Ali Shaheed Muhammad and D’Angelo Made “Brown Sugar” By Accident
D’Angelo took the music industry by storm when he came on the scene with 1995’s Brown Sugar. Utilizing gorgeous backing tracks coupled with a distinct, soul-crushing voice, he captured the essence of classic soul while giving it an updated feeling. With hits like “Brown Sugar”, “Lady”, “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine”, and a modern rendition of Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’”, the Richmond, Virginia soul singer’s debut earned him a platinum plaque and received four Grammy nominations.
Although D’Angelo had written rough versions of many songs on Brown Sugar several years earlier, the album’s lead single “Brown Sugar” happened by accident during a session with A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad.
After experimenting in a New Jersey home studio, the two artists hunkered down in Battery Studio’s Studio C to do some serious recording. The tiny Studio C was one of Shaheed’s favorite places to record, but it had its share of technical limitations. “The computers in Studio C crashed so much, I began to joke that the room was haunted,” Muhammad told Wax Poetics in an excellent 2010 interview by Michael A. Gonzales. Lo and behold, one of the computers crashed during their session while D’Angelo and Muhammad were coming up with song ideas.
“It was like it was too good to be true, because that song came out of twenty minutes and a mistake.”- Ali Shaheed Muhammad
While a studio engineer tried to figure out what was wrong with the computer, D’Angelo started messing around on the piano to kill time. Though he was minutes away from stumbling upon a song that would change his career, the initial results weren’t anything spectacular. “At first, it sounded like intermission music,” Muhammad told Wax Poetics.
D’Angelo kept playing while the engineer scrambled to fix the problem, and all of a sudden he struck gold. “He started playing this chord progression, and I stopped and looked at him. Even he wasn’t aware of what exactly he was playing, he just had his hands on the keyboard. When I asked him what he was playing, he said, ‘Nothing,’” Muhammad told Wax Poetics.
Luckily Muhammad had a DAT tape running to capture the moment. “You never know what you might pick up,” he told Wax Poetics.
Realizing that something beautiful was unfolding, Muhammad took a few minutes to program a rough beat that they could use as a foundation and asked D’Angelo to replay the earlier chord progression again. Both artists looked at each other in amazement when he was done. “Afterwards, we sat and stared at each other, and D’Angelo just started laughing, because he knew what I knew,” he told Wax Poetics.
“At first, it sounded like intermission music.”- Ali Shaheed Muhammad
D’Angelo and Muhammad were confident they had captured lightning in a bottle, but the record label people at EMI weren’t as thrilled. To them, the track sounded too rough and unpolished. Looking back on it, Muhammad understands their reservations. “You have to realize, at the time, nothing else had that sound,” he told Wax Poetics.
Despite some dragging of feet from the record label, “Brown Sugar” made its way onto the album. In addition to being the Brown Sugar’s lead single, “Brown Sugar” was the only individual song on the album to receive a Grammy nomination. “It was like it was too good to be true, because that song came out of twenty minutes and a mistake,” Muhammad later told Wax Poetics in amazement.
Connect with D’Angelo on Facebook, YouTube, his website and on Twitter @thedangelo. Connect with Ali Shaheed Muhammad on Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud, his website and on Twitter @alishaheed.
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