How Come You Taste So Good? - Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones

It's not like Mick Jagger to invite controversy. No not at all!

No other Rolling Stone song has attracted more vitriol than "Brown Sugar". Even before it was released, the song was already at the center of controversy. The release was delayed for over a year due to a legal battle over the rights of the song. While the lawyers were hashing it out, the Stones debuted the song at Altamont.

Not what I would call an auspicious start.

Since then, people have pored over the lyrics like it was The DaVinci Code. Claims have been made that the song is about slavery, rape, heroine and interracial sex…all dressed up as a party song.

Heavens to Betsy. What a dreadful idea. Not from the Stones.

Many learned Stones scholars would point out the song was really about Mick Jagger's affair with Claudia Lennear. She was one of the back-up singers for Ike Turner when his band toured with the Stones. Although Lennear has never confirmed that the song was about her, she's never denied it either. She raised no objection to her 1974 Playboy pictorial being titled "Brown Sugar". Assuming that this theory is correct, this would be the first of two songs inspired by the former Ikette. David Bowie's Shirley Bassey-esque song "Lady Grinning Soul" from Aladdin Sane is supposedly about his meeting with Lennear in 1972 (which was ironically a B-Side for Bowie's cover of "Let's Spend The Night Together").

However, singer, model, actress Marsha Hunt has claimed on several occasions that the song is about her. Hunt is the mother of Jagger's first daughter, Karis.

The song was never intended to glorify raping slaves (as the first verse would indicate). If the song was really inspired by either of the above mentioned women, it's more likely a contrast of interracial relationships from the colonial days to the late 60s.

It's checkered past hasn't prevented companies like Pepsi and Kahlua from using it to sell their products.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Woooo!