Neo Soul Music: Taking a look back at the classic album "The Colored Section"

The landmark moment in Neo Soul Music is back with 16 bonus tracks

In honor of the forthcoming 20th anniversary of its release, The Colored Section by influential neo-soul singer DONNIE received a brand new digital deluxe edition, to be released on DSPs June 18, 2021 via Motown/UMe. Being reissued as part of the celebrations for Juneteenth, Pride and Black Music Month, the re-issue will include 16 bonus tracks, all streaming for the first time ever, featuring various remixes, rarities and unreleased tracks from The Colored Section's recording sessions. You can check it out here.

Following an initial independent release on Giant Step Records in 2002, The Colored Section was re-released as a joint venture with Motown a year later, in the midst of a neo-soul movement that included his new label mates and legends in Neo Soul Music Erykah Badu, Kem and India Arie. It's a deeply affecting, inspiring record that touches on the societal and cultural topics of slavery, racism, oppression, consumerism, hair, same sex love and post 9/11 America – topics that we continue to struggle with to this day.https://youtu.be/5Osn43oWZgc

"The Colored Section gave me a chance to pay tribute to African American people and their American experience," explains Donnie, who is a cousin of Marvin Gaye, about the record. "When people approach me and tell me how The Colored Section changed their life for the better, it reminds me why I made the album in the first place. The Colored Section is my version of What's Going On? It definitely was one of the main inspirations for my album.""When Donnie approached me with his idea to make The Colored Section I said yes without hesitation," further adds Maurice Bernstein, the CEO of Giant Step Records and the album's Executive Producer. "It sounds as relevant and fresh today as it did when we first released it almost 20 years ago."

The Colored Section was critically-acclaimed upon its release, with The Boston Globe praising it as "… perhaps the best Soul record since Stevie Wonder's masterpieces of the 1970's." A reviewer for Billboard magazine lauded Donnie's homages to his inspirations Donny Hathaway and Wonder, "as on the harmonica-flavored groove 'Wildlife,' the Latin-tinged 'Do You Know?,' and the inspirational 'You Got a Friend.'" But dig deeper, the review continued, and the album "doubles as a history lesson about African-Americans' struggles, challenges, and still-undaunted hopes.For more dope content and Neo soul music, read on here