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. 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. [A limited-edition LP was released in 2015.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine