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Released: July 3, 1995

Rating: 4.399 (average of 12 ratings)

Genre: R&B

Quotable: --

Album Tracks:

  1. Brown Sugar
  2. Alright
  3. Jonz in My Bonz
  4. Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine
  5. Shit, Damn, Motherfucker
  6. Smooth
  7. Cruisin’
  8. When We Get By
  9. Lady
  10. Higher

Sales:

sales in U.S. only 1 million
sales in U.K. only - estimated --
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated 1 million

Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 22
peak on U.K. album chart --

Singles/Hit Songs:

  • Brown Sugar (5/27/95) #27 US, #24 UK, #2a RB
  • Cruisin’ (10/21/95) #53 US, #31 UK, #10 RB
  • Lady (3/2/96) #10 US, #21 UK, #2 RB
  • Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine (7/13/96) #74 US, #17a RB

Awards:

Rated one of the top 1000 albums of all time by Dave’s Music Database. Click to learn more.

Brown Sugar
D’Angelo
Review:
“By the mid-‘90s, most urban R&B had become rather predictable, working on similar combinations of soul and hip-hop, or relying on vocal theatrics on slow, seductive numbers. With his debut album, Brown Sugar, the 21-year-old D’Angelo crashed down some of those barriers. D’Angelo concentrates on classic versions of soul and R&B, but unlike most of his contemporaries, he doesn’t cut and paste older songs with hip-hop beats; instead, he attacks the forms with a hip-hop attitude, breathing new life into traditional forms” (Erlewine).

“Not all of his music works – there are several songs that sound incomplete, relying more on sound than structure. But when he does have a good song – like the hit Brown Sugar, Smokey Robinson’s Cruisin’, or the bluesy Shit, Damn, Motherfucker, among several others – D’Angelo’s wild talents are evident. Brown Sugar might not be consistently brilliant, but it is one of the most exciting debuts of 1995, giving a good sense of how deep D’Angelo’s talents run” (Erlewine).

Review Source(s):

Last updated May 30, 2008.