India.Arie’s song “Brown Skin” is a neo-soul classic that pushes back against white standards of beauty. The visuals for the video are all types of different black people enjoying themselves and living life. This sort of visual wasn’t necessarily rare for the time that this song came out, but it highlights a very dominant theme in R&B music from this era. The appreciation of Blackness came up in India.Arie’s contemporary’s music too.
If you were to watch a Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Jaguar Wright, or Angie Stone video from the time similar scenes can be found. The empowerment here is in the fact that the song is explicitly naming brown skin as something glorious and beautiful. The wide range of different black skin tones act in harmony throughout the video and India.Arie’s beauty as a dark-skinned black woman is centered. These sort of efforts are still crucial today with regard to visual representations of blackness and this video was shot almost 20 years ago.