Brown Sugar by D'angelo

Brown Sugar, D'Angelo's debut album, came out on EMI on July 3, 1995, and it sounds like soul music remembering it was played by people. He cut it in 1994 and 1995 at Battery Studios and RPM Studios in New York and the Pookie Lab in Sacramento, and handled most of the production, playing, arranging and writing himself, with Raphael Saadiq and Ali Shaheed Muhammad among his co-producers. Old recording gear sits next to modern electronics, and the slow, smoky grooves pull contemporary R&B back toward classic soul, with funk and hip-hop in the mix.

The songs are earnest about love and romance, and alongside the title track and "Lady" there's a cover of Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'". It debuted at number 6 on the Billboard R&B albums chart, spent 65 weeks on the Billboard 200, went platinum within a year and drew four Grammy nominations. It's widely credited with launching neo soul, a term coined by his manager Kedar Massenburg after the album took off.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.