Brown Sugar

The allure of D’Angelo began in 1995 on his debut single “Brown Sugar,” where he emerged as a nostalgic figure in modern soul. Armed with a honeyed voice and hip-hop swagger, D’Angelo was equal parts Marvin Gaye and LL Cool J, the consummate musician and the coolest guy in the room. It’s like he’d been here before and knew how to do it right this time. His blend of 1970s R&B and hip-hop felt uniquely vintage and modern. He appealed to wide swaths of listeners and helped usher in a new strain of black music.

Brown Sugar, D’Angelo’s debut, became an important forebear of what’s now called neo-soul. Released before Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite (1996) and Erykah Badu’s Baduizm (1997), D’Angelo changed the sound of R&B while paying homage to its pioneers: Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield and the like. The success of Brown Sugar paved the way for artists like Anthony Hamilton, Jill Scott, and Alicia Keys to break into the mainstream and achieve their own levels of fame. “Maxwell told me Brown Sugar’s success got his Urban Hang Suite off of Columbia’s shelf,” writer Nelson George penned in an essay for Brown Sugar’s deluxe edition. And to think, the album was essentially a small-scale event compared to its follow-ups—the groundbreaking Voodoo and the eruption of Black Messiah. No, Brown Sugar was truly bedroom soul: “I wrote … the majority of that record in my bedroom in Richmond,” D’Angelo recalled in 2014. “And all of the demos for it were done on a four-track [there].”

The son of a Pentecostal minister, D’Angelo grew up playing piano and won three amateur competitions as a teenager at the famed Apollo Theater. He signed a publishing deal with EMI in 1991, and prior to Brown Sugar’s release, the singer co-wrote and co-produced a gospel-infused song that appeared in 1994 film Jason’s Lyric. The song, “U Will Know,” featured a who’s who of prominent R&B singers at the time—Gerald Levert, Keith Sweat, Usher and Tevin Campbell, among many others—and earned D’Angelo his first bit of recognition. That buzz helped lay the framework for the musician’s first ever solo release.

Brown Sugar arrived during the peak of hip-hop’s golden era, when rappers like Nas and The Notorious B.I.G., and groups like Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest were at the height of their powers. D’Angelo instantly fit the mold. With his straight-back cornrow braids and baggy clothes, he looked like a rapper of that period, yet his music countered that which dominated the airwaves. Until Brown Sugar arrived, Top 40 R&B skewed very much toward hip-hop, from the upbeat tick of its beats to the guest rap verses that felt obligatory for almost every single. Songs like Monica’s “Don’t Take It Personal,” Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It” and Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” seemed influenced by Teddy Riley’s New Jack Swing-style production, which dominated urban music in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

D’Angelo was different, the perfect amalgamation of modern rap and old soul, and Brown Sugar was a masterclass in this alchemy. It was as if, from the very beginning, he wasn’t trying to go against the grain, he just wanted to keep things low-key. For instance, in the video for “Brown Sugar,” the scene unfolds in a smoky jazz club on what looks to be open mic night. It harkened back to the essence of soul and jazz music, live records cut at the Village Vanguard or Five Spot. The title track and the album felt honest and organic; you could feel the lush instrumentation, the sincerity in the lyrics, the warmth of the keys. This wasn’t R&B purposely intended for younger ears; Brown Sugar was grown folks music, it just so happened that a 21-year-old created it.

All these years later, Brown Sugar is still just as resonant, emitting a strong vintage quality that works in any era. It had everything: “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker,” a dark tale about death and infidelity, became a gritty street anthem that soundtracked a pivotal scene in 1999 film The Best Man. With its upbeat gospel sway, “When We Get By” was an uplifting tune in the vein of Ray Charles, as a track that meshed the genre’s traditional and contemporary aspects. On “Cruisin’,” the Smokey Robinson classic of the same name, D’Angelo kept the integrity of the original—the fluid guitar riff and wafting strings—yet he quickened the pace just slightly, and added weight to the drum kick. The finished product paid rightful homage to Smokey and might be a little better than the 1979 cut. The two-disc deluxe edition of Brown Sugar includes four remixes of D’Angelo’s “Cruisin’,” one apiece from producers King Tech and Dallas Austin, and two others labeled “Wet Remix” and “God Made Me Funky Remix.” Of the “Cruisin’” renditions, Austin’s is closest to D’Angelo’s portrayal; canned drums give it a distinct ’90s knock, but the strings and vocal arrangements are unchanged. The title track, “Lady” and “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine” also get a few different a capellas, instrumentals, and remixes here.

Listening to Brown Sugar’s deluxe edition is like walking through the mid-90s. The record feels like an artifact in that way, capturing D’Angelo at a nascent stage in his creative development while dusting off rhymes from Kool G. Rap (who originally appeared on King Tech’s remix of “Brown Sugar”), Redman (featured on the Def Squad remix of “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine”) and AZ (himself a featured rapper on DJ Premier’s “Lady” remix). Where Voodoo and Black Messiah felt especially grainy and dark, Brown Sugar feels especially lush and radiant, an outcome of Bob Power’s and Russell Elevado’s masterful engineering work. (Conversely, for Voodoo, Elevado and D’Angelo recorded everything on tape, which gave the record its lo-fi sound). Brown Sugar shifted modern soul, not only putting pressure on himself to exceed expectations moving forward, but it opened a door for a new movement in black music.