Schedule

5:30-6:30 pm - Sam will play a musical leadup playlist of artists that inspired or have been inspired by D'Angelo, including Erykah Badu, Maxwell, Frank Ocean, and Beyonce.

6:35 - Sam gives presentation on Voodoo, detailing its recoding process and lyrical content
6:45 - We drop the needle on Voodoo

Free Sam-made Lemonade and Dark Matter Coffee is available to attendees. It's also BYOB.

Classic Album Sundays is a monthly album listening event dedicated to experiencing an album in its entirety, on vinyl, and on a world-class sound system. Fans can experience the music as closely as possible to the artist’s original intent and develop a new connection with the music, whether it’s something they’ve just discovered or loved for years.

For the nineth edition of Classic Album Sundays Chicago, we celebrate D'Angelo's Voodoo, an essential R&B classic and pioneer of neo-soul.

Voodoo was not only massive artistic achievement, but it was also commercially successful. The album debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 Chart and won D’Angelo two Grammy Awards: ‘Best Male R&B Vocal’ and ‘Best R&B Album’. The album was the high point of the Soulquarian sound, the centrepiece of the movement. Despite or most likely because of the album’s massive success, D’Angelo disappeared from music-making once again, only to emerge over a decade later with his third album Black Messiah. But as good as that album may be, it’s Voodoo that still has the magic.

Amidst this whirlwind of creativity, D’Angelo produced the record that was as evolutionary as he had hoped. Voodoo broke down the conventional song structures of his debut, and the album cover of his bare torso reflected the stripped-down music and its muscular beats. Despite the futuristic funk feel of the record, the sonics had a vintage soul feel due to the older recording and mixing equipment often used in the studio. D’Angelo had also used the Fender Rhodes used by Stevie Wonder for Talking Book so a certain essence of his soul forebears was distilled throughout the album.