7. D’AngeloBrown Sugar

Until this record, what I’d heard of R&B never really did it for me. I wasn’t very excited by it nor identified with it. When I heard D’Angelo, the earthiness of his voice and his sonics struck me. This record comes from a darker realm of human experience and has the ability to take you into an experience, feeling or thought. I remember when I heard the title track of this record I thought ‘how has he managed to get it to sound like that?’ In the 90s when I had limited gear as a producer, I used to try to figure how different musicians got things to sound as good as they do by playing a record in my stereo system and use my auxiliary to try make my music match the level of the music I was playing, and Brown Sugar was a record I’d do this quite often with.