Meaning of “Sugar Man” by Rodriguez
“Sugar Man”, which was released through Sussex Records on 5 March 1970, was the late Rodriguez’s signature song. This was made evident for instance by the fact that a 2012 award-wining documentary about his career (and more specifically how he blew up in South Africa) was titled Searching for Sugar Man.
Also, upon Rodriguez’s passing in 2023 at the age of 81, many news outlets reporting on his death referred to him as “Sugar Man”.
That said, this track only charted down under, where it reached number 15 on the ARIA Single Chart, besides being certified platinum in Australia. That’s not a particularly odd fact as far as Rodriguez is concerned, since he was most successful in Oceania and Southern Africa despite the fact that he proved to be a loyal native of Detroit, a city found in the northern United States.
Rodriguez authored “Sugar Man”, and its producers are Mike Theodore and Dennis Coffey.
Lyrics of “Sugar Man”
It has been revealed that the titular “Sugar man” is a nickname for the vocalist’s drug dealer. That’s a conclusion that most listeners shouldn’t have trouble coming to themselves, even though the lyrical presentation, as with the title, is entirely metaphorical.
So the three verses we’re met with basically serve the purpose of explaining why the vocalist has developed an affinity for “jumpers, coke [and] sweet Mary Jane”, i.e. coca-ne, marijuana and whatever it is that “jumpers” may be (probably a slang for uppers).
The first verse, most simply interpreted, indicates that Rodriguez got high as a way of counteracting boredom. The second verse, which is a bit more confusing to make sense of, can be taken as implying that the vocalist sniffs, smokes or what have you in the name of staving off depression and perhaps also loneliness.
The third verse gives the impression that sometimes Rodriguez grew frustrated with the deceptive nature of people and perhaps the world around him in general. And again, he remedied such maladies by resorting to illicit intoxicants.
This song was dropped at a time in Western history when it first became chic for musicians to drop songs about drugs. In virtually all of such instances the lyrics are heavily metaphorical, as a way of evading censorship. But as for “Sugar Man”, metaphors and all it’s more on the nose, perhaps being a song Rodriguez got away with dropping because he wasn’t particularly popular in the US or UK to begin with.
