Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Chicago Tribune
Entertainment Weekly	A
The Guardian
MSN Music	A−
NME	9/10
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Spin	8/10

Brown Sugar is the debut album of American R&B singer D'Angelo. It was released on July 4, 1995, by EMI Music. Recording sessions for the album took place from 1994 to 1995 at Battery Studios and RPM Studios in New York City and at the Pookie Lab in Sacramento. Production, instrumentation, arrangements, and songwriting were primarily handled by D'Angelo, who employed both vintage recording equipment and modern electronic devices. Brown Sugar contains themes of love and romance, and features a fusion of contemporary R&B and traditional soul music, along with elements of funk, quiet storm, and hip hop music.

Brown Sugar debuted at number six on the US Billboard Top R&B Albums chart, selling 300,000 copies in its first two months. With the help of its four singles, it spent 65 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart and attained platinum shipments within a year of its release. Upon its release, Brown Sugar received acclaim from music critics and earned D'Angelo several accolades, including four Grammy Award nominations. Regarded by music writers as a pivotal album in neo soul, the album provided commercial visibility to the musical movement, amid the prominence of producer-driven, digitally approached R&B.

By 1991, eighteen-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael D'Angelo Archer had formed his native-Richmond, Virginia musical group—Michael Archer and Precise—and achieved success on the Amateur Night competition at Harlem, New York's Apollo Theater in 1991. Soon after, he dropped out of school and moved to New York City, as an attempt to develop his own music career. The group had previously enjoyed some notice in Richmond, evenly dividing their repertoire between soul covers and originals, while D'Angelo accumulated compositions of his own and developed his songwriting skills. The group's turnout on Amateur Night resulted in three consecutive wins and a cash prize, after which, upon returning home to Richmond, D'Angelo was inspired to produce his own album and began composing material.

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