Why the sweet soul of D'Angelo's classic Brown Sugar album is still relevant

D'Angelo influenced R&B in myriad ways with his 1995 debut album Brown Sugar. The album not only helped to pull the genre out of its trance-like love affair with new jack swing — the upbeat, synthetic sound made famous by the likes of Bobby Brown and Michael Jackson — but it also inspired the term "neo-soul" that went on to become an at times polarizing, catch-all phrase used to describe soul newcomers like Erykah Badu, Maxwell and Lauryn Hill.

Last month, Brown Sugar was reissued as a deluxe edition that includes rare remixes of singles from the original album.

Jason King is a music historian and professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU and he remembers the impact Brown Sugar had on R&B when it dropped.

We spoke with King to get his perspective on the album's importance to the sound of R&B then and now.

-Produced by Ty Callender