Growing up in rural Maryland I had to ride a schoolbus to school and it took one hour each way. During this daily 2-hour bus ride, I had to listen to the Top 40 hits of the day on the bus driver's radio. I heard a lot of what today is called "Classic Rock" from Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, and, of course, The Rolling Stones. The repetition of many of these songs was almost torture for me and I eschewed the Rolling Stones as a young adult due to over-saturation. I had just heard so many of those songs too many times. Among them was Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones.
Recently, The Rolling Stones stopped including Brown Sugar on their tours. When asked about it, Keith Richards replied,
"I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is. Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? But they’re trying to bury it. At the moment I don’t want to get into conflicts with all of this shit,” the guitarist remarked. "But I’m hoping that we’ll be able to resurrect the babe in her glory somewhere along the track.”
Sold Down the River
So, is the famous Rolling Stones song Brown Sugar really about the horrors of slavery? Brown Sugar is also a heroin reference as well, something that many of the Rolling Stones used back in the day. Let's dive a little deeper on the lyrics, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and released in 1971, the first cut on the album Sticky Fingers. The first verse says,
Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in the market down in New Orleans
Skydog slaver know he's doin' all right
Hear him whip the women, just around midnight
The first verse helps to show what Keith was talking about. The Gold Coast was a former British colony in Western Africa where most slaves were captured, kidnapped, and sold to areas of the Caribbean. In Brown Sugar, the ship is heading from New Orleans, Louisiana, to cotton fields somewhere on the east coast of the US. In this article from The Smithsonian, they state that New Orleans was the largest slave trade area in America prior to the Civil War. Interestingly enough, the phrase "sold down the river" is a leftover expression from slave times in the United States. The expression signifies a huge betrayal. For slaves, the river was the Ohio or Mississippi Rivers both of which end in New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico. There is no doubt that this expression was used by slaveholders to threaten slaves. To be sold down the river meant that you would have to survive a voyage to the largest slave market in the Western World in New Orleans. Slave owners would sell slaves if they were sickly, disobedient, or unable to reproduce. Slave owners would also separate families by selling slaves down the river. Slavery was not just about free labor it was also about reproducing more slaves as property that could be liquidated through sales at any time.
Skydog Slaver
So what is a skydog slaver? There is no historical reference for this word in relation to slavery and many versions of the Black Sugar lyrics say "scarred old slaver." Apparently, Keith Richards' excellent autobiography sheds further light on this reference:
"In Keith Richards' Life, Dickinson clears up an often-misheard line. "If you listen to the lyrics, he says, 'Skydog slaver' (though it's always written 'scarred old slaver'). What does that mean? Skydog is what they called Duane Allman in Muscle Shoals because he was high all the time. And Jagger heard somebody say it and he thought it was a cool word so he used it."
OK, so the slaver knows he is doing all right shows the hypocrisy of a slaver living in a world where slavery is not only acceptable but earns you money. The singer (or narrator) of the song invites us to "Hear him whip the women just around midnight." This is most certainly the most slavery-is-evil lyric-- a man in power who routinely whips women slaves in the middle of the night. Presumably, this sound would be horribly filled with screams, moans, and the crack of the whip meeting flesh. This lyric implies the daily and systemic abuse of female slaves at the hands of men, something that absolutely happened in the United States for hundreds of years. If Brown Sugar was just this first verse I would totally agree with Keith Richards that this song is a "babe" worth placing back into the Rolling Stone's performance repertoire. Sadly, Brown Sugar doesn't end here.
Chorus and Second Verse
The words of the chorus say:
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good?
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should, oh no
By referring to female slaves as brown sugar, Mick Jagger is comparing women of color to another hot commodity during the slave era and that is sugar. In the Caribbean, sugar was one of the most lucrative crops that was mostly farmed by slave labor. It is a clever comparison but it is not a condemnation of the horrors of slavery by any means. This jubilant chorus enforces that black and brown slave women are a delicious commodity and manages to promote the admiration of young girls. It's just a creepy lyric especially given that women and girls are still oftentimes reduced to objects even in the 21st century.
The second verse gets more nebulous here:
Drums beatin' cold, English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' when it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doin' all right
You should have heard him, just around midnight
We are not sure who is beating the cold drums or if it is another whipping reference. The hot English blood is an obvious reference to the white men in power who were sexually excited by black female slaves. Who is the lady of the house? What is the house boy doing just around midnight? We are not sure. Mick Jagger adds a second piece to the Brown Sugar chorus:
The Chorus Says It All
Brown Sugar, how come you dance so good?Oh, got me quittin'
Brown Sugar, just like a black girl should, yeah
The choruses of Brown Sugar contradict the alleged horrors of slavery foundation of the song. The chorus talks about the powerful sexual attraction of the black female slave and says they are delicious and dance well. In the chorus of Brown Sugar, the slave women in the song are reduced to the same objects they would have been viewed as in slave-era United States. It is about female slaves being admired, taken, and owned by men in power. Reduced to its essence this is a song that reinforces the exoticization of the other and exhibits women and girls as objects and possessions. It is about power over women 'like a young girl Should.' Yuck. Especially given the context that this song was written by two young white British males, The Rolling Stones were 100% correct to remove this song from their concerts in 2021.
To put the song Brown Sugar into perspective, I can see how Mick Jagger might have thought this song was progressive in the late 1960s because it is the voice of a white man who speaks admiringly of the beauty of the female brown body. In the current century, we see this in perspective for what it is-- sexist, racist, and with great guitar hooks from Keith Richards. The song Brown Sugar was allegedly written for Mick Jagger's then-girlfriend Marsha Hunt who is African American. Brown Sugar was a single from the Rolling Stone's album Sticky Fingers (1971) which features the outline of someone's man parts in tight pants. It was designed by Andy Warhol and featured the novelty of a real zipper. The album title and art convey to the viewer that this could contain a few sexually-charged songs.
The final verse of Brown Sugar is also derogatory as the song narrator attempts to seduce an unknown black girl,
Now, I bet your mama was a tent show queen
And all her boyfriends were sweet 16
I'm no schoolboy but I know what I like
You should have heard them, just around midnight
The song narrator is flattering a beautiful prospect by telling her that he bets her mother was a beauty queen, or in this case, a tent show queen. Again, it is about a beautiful female on display during times of slavery and in general. The narrator tells his subject that he imagines that her mother had many young and virile suitors. Because she is beautiful? Or is the narrator saying the object of the song is promiscuous? This is definitely what we call a backhanded insult. We learn that the narrator is an adult man and that he knows what he likes. This final verse clinches it.
This is not a song about the horrors of slavery it is about the domination of men over women who exist to be beautiful and to please men. This white sister totally understands why this song was dropped from The Rolling Stone's setlist. Sorry, Keith, sorry Mick. If you are serious about bringing Brown Sugar back, you will need to re-write the entire song. I suggest you write it from the female perspective. Good luck.