauryn. About the way she strolls into a crowded lower Manhattan photo studio and commands immediate attention. About the way she sings along to her own songs on New York’s Hot 97 radio station. About the way she steals glimpses of her boyfriend [Rohan Marley] from the corner of the mirror’s eye. About the way she is utterly unimpressed that September afternoon when her manager walks in and announces that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is the number one record in America and fastest-selling female debut ever.


And there’s something about D’Angelo. He sits smoking weed in the middle of a large leather couch, all baggy homeboyness and reflective silence. He talks about his childhood church, about his little boy, and you hear the preacher’s son in his slow, measured delivery of words, but the next minute he’s mentioning DMX’s “Ruff Ryders Anthem” which he refers to as, “the music we want to hear right now.” In a second he’ll rise to be styled and when he returns from the dressing room he is souled-out Sunday-best preacher’s son again.


Right now, Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo are on the verge of reinventing the way young America feels about hip hop soul. If Puff Daddy can be fully credited as the inventor of a sound that was best reflected in the mid-‘90s music of Jodeci and Mary J. Blige, then D’Angelo can rightfully claim that his debut single— 1995’s “Brown Sugar”—heralded a movement whereby the philosophy of hip hop could be successfully adapted to the luscious harmonies of soul music as we once knew it. The buzz generated by D’Angelo’s first album in both R&B and hip hop circles enabled it to sell close to two million copies, and overnight D’Angelo emerged as more than a catalyst. Suddenly, he was a keeper of some sort of new soul idealism. This year, drawing from her Fugees experience while venturing into a personal quest for sincerity, Lauryn seized D’Angelo’s brief and released the solo record we’d all been waiting for.


Next February, D’Angelo will expand on his initial agenda, and release Voodoo, an addictive concoction of soul food where the songs are the male answer to all the female dilemmas enumerated in Miseducation. The street record that is currently being circulated on underground airwaves, “Devil’s Pie,” was produced by D’Angelo and DJ Premier. You could call it D’Angelo’s “Lost Ones”. “The Root”, with its backward guitar solos, could be compared to Lauryn’s “To Zion.” “Send it On”, which benefits from the musicianship of Roy Hargrove and The Roots’ ?uestlove, has the potential to be another “Doo Wop(That Thing.” And “Untitled”, a stunning Prince tribute, which D’Angelo produced with Raphael Saadiq, contains a chorus that asks,How does it feel? For that reason alone, “Untitled” is a song in the key of Miseducation’s eye-opening title track.


Dominique Trenier, the president of Cheeba Sound, D’Angelo’s Virgin-distributed record company, says that D’Angelo called him one day and said, “Either I’m under a spell, or everybody who’s listening to this shit is under a spell. I wanna call this album Voodoo.” And because you’re not hearing drum machines but real drums, or horn machines but real horns, Voodoo is reminiscent of Miseducation in its deliberate attempt to set a new standard for music and articulate the contradictions of urban life in America. A telling episode came during the photo shoot, Lauryn suggested to the photographer that they try a Marvin and Diana pose for the cover, and D’Angelo complied. At 24, Lauryn and D’Angelo have succeeded in emulating the R&B greats. And soon they could be legends in their own right.



TRACE: D’Angelo and I were talking about God. How can you draw from God and create music, that’s where I saw the connection between you two [D’Angelo and Lauryn], because the inspiration comes from God.
D’ANGELO: It’s God and I’m saying it doesn’t have to be one religion, but it’s still…
LAURYN HILL: One God, yeah[laughs].


TRACE: What I’m really interested in is the creative process. How do you translate your emotions to so many people on a worldwide level?
LAURYN HILL: There are a couple of ways you can approach music. Some people approach it on a groove basis, they like to make people move. There are some people who approach it on an intellectual basis, they like to make people think. I like to approach music where I can make people groove and make people think. I don’t like to separate myself from the audience. I don’t like to do music about what I got and you don’t got, it’s about what we have in common. So I find myself writing very heartfelt music about my personal experiences, things that I’ve been through…That’s the easiest thing because they’re closest to the nerve of me, a lot closer to the skin. A lot of people say that if a record is very personal it’s very hard to do, but I think it would have been harder to do if I’d had to pretend to be someone else or put on a face. My music is very honest because it’s for the people and directly inspired by God. I think that neither myself nor D’Angelo are trying to be pretentious or too deep. I think we are just really relating who we are; we are like the combination of our influences and also who we’ve become, what we’ve grown into in this hip hop thing coming from the church, being inspired by soul music—and I know I got a little reggae up in me, y’nah mean? It just comes in the way that it does.


TRACE: Your music is so honest, but I think there are two types of people in this hip hop thing. Some people will do anything to taste the ‘American Dream’ and some people just project who they are without chasing anything.
LAURYN HILL: I think it also depends on their relationship with God too. It’s very easy to chase that [American Dream], or to want to chase that—there’s a lot of desire and temptation around us constantly. Most people in hip hop are under 24 years old, at least when they start, so they’re very young. Things are tempting, and by the time they’ve matured enough to realize that all the superficial, monetary shallow stuff don’t count, usually their career span is not able to do it anymore. But then you have certain people who know what touched us in our lives…perhaps it was the fact that D’Angelo’s father was a preacher…actually know that it was the Father. Everybody has a corner to hold, and I think you can’t necessarily recognize the music of D’Angelo, without differentiating it from that something else.


TRACE: Some people can differentiate.
LAURYN HILL: I think we are inspired to do what we do for a reason. There are people who relate like, you know, there was music that touched me when I was growing up. I think we have a job to do for our generation.


TRACE: The moral responsibility for the youth because you’re like their heroes, because there is no political leadership in this country really…
LAURYN HILL: Because music’s raising babies right now.


TRACE: For me, the greatest record is Innervisions. For me that’s the perfect record, it contains every single human emotion.
LAURYN HILL: Definitely, definitely. I think that’s why we take so long on our albums, because it’s not just about anything, it’s not about releasing a hit. You know it’s not easy in the industry today because the industry doesn’t develop artists anymore, they develop hit singles—not even hit albums. So it really takes a lot of strength and a lot of courage to take your time and really evolve, to push envelopes and kinda broaden the base of hip hop, because a lot of people are trying to swing on the coast-tails of somebody else’s success, y’nah mean?
D’ANGELO: She’s right on point man, there isn’t nobody in the industry that think like that, it’s not even the industry, it’s in general, you know what I mean? Everybody got different motivations—people be in it for different reasons. The reason Lauryn is on is the same reason I’m in.


TRACE: At the same time, someone from the outside could say that you benefited greatly from the singles thing. Both of you had hit singles and the way a person maybe would never have heard of you if not for “Killing Me Softly” or “Brown Sugar”.
LAURYN HILL: That’s a lesson that comes from making the music. But I don’t think we sat in the studio and thought, “Okay, we can easily make this hot single that’s gonna blaze.” That wasn’t motivation behind making the music. You have music from your heart, from your soul…and if people feel it, that’s wonderful, you know what I’m saying? That’s the motivation [behind the music], it wasn’t to top the Billboard [charts]…
D’ANGLEO: Our music comes from the heart…
LAURYN HILL: Yeah!


TRACE: I think the problem when you’re a new artist trying to create music, is that it’s so difficult to express oneself accurately. Some people find it easy to express themselves, they have so many feelings inside themselves but when it comes out the way it comes out, they feel that “This is not really me”. Have you ever felt you released something that wasn’t really you, that you were ashamed of it,that, “This record is not really me and I’m ashamed people are going to see me in that light”?
LAURYN HILL: I…er…um, have you ever had that experience? [to D’Angelo]
D’ANGELO: I…I was one time, one time…
LAURYN HILL: Yeah, I think one time [both laugh].
D’ANGELO: You know what? When it happened, I was doing it for the money—I had a taste for clothes, I had bills to pay. When I approach it from that point of view I ain’t gonna be proud of that.
LAURYN HILL: Believe it or not, the record company [Columbia] tied and gagged me to put [the Frankie Valli cover] “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” on the album. It was never intended for release, it was supposed to be for The Score: The Movie [laughing]. It was for money that I made that song [still laughing]. D’ANGELO: For me it was a thing where I did the song—I probably wrote it when I was 17 or 18 years-old, you know—people were like “Put it out”. People don’t know how much, or can’t estimate how much…
LAURYN HILL:…How much they’ll drive us to.
D’ANGELO: But I learned.
LAURYN HILL: Just like for me, being a female, for the images and stuff. I remember doing a photo shoot and because I was surrounded by two guys, they were always going to make me stick out, they wanted to put me into something short and tight, and I used to be like, “Yo, you know I’m not really into…you know”, and they used to be like, “No, you look fabulous!” and I be like, “Nah, they crazy.” But then like a fool I wore it, they snapped the pictures and of course the publication would come out and I be like, “See, I do look like a fool”, and everybody be like, “Yo L, I don’t know what that fur coat you had on was doing.” You know what I’m saying? So because it’s like…our image that’s out there, and will be out there for years to come, I think we got to be very strict about what we allow to be released of ourselves because it’s us. It’s like this is our heart and this is our soul, and this is what gets out to the public.


TRACE: I’ve noticed over the years how both of you have taken real drastic steps to take more control of the image, of the music, of everything…
LAURYN HILL: Because we both know how it feels to be exploited. We don’t like being taken advantage of.


TRACE: Does there come a point where you think maybe you wouldn’t have been able to take control if you hadn’t been so successful?
LAURYN HILL: Yeah, it’s hard, definitely it’s hard. I know people who say, “I wish I could do that, but they just won’t allow me.” It is hard.


TRACE: How did you get the confidence to say, ”I’m going to take control over this [Miseducation] project”?
LAURYN HILL: It wasn’t even confidence, it wasn’t even a decision, it was like I was making music and before I knew it, I had this narrative. To me what’s in my heart and in my soul, it would have been harder for me to articulate that to somebody else, rather than just do that myself.
D’ANGELO: That’s right, that’s the whole thing that I deal with now. Because when I’m doing the music usually I start out everything myself, you know? I’m not skilled on all instruments how I am on the piano, you know, it’s my main instrument. I know what I wanna hear and, and…whether it’s scratchin’ or whatever, you know, I just play a rough little thing first, or just get somebody else to play it…
LAURYN HILL: Exactly, exactly, exactly…[throughout]
D’ANGELO: But it’s got to be that voice.
LAURYN HILL: Same way man, same way. Exact same process.


TRACE: There are so many similarities between you; both your families from Virginia, too. Did you feel that when you just met you knew you would get along? Like there was something there?
LAURYN HILL: When I first heard D’Angelo, I was just like…”Oh my God!”… I was overwhelmed, I was just happy ‘cause he set it down for real music, real soul. I was like, “Yeah, that’s it, that’s it, that’s exactly what we been missing.” He filled in the void…


TRACE: [to D’Angelo]…and you told me earlier you felt the same way.
D’ANGELO: I saw you a long time ago, Lauryn, before The Score had come out.
LAURYN HILL: Where were you?
D’ANGELO: I saw you in Sister Act [Laughter]. I had no idea who you were, I just thought you had an amazing voice, and the next time I saw you was on some MTV thing.
LAURYN HILL: Yeah at Unplugged…Hey yo. old ladies used to cuss me out, “Why you rapping girl?”
D’ANGELO: I couldn’t tell for the longest, I was like, “Is that her?” But the first time I ever talked to you was at an awards show, you grabbed me to the side and just talked to me, told me some real inspiring things…that, like, motivated me.
LAURYN HILL: I was so proud, I was just proud.
D’ANGELO: I was like, “Yo, I love L.” Now that’s love, that’s real love.


TRACE: “Nothing Even Matters” is beautiful. I read other people’s reviews, not just our own. Everybody loves that record.
LAURYN HILL: We got another one to do [for D’Angelo’s upcoming album]. It ain’t even done yet. We got this thing going on, it’s like reciprocity, you know what I’m saying?
D’ANGELO: We call her the princess, man, everybody in my camp, at the studio—it’s been like that just…Boom! Whatever, you know what I’m saying, she’s a princess, she’s a representative of what we are doing, she’s doing it very, very strongly. She’s the one.


TRACE: Lauryn, being such a huge star, being recognized all over the world and that kinda stuff, is that something that’s hard to deal with?
LAURYN HILL: You see my jewelry hasn’t changed, you know what I’m saying? We walk the streets, I’m not bothered, so it’s the attention that you seek that’s what comes back. I’m not driving around in limos and I’m not shopping for furs, we keep it real.


TRACE: Have there been times when your people were like, “Girl, you trippin’. This whole Fugee thing is getting to your head?”
LAURYN HILL: That’s why I’ve surrounded myself with family. I don’t ever think I tripped on that level, I think I was probably being attracted to drama, for a minute. I probably tripped on what every young girl growing up trips on. It’s all over the album, but I never tripped on myself…
D’ANGELO:…It was more on….
D’ANGELO & LAURYN HILL: …everything that was going on around you.
LAURYN HILL: Yeah, you know what I’m saying. But also with God at the center, Him saying, “This is the ground that gathers you.” When I met Carlos Santana—here’s this man whose music I grew up on and he was telling me about how it must be hard to be me. I was like, “Who you talkin’ to?” It seemed to me that all the real artists are humble, humble spirits, but some people…
D’ANGELO:…they got problems.
LAURYN HILL: It’s heavy, you know. If you really made a commitment to music, if you made a commitment to God, then you ain’t trippin’.
D’ANGELO: ‘cause you know where it comes from…
LAURYN HILL:…You know exactly where the source is.


TRACE: And that’s why Bob Marley’s spirit lives on. Now you’re a part of the family—you’re close to all that. Can you still feel the spirit of Bob Marley to this day?
LAURYN HILL: I recorded part of this album at Tuff Gong, and I’m telling you we felt the spirit. [To D’Angelo] You got to go there and record. On my God! Whenever you want to come, let me know.
D’ANGELO: I gotta come, I never ever been there.
LAURYN HILL: Let me tell you, and whenever you talking about licking come basslines, on my God, and there’s this young bass player…he had this bass which was like the color of natural wood—I used to call it ‘The Tree’—and the sound used to be so heavy we’d be like, “Jesus, yo.”
D’ANGELO: That’s the sound, that’s what we been trying to find, what we been trying to look for.
LAURYN HILL: [To D’angelo] How was, um..how did you…you know what I’m talking about, Electric Lady [recording studio]? Because, you know if you listen to albums. Like from 1974, ’75,’76, that’s when music started sounding different, that’s when the technology changed. So if you want that raw sound you have to really work it to record it in that same tight…you know what I’m saying? Heavy sound. It’s not easy man, you got to work at that.
D’ANGELO: I got an engineer, he was assisting during them days, you know, there was no automation. So he really seen how the masters do it—mic, the drums, put the amp on it and he be in the corner on the DAT board. I be like, “What de doing down there.”
LAURYN HILL: Yo listen, Carlos [Santana] put this mic behind the amp, behind something else, yo it was crazy so you only got the box of his sound, it was so ill, I was like, “Oh my God!”
D’ANGELO: That’s like the warped sound. Probably now it’s just all digital, hook the shit straight to the computers, and you’re not thinking about the…
LAURYN HILL:…ambiance…
D’ANGELO: …the acoustics, that’s the whole sound.


TRACE: That gets me back to Innervisions. How do you feel about that record?
LAURYN HILL: It’s an all-time classic, when I’m Mcing, I always be flowing Stevie up in the rhymes.


TRACE: I remember one CD I bought in London a couple of years ago. It was “Blame it On The Sun”, a John Peel Session that was a B-side to a Fugees single you released.
LAURYN HILL: Stevie was like….please, please. I can’t even begin to tell you.


TRACE: Have you hung out with him?
LAURYN HILL: Yeah, a little something. He’s a brilliant man. Yo, you know that’s all God.


TRACE: [To D’Angelo] Have you hung out with him too?
D’ANGELO: He sang “Shit, Damn Motherf**ker” to me…
LAURYN HILL: Stop lyin’. [Laughs]
D’ANGELO: When I was walkin’ him around and he was singin’ “Shit, Damn Motherf**ker” to me and I couldn’t do anything after that, I was shocked man.
LAURYN HILL: When I was nine years old, we happened to be in the same restaurant. My father was like, “Lauryn, sing for him.” I was like, “Dad, you better stop playing me.” Yo, in the middle of this man’s brunch I think I got up on the table and was like, “La la la…”


TRACE: What did he say? How did he react?
LAURYN HILL: I sang one his songs of course! When you see Stevie that’s all you can think of, you can’t think of no other song. Yo, it was either that or Mary Poppins. I remember what I sang, but he was so sweet. He was so sweet man, but I was speechless. I tell you though…listen, when it came to singing, yo…when I had my child though, my voice changed. It’s just now that it is becoming the same. Women go through some crazy stuff, yo. Like my body was…[laughs] and my voice was weird.


TRACE: You’re seven months pregnant and your record is number one, do you feel like maybe people are making too many demands of you as a person?
LAURYN HILL: People will always make demands, it’s how far you allow them to go, that’s what I’m realizing now. It’s cool if they knocking, that’s a blessing ‘cause they could definitely not be knocking. It’s just as far as me, you know? I have to make decisions wisely and take into consideration I’m not the 16-year-old I was when I started in this industry. You know when you 16, you’re naïve and you just want to do everything and I really exhausted myself. Now I just choose wisely.
D’ANGELO: You learn to make choices.
LAURYN HILL: Very smart man, see he can tell you. My brother right here.


TRACE: I can see all the warmth, I can feel the love. There’s not that much black love out there right now…
LAURYN HILL: When black love is there, it’s the strongest thing, yo.


TRACE: It comes from suffering, years of suffering.
LAURYN HILL: It comes from struggle, struggle then love. For the record: let it be known that Lauryn loves D’Angelo.

D'ANGELO AND BECK INTERVIEW
(also a nice read--also an old interview)

Beck & D’Angelo Talk Soul
THE FADER, Number 3: Soul, Spring 2000


Beneath the surface is where it counts—under layers of affectation, tradition and expectation, out of the glare of fame and away from the scrutiny of self-examination. Way down is where you find what matters, that repository of formative ideas, thoughts and processes that mold the essence of a person. Everything else is, in a sense, just elaborate, intricate baggage—crucial, but not integral.


You might not know it to look at them, but Beck and D’Angelo are cut from the same cloth—grounded in the same musical attitudes of blues, soul, rock and hip-hop while innovating on those traditions to take them in new directions. Of course, no contemporary musician is more flexible than Beck, who has established himself as a master of mimesis over the past decade, drawing upon a staggeringly vast range of influences to create his sound—no two tracks are alike. This eclecticism is more than just an excuse to drop names, or styles, but a reflection of popular music as the great continuum that it is. In Beck, we see music reimagined as a fertile playspace, ignorant of boundaries and categorizations—a melange of Jagger, Veloso, Prince, Lydon and whoever all else, dancing ’til sunrise.


While Beck and his party dance, though, D’Angelo and his spirits seek refuge indoors. Compared to Beck’s sponge, D’Angelo is a filter, collecting influence upon influence and ruminating on it until a final, precise conclusion is reached. He creates a sound with nothing extraneous. As a result, D’Angelo is the closest the last decade has had to a soul singer, as opposed to an R&B crooner. In an era where mechanized lotharios regurgitate themes and beats, D’Angelo’s facility is in delivering pained, complex emotions, almost solely through voice. It’s a gift from a lost era, and all the more important for its distinctiveness.


But if all it took to get by in music was nostalgia, there’d be hundreds of stars. What sets this pair apart is their reverence for past masters and their ability to translate that admiration into music that eclipses the rest of their generation’s revisionist schlock. Their meeting was as much of an experiment as either of their music; a few minutes showed us the two had more in common than their sounds might reveal. They’re both careful students, and finally brought together face to face, the two soul stirrers cut through the haze to find broad swaths of common ground, jumping from old blues to Rakim to callous over-production to the swindles of fame. Of course, at the end of everything, it all came down to the songs…



D’Angelo: How long do you sit with a song? I know it depends on where you at, but how long do you usually take?
Beck: It’s different. I have songs I did in four hours—written, recorded, mixed, done. And then I have some on this album I spent six weeks on, 16 hours a day.


D: No doubt.
B: And two thirds of the work you don’t even hear on the final song. Shit just went out the window. I don’t think there’s one way, but it is satisfying when the jams come easy, and you don’t get sick of it. It’s just always fresh.


D: I’m famous for that—I take forever for one song. The thing that’s hard for me is that if I take two weeks away from a song, then come back to it, I’ve lost that initial energy about it.
B: You go through a lot of stages. The inspiration, then you hate it, then you’re bored of it, then you don’t care about it, then you’re just putting up with it. Then you like it again, and then it becomes part of you. It’s like 12 stages. After a certain point, and you’re playing the same songs on tour night after night after night, they become like appendages. You don’t even think of them as songs anymore.


Fader: Do they lose the fire after playing them night after night? De La Soul was just here last week, and every time they do “Me, Myself & I,” Posdnuos will be up there chanting “We hate this song. We hate this song,” all over the chorus. Pos is smart, and that’s not what De La’s about anymore, but they’re obliged to perform it. Do you ever get that way with old material, sort of a love-hate thing?
D: You said it. You love it. You hate it. You put up with it.
B: I don’t have that. I don’t think of it like that. I’m beyond bored with it. It’s like my arm. Are you bored of your arm? You use it every day. That’s the eternal struggle, though, is trying to keep it fresh, come up with new shit. People always wanna hear the old shit—that’s always gonna be the case. The shit you’re inspired by, it’s never going to strike a chord until you’re over it.


F: One thing that strikes me as different about the way you two put together records is that, Beck, you draw upon a vast range of influences, and very willfully—tropicalia, old-school hip-hop, electro and so on. Whereas D’Angelo, you seem very preoccupied with capturing a particular mood. And two years or more in the studio just to capture that one mood. Where you’re [Beck] trying to capture ten moods—it’s frenetic. It’s experimental. It’s saying “I was listening to this. I’m filtering it and this is how it’s coming out.” Where you’re [D’Angelo] honing things down to a point, cutting out all the bullshit—doing vocal tracks ten times until it’s right. Is that the way you’ve always worked?
B: I respect what he’s doing. I wish I could do that, but that’s not my strength. My strength is to come from ten different directions at once. I wish I could have that focus—going for the one thing and nailing it.
D: Thanks, man.
B: No, I’m serious. I’d rather listen to his record than my record. It makes you feel good. Mine is another thing, it takes some work.
D: Man, this guy… Beck is funky. I don’t look at MTV or BET a lot. I don’t really listen to the radio. But I caught some of what you put out. I caught you on an award show with your band, and it was wild. Everything you were doing was kinda where I was trying to go; this is when I was writing for Voodoo. Even the choice of instruments—you had a kid up there playing a farfisa. And you was doing some James Brown steps, with the horn section and everything. It was just a return to some basic shit; that’s where I’m trying to go. And it’s dope to see you do it, because even though you’re not on the black side of the music, you’re doing shit that’s reminiscent of what we used to do, and I wish that more black artists would do that.


F: Take those risks?
D: Yeah, take those risks. That’s the shit, man.


F: If you look at the state of contemporary R&B in the most broad sense, it’s an extraordinarily stagnant genre. It doesn’t attempt anything.
D: It’s pop music now.
B: It’s the equivalent of what country music’s become. Country music’s become Billy Joel. And it’s all kind of gravitating to that center.


F: Well, if one person becomes successful at something, everybody moves there. When Curtis Mayfield passed, it got me thinking about the state of contemporary soul music, and how in the ’90s, we don’t really have that many soul icons. Back then, we had a Sam Cooke, a Curtis Mayfield, a Marvin Gaye, more than you can count on two hands. People whose records you could consistently buy, and count upon.
D: The whole cycle was that. It’s like you said about seeing motherfuckers being successful at using a format. Back in the day all those cats were really, really good, so that caused a chain reaction. It ain’t that now. It’s on some business-savvy shit now.
B: That’s what was good about the rock world at that time too, because they were looking over at the soul world and realizing that they had to live up to that shit too. Like the Stones, they had to live up to that shit too. I feel like it was such a healthier environment for music back then.
D: And you had the civil rights era, and all the shit that was happening in society, and music was playing a big part in it, as far as closing those gaps. Like when you had Jimi Hendrix, doing what he was doing, it was less a thing of an individual genre, but people really looking at the big picture. Jimi was blending so much shit together—he was deemed as a rock & roll artist, but he put so many influences into what he did—Curtis Mayfield, blues, whatever. Sly Stone even was picking up on that, and Miles Davis was trying to do the same shit. They were looking at a bigger picture.
B: That was true about Hendrix, too, because he came from that blues background, but he was down with Dylan too, and it’s interesting to see something like that.


F: But in the ’60s, what was of paramount importance to American society was equality, civil rights, politics. It was fundamentally about political and social change. The music was central to the consciousness. But now, you can put out a record that’s fairly ignorant, become financially successful, elevate to the middle class, and in a fairly superficial way, eliminate all those problems.
B: It’s all about comfort now. People wanna hear the sound of comfort.They don’t want to hear anything that’s in between. They want the couch that doesn’t have any hard spots in it. They just want to settle in for the ride.
D: See, that’s the thing. Motherfuckers could care less about politics or certain things. Everybody just wants to party and floss. The whole deeper consciousness of it is gone.


F: When was the last time that any contemporary music had that though? Since disco, it seemed that it’s all gone in that direction.
B: I think it’s since about ’82 or ’83. In ’83, hip-hop went off on its own. New wave kinda took in hair metal, went off that way. For me, the biggest inspiration on this record was that era of ’79 to ’82, where punk rock was mutating into something else. It was maturing, becoming more experimental. You had Talking Heads. You had Johnny Lydon doing film. People were experimenting with beats. All the original New York punk bands were getting into hip-hop. That was the last cool moment in music for me.
D: You’re talking about Talking Heads and Blondie, and I always look at that period after punk came in, and I don’t really know much about it, but I saw it as a kind of commercialization of what punk was. But they were expanding on it.
B: See, I think they were taking it to the next place. I like punk in its pure form, I grew up with that, but there was such a possibility happening at that time. But you listen to all that late punk, early new wave stuff, and the beats were heavy, and they were straight out of hip-hop. You listen to all those early Gary Numan records. It’s hip-hop, but it has another sensibility over it. With my record, I was trying to capture the rawness of the punk, and the smoothness of the R&B and hip-hop. That just seemed like the logical place. Since then, it just seems like we’ve been lost in the wilderness, flailing and retreading things.
D: My favorite period of time in hip-hop was around mid-’80s, late-’80s.
B: It was still a little experimental.
D: It hadn’t quite blew up yet. The only thing you would see on MTV was maybe Run-DMC with Aerosmith, or Salt ’N Pepa, but there was still a large undercurrent happening. And until the early ’90s, that was a real golden period.


F: You would see all these videos on MTV—Stetsasonic’s “A.F.R.I.C.A.”, Rakim’s “Follow the Leader”. And that presaged, two years later, MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, even though it was just a small breakthrough.
D: Well by then, running that shit on Yo! MTV Raps, it was clear that it was making money.
B: But they need somebody to come and simplify it for the broadest dissemination. That’s the struggle, to keep it…
D: Pure.
B: For me, it’s not pure, because my music is so completely bastardized.
D: But I don’t mean clean, I mean honest, true to yourself.
B: Having your inconsistencies and vulnerabilities.
D: Take Prince as an example. The shit that he’s doing now isn’t purely Prince.
B: I wouldn’t tell Prince what to do, but I would love to hear him make a record, just him and a piano that’s out of tune. He has so much soul and it’s caught up in the machines of production. His records always had a slickness that I liked, that I thought was cool.
D: He need to bring out the old drums, and a piano, and that old guitar he used to play, not that big symbol joint.
B: I say just give him a two-string guitar and see what happens. He’s such a genius that he needs a little limitation.
D: That’s dope. Motherfuckers don’t think like that.
B: People would go nuts if he did that. They want the pure, unadulterated Prince. If you’re in the game long enough, you begin to think you need to have all the accoutrements of fame and what sounds good.
D: He thinks he needs to go farther, to top what he’s already done.
B: He needs to go under what he’s done.
D: He needs to go back to the ABCs.


F: He got so preoccupied with the politics of it—not being on a major label, not having major distribution—he lost vision of the music. And now that he’s back on a major label, he’s thinking he has to let it all hang out, bringing in the extra musicians, producers, whatnot.
D: My theory about it, I think the forces that used to be around when he was making great shit aren’t really around him anymore. He had Wendy and Lisa, who were very integral. You had The Time and Morris Day that was lighting a fire in his ass every night.
B: That has a lot to do with your music, who you surround yourself with. A lot of my music comes out of the personality of the people I was hanging around with. That’s why so much of my album is silly, because I had the guys from my band hanging out, making jokes, causing all kinds of trouble. After a while you’re just on the mic trying to make them laugh, and that’s how it comes out.


F: That’s why records are like timepieces; they definitely capture the essence of what that year, that month, that moment was about. It must be strange to have that type of thing documented so literally, then disseminated so widely. It’s a soul-opening experience.
D: I can’t think about that shit. When I was doing the first album, I never thought of it. After that, though, I became aware of it, and that really fucked with me. I had to block that shit out of my mind before I wrote.


F: Because then you’re writing for thousands of people.
D: You’re self-conscious.
B: And that’s dangerous because then you feel like you have to say something important, and you have to do something that’s worthy. That’s the other trap, thinking you have to be worthy. But people didn’t like you because you were worthy; they liked you because you were unworthy, because you didn’t care.
D: That’s the shit.


F: Is that hard as human beings as well, not just as recording artists?
D: As a human being, I know that I make a living off of this, but this is something that I love. If I wasn’t making a living off of it, I would still do it. When I go out in the street, I gotta keep in mind that I ain’t nobody different than I was ten years ago, before I had a record deal. Everything that you write is just a reflection of you, so you can’t lose touch with where you came from, because otherwise that’s gonna affect what you do.
B: No matter how many after-show parties I go to, no matter how many award shows I play on, even if I wanted to feel like I was more important, I just can’t. None of this makes me feel any more confident.
D: Yeah, it makes you more self-aware!
B: It makes me question myself more. Every time I get off the stage, I think to myself “Was that a piece of shit?”
D: And then you don’t know if motherfuckers is being real with you, or just blowing smoke up your ass.
B: You can see why the ego comes in.
D: I saw you accept an award, man, and it tripped me out.
B: Oh, I’m terrible at speeches.
D: No, it was the bomb, man. Everybody wants to get up there and say something important, and you were just casual.
B: Yeah, I always feel weird about saying something important.


F: Are you guys still perplexed by fame?
B: It’s something I’ve never gotten used to, and I’ll never take it for granted. I always have a feeling that it’s just going to fade out. Everytime I make a new album, I’m starting over again.
D: Yeah, man. It ain’t promised tomorrow.

SOULQUARIANS INTERVIEW
(okay.. this is the last one)

From VIBE magazine the 7th Anniversary/JUICE issue, September 2000.

"I’m a cynic when it comes to astrology,” says the Roots drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson. “But when the members of the Soulquarians [Thompson, D’Angelo, beatmaker Jay Dee, and keyboardist JamesPoyser] realized that we all share a love for “sickness” in our work—offbeat rhythms, unorthodox chords, stacks of haramony, an overall rebellious attitude to the status quo—and to top it off, that we’re all Aquarians, we knew it wasn’t just a coincidence. Perhaps the stars play a role in our genuine love for the unknown.”


The stars certainly played a role on June 8, when VIBE gathered the Soulquarians and their extended family of hugely talented, like-minded artists for a musical-movement-solidifying photo shoot. “Our sect rarely collaborated with each other in the past,” says Thompson. “Us ‘art cats’ have a tendency to get snobbish. Whereas Ruff Ryders, Roc-A-Fella, Aftermath, and Bad Boys cats get damn near incest-like when it comes to doing cameos and collabos, we were the only ones that couldn’t get it together.”


However, credit lists for D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Common’s Like Water for Chocolate prove that, despite the fact that they’re all on different labels, these art cats have been doing a much better job of getting it together lately. And projects-in-progress from Erykah Badu and recent Interscope signee Bilal are sure to continue the trend. Might such collective exploration herald the dawning of a new age in hip hop and R & B? When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars… David Bry

Nice reads Purpleone! Thanks!

Do you remember when D was performing "I've Been Trying" with Eric Clapton and at the beginning you can hear Lauryn in the audience saying "Sing D'Angelo!" like one of those mothers in the church!

Holy shit what awesome articles you guys

okaypimpn said:

nope. i've only got an audio recording of that performance. i'll definitely go check it out.