Milestones: Brown Sugar by D’Angelo
Armed with a Marvin Gaye-like honeyed croon and the streetwise swagger of a rapper, the young D’Angelo channeled the spirit of 1970s soul through a 1990s lens.
D’Angelo did not spring fully formed from the head of some A&R executive. Born Michael Eugene Archer in Richmond, Virginia to a Pentecostal preacher and a devoted mother, he grew up around the chord changes and cadences of the Black church. By age four he was teaching himself piano, absorbing gospel, jazz and funk records that filtered through his parents’ living room. In a region where choir lofts doubled as classrooms, the boy developed a vocabulary steeped in call-and-response, improvisational riffs and the patience to let a groove simmer. Those sensibilities would remain central to his craft decades later. He formed a band, Michael Archer and Precise, during his teens and honed his songs in local clubs. When he entered the legendary Amateur Night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater he delivered a rendition of “Stop to Start” so startling that he won three weeks in a row; the prize money funded a four-track recorder for his bedroom studio. With that gear he sketched the early outlines of Brown Sugar and discovered the freedom of layering his own Rhodes chords over drum machine loops without anyone telling him where the bar lines belonged.
That homegrown discipline opened professional doors. In the early 1990s, he joined a local rap ensemble named I.D.U. and cut his teeth trading verses with other Richmond MCs. Those experiences sharpened his sense of rhythm; he learned how to treat his vocals as rhythmic instruments and how to squeeze lyrics around breakbeats. Through a mutual contact, he auditioned for the publisher EMI by playing piano for three hours straight, until the executives offered him a contract and an advance. He wrote songs for other artists, including a contemplative ballad titled “Overjoyed” for the Boys Choir of Harlem and a co-written anthem, “U Will Know,” which assembled an all-star cast under the name Black Men United and charted on the Billboard Hot 100. His work as a writer and producer on Vertical Hold’s “Pray,” where he supplied the haunting piano foundation and co-authored the melody, further solidified his reputation as a prodigious talent at home in both church pews and radio stations. These early assignments illustrate his willingness to serve other voices and his understanding that communal success would eventually support his solo vision.
That vision candied between 1993 and 1995 in a handful of recording studios. Thanks to the EMI deal, he relocated to New York City and set up shop at Battery and RPM Studios, with occasional sessions in Sacramento at a space called Pookie Laben. He insisted on producing his own material and pressed the label to hire engineer Bob Power, whose work on A Tribe Called Quest’s jazz-rap masterpieces offered a template for how to blend acoustic instruments and drum loops without sacrificing warmth. The sessions were intentionally fluid; D’Angelo would track guitars, bass, Rhodes, and organ parts himself, then program beats on an Ensoniq sampler or drum machine and layer them until the result felt like a living band. He used vintage gear—Hammond organs, Fender Rhodes, and tube microphones—to conjure analog warmth, but he also relied on modern sequencing and digital effects to keep the rhythms tight.
This blending of eras created a distinctive sonic palette: heavy bass lines anchored by hip-hop beats, shimmering electric piano chords, and hushed vocals mixed slightly behind the instruments to create intimacy. Bob Power, known for preserving the integrity of an artist’s demo, was careful not to sterilize those elements; he preserved the grit of the drum programming while smoothing transients and adding subtle compression to unify the layers. In later sessions, Russell Elevado joined to mix several tracks, and though he and D’Angelo toyed with adding distortion, they ultimately decided to maintain continuity with Power’s cleaner mix. Their discussions, however, planted the seeds for the tape-saturated experimentalism of D’Angelo’s next project, Voodoo.
When Brown Sugar’s title track emerged as the lead single, casual listeners heard a sensual love song to a woman. In truth, the lyrics are a clever ode to cannabis; D’Angelo describes a lover who gets him high, noting that he “always has to have a little bit more” of her sweet taste. He half-sings and half-raps over a looped beat reminiscent of early hip-hop producers Marley Marl and Large Professor. The verse cadence glides and pauses in syncopation, and he punctuates lines with spoken interjections.
Horns arranged by D’Angelo and recorded with vintage microphones evoke the smoky atmosphere of a late-night jazz lounge. Throughout the track, the Fender Rhodes chords melt into the snare hits, and the bass line rolls like a tide, bridging the elasticity of soul and the head-nod urgency of rap. He builds tension by letting the beat ride for several bars without vocals, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in the groove. When he chants the title in layered harmonies, it feels less like a hook and more like a group exhale. This combination of coded lyricism and organic production set the tone for the album: D’Angelo would use familiar tropes of romantic soul to smuggle in narratives about self-medication, community bonding, and Black creativity.
Following “Brown Sugar,” the album continues to slide between gospel conviction, street-corner storytelling, and bedroom balladry. “Alright” opens with vinyl crackle and an upbeat funk guitar riff reminiscent of Sly Stone. The beat is built around breakbeats and handclaps that recall James Brown’s live performances, yet the chorus floats on soft chords. D’Angelo pleads for perseverance—“I’ve been through so many trials and tribulations, but I know we’ll be alright”—while his multi-tracked vocals create the effect of a small choir. The song’s structure mirrors the message: verses describing hardship are juxtaposed with jubilant choruses, suggesting that resilience is a communal act. Bob Power co-produced “Alright,” emphasizing its percussive layering and leaving space in the arrangement for the instruments to breathe—the track functions as a bridge between the album’s heady opener and its deeper introspective pieces.
On “Jonz in My Bonz,” co-written with singer Angie Stone, D’Angelo channels both carnal hunger and metaphysical longing. The phrase “jones in my bones” has long been used to describe an addictive craving; by altering the spelling and pronouncing it with a soft drawl, he personalizes the desire. The instrumentation is minimal—just Rhodes chords, a swooning string patch, and a slow, boom-bap drum loop. His lyrics are elliptical, hinting at obsession and vulnerability: he wakes up from dreams about his lover, confesses that her scent haunts his sheets, and begs her to satisfy his jones. The chorus layers his falsetto harmonies over a chord progression that would be at home on a late 1970s Earth, Wind & Fire record. This song demonstrates how he repurposes R&B idioms: the structure is classic verse–chorus, but the phrasing reflects his hip-hop roots, with lines that spill over bar lines and internal rhymes that emphasize vowel sounds.
One of the most startling moments on Brown Sugar arrives with “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker.” Over a bluesy guitar riff, D’Angelo recounts catching his woman in bed with his best friend, murdering them in a fit of rage, and then fleeing police. The narrative is cinematic; he structures verses like chapters in a short story, each one advancing the plot while revealing his protagonist’s psyche. The refrain is simply three curse words, but the way he delivers them—breathy and almost bemused—underscores the numbness after violence. The instrumentation is sparse: a steady snare, a rumbling bass line, and occasional organ stabs. The minimalism heightens the lyrics; there is nowhere to hide from the confession. We often mischaracterize the track as a gratuitous attempt at shock value, but it is better understood as a reflection on the consequences of betrayal and the fragility of masculinity. D’Angelo’s choice to relate the story in first person invites empathy, yet his unsentimental tone forces listeners to wrestle with their own moral response.
It also reflects the influence of gangsta rap storytelling; rather than preach, he uses narrative as a cautionary fable. “Cruisin’,” the album’s only cover, pays homage to Smokey Robinson’s 1979 hit. Where the original floats on a feather-light guitar line and Smokey’s airy falsetto, D’Angelo grounds his version in a thicker bass groove and a syncopated kick drum. His voice glides over the rhythm with an unhurried confidence, and he adds melismatic runs that bend the melody into minor key inflections. He preserves the song’s core message—an invitation to get lost with a lover—but recasts it through his own harmonic sensibilities: the chords linger longer, the organ adds gospel coloration, and the backing vocals are stacked to create a richer texture. This approach honors Robinson’s craftsmanship while asserting D’Angelo’s agency.
He is not content to faithfully replicate; instead, he locates the song within his own aesthetic world where soul and hip-hop cohabit. The result highlights his respect for Motown tradition as well as his ability to reimagine it. “When We Get By” is the album’s spiritual center. The track opens with a slow-burning groove, organ chords swelling like the introduction to a church hymn. D’Angelo sings about the everyday ritual of reuniting with his partner after a long day: “Hello my love, before the day is through, I’ll be right home to you.” The lyrics are simple, but the way he stretches syllables and improvises around the melody conveys devotion. Halfway through, a chorus of layered voices enters in a call-and-response reminiscent of Pentecostal services. The arrangement features a plucked bass line, hand percussion, and subtle horns, giving the song the feel of a 1970s soul ballad updated with hip-hop sensibilities. It is as much about the sanctity of domestic intimacy as it is about faith: D’Angelo whispers thanks to a higher power for love’s sustenance. The track’s warmth invites the listener to view love not just as erotic satisfaction but as spiritual sustenance that helps black communities endure.
“Higher,” which closes the album, continues this theme more explicitly. Written as a hymn, it layers church-like piano with chanting, culminating in a coda where D’Angelo and his chorus repeat “I wanna go higher” over a swelling chord progression. The song functions as a benediction, pointing toward transcendence. The duet “Lady,” co-written and co-produced with Raphael Saadiq, was born from spontaneity. During a visit to Saadiq’s home studio, the two musicians traded riffs until a slinky bass line and drum pattern materialized. They kept the lyrics direct and straightforward: D’Angelo extols the virtues of his lover, his voice gliding atop gospel-tinged chords and a rhythm that nods to New Jack Swing without succumbing to its gloss.
He recorded all the background harmonies himself, stacking them until they resembled a choir. The resulting single reached the top ten of the R&B charts and eventually went gold. A remix by DJ Premier featuring rapper AZ emphasized the track’s hip-hop roots and signaled that Brown Sugar was as comfortable on rap stations as it was on quiet-storm radio. The success of “Lady” exemplified D’Angelo’s ability to craft songs that appealed to mainstream R&B audiences while maintaining his organic, analog aesthetic.
Brown Sugar’s overarching aesthetic can be traced to the interplay between musicianship and technology. D’Angelo’s musicality is steeped in the harmonies of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Prince; his falsetto often recalls Prince’s breathy tone and Wonder’s elastic phrasing. Yet he is equally influenced by the rawness of hip-hop producers like Marley Marl, J Dilla, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad (who co-produced “Brown Sugar”). In the studio, he would lay down drum loops first—usually sampled or programmed—then play keyboard and guitar over them. This process inverted the typical soul workflow—rather than building a rhythm section around chord progressions, he built chord progressions around beats. Bob Power’s engineering preserved this sequencing while adding the warmth and depth associated with analog recording: he used tube compressors and reel-to-reel tape machines to soften transients and emphasize midrange frequencies. Power also contributed guitar parts and occasional bass lines, ensuring that the album’s sound felt like a band rather than a collage of samples. The result is a record that sounds both vintage and contemporary, balancing the grit of hip-hop with the polish of 1970s soul.
Russell Elevado’s contributions to Brown Sugar were limited to mixing a few tracks after Bob Power departed, but his conversations with D’Angelo during this period were pivotal. Elevated admiration for Power’s work, yet proposed pushing the sound further by introducing distortion and tape saturation. D’Angelo hesitated, wanting to maintain cohesion across the album. But the idea stuck; when he began work on his follow-up, Voodoo, he and Elevado would spend years recording to tape, moving microphones rather than relying on equalizers or digital plugins, and intentionally leaving imperfections in the performances. In hindsight, Brown Sugar can be viewed as the gateway between D’Angelo’s bedroom demos and the sonic experiments that defined Voodoo. It captures an artist still enamored with clarity and classicism, yet dreaming of dirtier textures and freer structures.
D’Angelo’s upbringing within the Black church permeates Brown Sugar in subtle ways beyond the overtly gospel-inspired tracks. His sense of space—allowing instrumental breaks to breathe, letting a phrase linger without lyrics—reflects the spontaneity of Pentecostal services. Growing up under a preacher father, he learned to command an audience not just through words but through presence. He also absorbed his mother’s love of jazz, which taught him the value of improvisation. These influences manifest in the album’s fluid transitions and unpredictable vocal runs. At the same time, his tenure with I.D.U. and his fascination with Rakim’s internal rhymes and KRS-One’s cadence taught him the importance of rhythmic phrasing. On Brown Sugar, he often sings as if he is rapping—his lines are tightly packed with consonants, his breath control honed to ride the pocket. This synthesis of church, jazz, and rap created a blueprint for what would later be called “neo-soul,” though D’Angelo rejected that label, insisting he simply made Black music.
Brown Sugar’s impact extended far beyond its commercial performance. It reintroduced the idea that modern R&B could be built on live instrumentation and analog warmth rather than solely on sample-based production. At a time when mainstream R&B was dominated by slick New Jack Swing and hip-hop soul producers were increasingly reliant on chopped loops, D’Angelo’s choice to play most of the instruments himself signaled a return to musicianship. The success of Brown Sugar convinced record labels to sign artists like Erykah Badu, Maxwell, and Ms. Lauryn Hill, who blended vintage soul with contemporary sensibilities. Kedar Massenburg labeled this movement “neo-soul,” yet the artists themselves saw it as a continuation of a lineage stretching back to Al Green and Aretha Franklin.
The term may have been useful for packaging, but the music owed more to community roots than any marketing department. D’Angelo’s relationship with his music is intensely personal. During interviews, he often emphasized that he wasn’t trying to chase hits; he wanted to make “dope black music” that spoke to his people. Brown Sugar allowed him to accomplish that. The album features songs that revel in sensuality, songs that grapple with infidelity and violence, songs that thank a higher power for love, and songs that simply groove for their own sake. It is cohesive not because of lyrical themes but because of its sonic environment—a warm, humid space where the smell of incense mingles with the click of a drum machine and the hum of a tube amplifier. The record invites us into that room. It is not polished within an inch of its life; you hear fingers slide across strings, you notice the hiss of tape. This honesty resonated in Black communities who were weary of over-produced R&B and hungry for something that felt real. It also reveals D’Angelo’s narrative arc.
The album opens with the coded indulgence of the title track and then traverses through hope (“Alright”), romantic longing (“Jonz in My Bonz”), celebration of love (“Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine”), rage (“Shit, Damn, Motherfucker”), homage (“Cruisin’”), affirmation (“When We Get By”) and spiritual yearning (“Higher”). This arc mirrors a night in a club or church service; listeners are invited to sway, dance, ponder, repent, and ultimately transcend. The arrangement of songs suggests a DJ’s set: up-tempo numbers to get people on their feet, ballads to encourage connection, a narrative twist to jolt the crowd, a sing-along cover to invite participation, and a closing hymn to send them home feeling uplifted. That sequence underscores D’Angelo’s deep understanding of performance and audience engagement. Though recorded in the studio, Brown Sugar feels like a live show captured on tape.
Decades after its release, Brown Sugar stands as a milestone for fusing seemingly disparate elements without diluting any of them. It is simultaneously a rap record and a soul record; it contains both explicit tales of inner-city betrayal and whispered prayers of devotion. It introduced a generation of listeners to the joys of analog warmth at a time when digital clarity was prized, and it reminded the industry that musicianship and groove could be more compelling than the latest drum machine preset. The album’s influence can be heard in the rhythmic elasticity of modern R&B artists like Anderson .Paak and H.E.R., and in the vintage textures embraced by producers who sample Rhodes chords rather than synthesizer pads. Its legacy also lies in how it empowered a community of Black musicians to trust their instincts, to draw from church and street as equal sources of inspiration, and to claim space for a sound that existing categories could not easily contain.
D’Angelo himself has remained elusive and meticulous since Brown Sugar. It took five years to craft Voodoo, an album mainly recorded to tape, saturated with improvisational sessions and raw mixes that responded to the conversations he began with Russell Elevado during Brown Sugar’s final days. Fans waited fourteen years for the follow-up, Black Messiah. That bar remains high because Brown Sugar distilled decades of Black musical tradition into a singular vision. It captured an artist at the cusp of adulthood, synthesizing his roots—church, jazz, hip-hop—and forging a path that others would follow. The album’s organic warmth, live-club atmosphere, and vintage sensibility do more than evoke nostalgia; they assert a continuity of Black musical expression. Brown Sugar remains a testament to what can happen when a young musician insists on producing his own music, trusts analog imperfections, and elevates groove over gloss. Its fusion of modern rap and old-school soul is not a calculated formula but a lived experience, and that authenticity is why it endures.
Masterpiece (★★★★★)