Dames Brown Release Debut Album ‘Take Me As I Am’
There is a particular weight to Detroit soul when it is carried forward rather than revived. Take Me As I Am, the long-awaited debut album from Dames Brown, arrives with that weight intact. It is not positioned as an introduction or a reinvention. Instead, it unfolds as a statement that feels patiently earned, grounded in years of shared history, collective discipline and lived musical understanding.
Presented by the late Amp Fiddler, the record holds the clarity of something completed in motion. Recorded largely at Fiddler’s home studio, the album preserves the intimacy of its process. You can hear the room. You can hear the trust. Nothing feels rushed or polished into anonymity. The songs move with a natural confidence, allowing gospel phrasing, funk elasticity and house rhythms to coexist without hierarchy.
Dames Brown, formed by Athena Johnson, Teresa Marbury and LaRae Starr, have always operated less like a vocal group and more like a shared instrument. Their harmonies are precise but never ornamental, shaped by decades of church singing, session work and Detroit’s long tradition of voices built for endurance. On Take Me As I Am, that discipline becomes expansive. The trio does not perform for the groove so much as sit inside it, bending rhythm with restraint rather than force.
The album’s collaborators reinforce that sense of lineage rather than spectacle. Contributions from Andrés, Eddie Fowlkes and Waajeed feel conversational, not extractive. Additional appearances by Paul Randolph, Chris Bruce and Will Sessions further anchor the project in Detroit’s ecosystem, connecting gospel cadence to funk muscle and house’s communal release.
Tracks like You’re The One For Me and What Would You Do move with a subtle emotional directness, resisting melodrama in favour of clarity. Glory channels praise without sanctimony. The title track stands as the album’s quiet centre, its message neither defensive nor declarative, but settled. Even when the grooves deepen, the record never leans on excess. Control remains the defining gesture.
There is an added gravity in knowing that Take Me As I Am also functions as one of Amp Fiddler’s final creative chapters. His presence is not framed as memorialised nostalgia, but as active guidance. His voice, touch and philosophy are embedded in the album’s pacing and generosity. The music does not mourn. It continues.
Released via Defected Records, a label relationship that stretches back nearly a decade for the trio, the album feels less like a debut than a consolidation. Dames Brown have already shaped dancefloors worldwide through collaborations with The Vision, Floorplan, Horse Meat Disco and Louie Vega and Josh Milan. This record simply gathers those threads into a form that belongs wholly to them.
A forthcoming 7-inch remix of Take Me As I Am by Moodymann will follow, extending the album’s life into the club without altering its intent.
On stage, Dames Brown have always prioritised connection over spectacle, building intensity through control and shared breath rather than volume. With upcoming live dates across Detroit, North America and beyond, Take Me As I Am does not announce arrival. It documents presence. The album stands as a continuation of Detroit’s vocal tradition, carried forward with humility, warmth and unshakeable purpose.
Dames Brown
‘Take Me As I Am’
Defected Records
Out Now - January 21, 2026
