Music and Theme
"Suga Mama" is a moderate R&B and soul song that displays influences of the 1960s as well as 1970s funk and rock music. It also song contains limited elements of the 1980s go-go and sounds more closely resembling live music than Knowles' previous recordings. According to the sheet music published by Hal Leonard Corporation, "Suga Mama" was composed using common time in the key of G minor, with a moderate tempo of 94 beats per minute.
Knowles' vocals span from the low note of C4 to the high note of D5 as she sings on a hip hop and jazzy beat. The main instrumentation is provided by a bluesy guitar. IGN Music noted that "Suga Mama" is built of a "static grit groove", and Jody Rosen of Entertainment Weekly wrote that the song consists of a mixture of "brute power and slick syncopation". It samples Jake Wade and the Soul Searchers' song "Searching for Soul", which was written by Chuck Middleton.
"Suga Mama" features the female protagonist offering up the keys to her house and car, and her credit card just to keep her love interest and his good loving at home, presumably so that he can listen to her collection of old soul records. These interpretations are shown in the lines: "It's so good to the point that I'll do anything just to keep you home ... Tell me what you want me to buy, my accountant's waiting on the phone ...". The woman also sees the man as a sex object, asking him to sit on her lap and "take it off while I watch you perform". Staff members of USA Today contrasted "Suga Mama" with the 1999 song "Bills, Bills, Bills" by Destiny's Child (of which Knowles was a member), writing that "From needing somebody to pay her automo-bills, now doling out the cash as a satisfaction-seeking 'Suga Mama'." Dave de Sylvi of Sputnikmusic noted that Knowles sings: "I could be like a jolly rancher that you get from the corner store" with the same sense of mischief as Christina Aguilera on 'Candyman' (2007)." On the other hand, Gail Mitchell of Billboard magazine noticed that the song's lyrical arrangement was similar to that of Tina Turner's work. A remix of the song features American rapper Consequence.
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