early 2000s, the Soulquarians, an experimental black music collective, held jam sessions and recorded albums at the studio, often drawing on the influence of Hendrix and Wonder's recordings. The period began in 1997, when the singer D'Angelo and drummer-producer Questlove (of The Roots) prepared to record Voodoo (2000). Their sessions at the studio over the next five years produced the Roots' albums Things Fall Apart (1999) and Phrenology (2002), singer Erykah Badu's second album Mama's Gun (2000), rapper Common's Like Water for Chocolate (2000) and Electric Circus (2002), and singer Bilal's debut album 1st Born Second (2001). Questlove often acted as the director behind the sessions. "I tried to do all in my power that I could to bring people together – to bring Common to Electric Lady, have him record here whenever so that he could record with some of these other artists," he said in 2002. "You'd just come into [the studio's] A Room, you don't even know who has a session, but you call me: 'Who's down there?' 'Common's in there today.' So you come down, you order some food, sit down and bullshit, watch a movie, and then it's, 'Let's play something.' And I say, 'Who wants this [track]?' And it would be, 'I want it!' 'No, I want it!'" Eventually, the Soulquarians' period at the studio ended, in part because labels declined to release the experimental music it was producing. Bilal held improvisatory jam sessions at the studio for his second album, Love for Sale, which the label hesitated to release, and then shelved after it leaked. Common's similarly experimental Electric Circus sold disappointingly, which discouraged his and the Roots' shared label, MCA Records, from letting the artistically free environment at the studio continue. Producer Mark Ronson, who often visited Electric Lady during the "Soulquarian" period, said in 2015 that the studio's "glory-days era had sort of ended". Schillinger wrote that "after the Soulquarians had departed, the place had gone further downhill." 2000s–present: Renovation and continued use After years of financial hardship, the studio was taken over by investor Keith Stoltz and studio manager Lee Foster in 2010. They renovated and expanded the studio, adding a new mixing studio the second floor and turning the third into a self-contained unit including Studio C, a private lounge, and another mixing suite. The studio has since been used by popular recording artists, such as Kanye West. Adele,