The 79 minutes of live jam, indistinct falsetto and melodic deficiency

syndrome that is D'Angelo's sophomore disc, Voodoo, has little to

do with the state of R&B today. Its main achievement is making his 1995

debut, Brown Sugar, sound so articulate. All sorts of noises that

previously came across as too abstract or barely audible have taken on

the force of mnemonic devices: the snaky bassline in "Alright"; the warm

catchiness of the title hook in "When We Get By"; the dew gathering on

the keybs in "Jonz in My Bonz." Still, who knows which parts of Voodoo

will come to the fore once the next album is out in 2005?

Amazingly, many critics are claiming to hear them right now. You read

about the funky space transmissions in "Devil's Pie" (RealAudio

excerpt), the backwards guitar in "Africa," the brief jazzy

interlude tacked on to the end of "One Mo'gin" — all eagerly seized

on as major pleasures. If they really believe that, they're probably

working too hard to do so, because to these ears, D'Angelo is barely

throwing us any bones, since the potential hooks and shape shifters

mentioned above continually get subsumed into an irritatingly long,

undifferentiated flow.

Further obscuring any recognition factor was the decision to emulate flow

through the use of unconvincing live jams. While many musicians resort

to jams as building blocks for songs, D'Angelo has opted to keep them

solely for their discursive feel, reserving the studio sorcery mainly for

his multitracked, mush-mouthed falsetto. Throughout the album, he calls

from the margins of already marginal music while Roots drummer ?uestlove's

perversely unwavering four-on-the-floor refuses to direct the flow toward

the dance floor (or anywhere else, really). Take "Chicken Grease" (RealAudio

excerpt), quite possibly the most anti-social "get down" song

ever recorded. Its chicken-scratch guitar is so slight and quiet that it

barely registers as sound, much less as breakdown.

The longer Voodoo goes on — and it does go on —

the more D'Angelo finds the kind of diminishing returns usually associated

with anonymous ambient doodlers. Ultimately, it's hard to keep this sort

of foreplay up that long without the fulfillment of some release. Had he

pruned back some, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" (RealAudio

excerpt) might have sounded as Prince-like as it's supposed to;

"The Line" would have told us something about his tardiness in getting

this follow-up finished; and Voodoo as a whole would have given

us a clearer picture of precisely who D'Angelo's been in the interim.

Maybe then listeners wouldn't be trying so hard to enjoy it all simply

because they've been waiting so long for the second coming of a neo-soul

messiah.