Voodoo was already “grown” when it came out 26 years ago today. D’Angelo manifested maturity coupled with audacity when he produced, co-wrote and performed songs way ahead of every curve imaginable, including his own. The album is only one year older than D’Angelo was when it was released in 2000.

Now, the album hits differently. The passage of time does that to any work of art. But today marks the first Voodoo anniversary after D’Angelo’s untimely death last October at the age of 51.

But another tragic death weighed on my mind as I listened to Voodoo yesterday. I was deeply affected by the unrest in Minneapolis—specifically, the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti. Yesterday morning, Pretti, an ICU nurse, was filming the movements of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols. He was trying to help a woman who had been shoved to the ground by an ICE officer. Pretti was then tackled, held down and beaten by a group of ICE officers thugs. After a few moments, gunshots rang out and Pretti laid on the ground—his body, still.

A narrative was pushed by the Department of Homeland Security that Pretti had been armed and therefore was a threat to ICE. He did carry a gun, but videos released on social media did not appear to show that he had his weapon out of its holster or pointed it at anyone before the shooting.

This part of the chorus from “The Line,” track 4 on Voodoo, haunted me Saturday night.

I’m gonna put my finger on the trigger
I’m gonna pull it/And then we gonna see
What the deal
I’m for real
I just wanna put it on, put it on the line…
And we haven’t got much time.

Everyone gets the gun metaphors D’Angelo employs in “The Line.” The “trigger” he pulls is him activating his pride as a man and his integrity as an artist.

But listening to this song in the aftermath of a man who put it on the line for someone else and lost…for whom the trigger was used against him, with no chance to literally pull it himself in self-defense, it felt elegiac in that fragile moment. On the flipside, Pretti more than demonstrated his courage along with other community folks supporting immigrants and condemning authoritarianism. He was “for real” in the ultimate sense.

The other lyric from Voodoo that I couldn’t untangle from Pretti’s killing was a vamp near the end of “Greatdayindamornin.’”

Say don’t you know tomorrow’s sun,
Could be shining on your grave?

Those lines hurt my heart when D’Angelo died last year. Now they cut through me for a different reason: an innocent man in Minneapolis who died violently and, like D, way too young.

Me in my super beat-up Levi’s denim jacket from the *Voodoo* tour in 2000.

With time, true art can morph its meaning or context to catch the past up to the present. Voodoo does that, and it continues to be a hallmark of the throwback R&B D’Angelo loved and was raised on, fused with the desire he and his collaborators had to push Black sound and culture into the future.

There is talk that the album D’Angelo was working on prior to his death will be come out at some point. But unless new “treats” (IYKYK) surface from sessions decades before, if/when that posthumous release happens, his visionary musical journey ends. That will never stop being heartbreaking to me.

If there is one consolation, it is this: because D’Angelo transcends time, Voodoo and the rest of his discography is timeless.

Rest in peace, D’Angelo. You are loved and missed.

(And rest in peace, Alex Jeffery Pretti.)

“Voodoo” at 26: Yesterday was crazy...