According to music journalist Peter Shapiro, "Lady" uses "the jazzy hallmarks of bohemian soul to emphasize the singer's insecurity". Most of the songs on the album have a stripped-down feel, without complex orchestrations, and have heavy drum beats and bass lines, which are accompanied by electric piano riffs and minimal guitar work. Music writer Robert Christgau finds Brown Sugar to be "bass-driven rather than voice-led". D'Angelo's singing throughout Brown Sugar is a gospel-influenced, falsetto crooning style, which critics have compared the singing of Prince, Al Green, Donny Hathaway, and Sam Cooke. Despite the album's retro influence, music writers have noted his delivery as having a hip hop approach and "swagger", as one critic described the album as a "blend of classic soul and urban attitude". Another writer described the album's vibe as "sultry" and D'Angelo's vocal delivery as "sly". Music journalist Jon Caramanica later called D'Angelo a "classicist, in other words, cloaked in the guise of a hip-hop roughneck." Shapiro viewed the vocal production as similar to that of Prince's Sign o' the Times (1987). The album's closing track "Higher" features D'Angelo's organ set to a choir of his overdubbed vocals, while "Jonz in My Bonz", which compares love to an addiction, features D'Angelo's falsetto moans overdubbed in an array for effect. According to D'Angelo, the hip hop influence present on the album "came from the Native Tongues movement - Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr and Main Source." The title track features the most hip hop influence on the album, as Ali Shaheed Muhammad's co-production for the song developed a seamless integration of hip hop beats into D'Angelo's old school-influenced material. The vocal delivery on the track resembles the flow of most emcees at the time. In a 1995 interview, D'Angelo cited hip hop artists Rakim and KRS-One as one of his greatest influences, and explained his affinity with rapping, stating "All rap is street soul. They just have a different method." Lyrics and themes With the exception of the title track, a thinly veiled ode to smoking marijuana, most of the album's material consists of traditional romance ballads and love songs, in the style of classic soul music. The lyrical content of the album closer, "Higher", combines the spiritual love of God and the carnal love of a woman, and is similar to the lyricism of Prince, who has been noted by music writers for exploring the "eternal dichotomy"