"Brown Sugar" – D'Angelo
You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians
Peter Martin
4.9 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
D'Angelo's Brown Sugar sounded like nothing else in 1995. R&B was slick, polished, and built for clubs. D'Angelo later said the "deeper consciousness" had gone out of contemporary music. Questlove later wrote that contemporary R&B had become "trite" and "soulless" ... and then there was Brown Sugar, D'Angelo's debut album. It sounded more like the '70s than the '90s. More like church than the club.
On this episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin go track by track through D'Angelo's debut, pulling apart the vocal stems, naming the jazz chords underneath the soul, and tracing every influence back to its root. They also bring in the archival recordings you might have missed: a live set from the Jazz Café London that gives the album a whole second life, and a J Dilla remix.
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Related You'll Hear It episodes:
Voodoo: https://youtu.be/AYqmFNF2s0U
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About You'll Hear It:
In this popular music series Adam and Peter break down the greatest albums of all time. Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Joni Mitchell, D'Angelo: Jazz is the foundation of the most GENIUS music in recent history. These seasoned jazz pianists bring their deep musical knowledge to every joyful episode to help you hear the hidden qualities that make music AMAZING. You'll never hear music the same way again.
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00:00 - D'Angelo's Brown Sugar
01:11 - Let's Go Back to 1995
05:35 - "Brown Sugar"
08:30 - Engineer Bob Power's Influence
09:13 - "Brown Sugar" Felt Different From Anything Else in 1995
16:57 - D'Angelo on Why He Picked Bob Power
19:30 - "Alright"
28:57 - Isolated Vocal Stems on "Alright"
31:27 - "Jones in My Bones"
33:20 - The Little-Known D'Angelo Album
36:25 - "Me & Those Dreamin' Eyes of Mine"
40:30 - The J Dilla Remix (1997)
44:18 - "Shit, Damn, Motherfucker"
46:30 - Live at the Jazz Cafe - "Shit, Damn, Motherfucker"
48:10 - "Smooth"
50:20 - D'Angelo Could Have Been a Jazz Pianist
53:04 - D'Angelo and Peter's Ellis Marsalis Connection
56:21 - "Cruisin'"
59:25 - Ad Break: Learn To Play Like D'Angelo
1:00:37 - "When We Get By"
1:04:44 - "We Were Just Mocking Dilla": Raphael Saadiq on How "Lady" Was Made
1:06:20 - "Lady"
1:11:02 - "Higher"
1:15:28 - "Brown Sugar" Hits Different 30 Years Later
1:17:00 - Our Favorite Moments
1:23:45 - Quibble Bits, Snob-O-Meter & Accoutrements
1:27:26 - Up Next + Listener Reviews
1:29:45 - Open Studio Plays "Lady"
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 1995. R&B is all drum machines and digital production. Slick, polished, safe. |
| 0:06.0 | Hip-hop and soul are living in two different houses. |
| 0:09.0 | All of a sudden, a 21-year-old from Richmond, Virginia, |
| 0:12.0 | walks into a New York studio with a Fender Rhodes, a Hammond organ and a head full of Marvin, Prince, and Tribe. |
| 0:17.0 | He plays almost everything himself, writes it, produces it, arranges it. |
| 0:21.6 | Nobody asked for this record, but it would build a bridge between those two worlds. |
| 0:25.6 | His manager anointed it at the birth of Neo's soul, but DiAngelo never claimed that term. |
| 0:30.6 | He just said, I make black music. This is Brown Sugar, and he's got someone he wants you to meet. |
| 0:36.6 | Let me tell you about this girl, maybe I should. |
| 0:40.3 | I met her in filth and the name was brown sugar. |
| 0:43.5 | See, we'd be making love constantly. |
| 0:45.7 | That's why my eyes are in shade. |
| 0:47.7 | Blood burning me. |
| 0:49.0 | The way that we kiss is unlike any other way that I be kissing when I'm pissing what I miss, won't you listen? |
| 0:55.3 | Brown sugar, babe. |
| 0:57.3 | I guess high up your love, I don't know how to be. |
| 1:00.7 | I'm Adam Manus. |
| 1:01.8 | And I'm Peter Martin. |
| 1:02.6 | And you're listening to The You'll Hear a podcast. |
| 1:04.4 | Music Explored. |
| 1:05.5 | Explored, brought today by Open Studio. |
| 1:07.4 | Go to Open StudioJadogadogad.com for, oh, your jazz lesson needs. Peter, Big Day. Big day. This is going to be fun. We're going back in time. In fact, we're going so far back in time that I got a little confused what decade it was. I did say 1995, right? You did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then I realized, I mean, this, this is 1995 right here. This is scream in the middle of the 90s. You know how many Toyota celicas I got in the passenger seat of where a copy of that CD, DeAngelo's Brown Sugar, was kind of broken. The case was broken and it was sitting on the floor of the celica. Yeah. And it had ground. The celica also, by the way, it had ground effects. It had a wing on the back. Some McDonald French fries. Hell yeah. |
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