Originally published as “In the Raw” in Wax Poetics Issue 42, July/August 2010.

Singer, songwriter, and musician Michael Eugene Archer, who later adopted the jiggy stage name D’Angelo, released his groundbreaking album, Brown Sugar, in 1995. Though only twenty-one, he changed the sound of R&B, creating an entirely new genre called neo-soul. In the same way Ray Charles master-mixed juke-joint vibes and Sunday-morning gospel, baby-faced D’Angelo created an intoxicating fusion of Southern soul and East Coast hip-hop that transcended the R&B genre.

As a stirring cycle of songs ripe with raw romanticism, funky sensuality, haunting lyricism, dirty grooves, and laid-back attitude, Brown Sugar was arguably the last great soul album of the millennium. Blending Southern vocal phrasings with big-city cool, D’Angelo’s music possessed a similar rhythmic spirit as his yesteryear FM radio heroes who once made records for Stax, Motown, and Atlantic.

Recorded from 1993 to 1995, D’Angelo utilized the talents of producers (and later friends) Raphael Saadiq, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Bob Power to create a stellar collection of soul songs that were instant classics. “My music is left of mainstream, but not too abstract,” D’Angelo told Billboard three months before Brown Sugar’s release.

http://www.waxpoetics.com...rown-sugar

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