Curtis

Mayfield's first solo album came out on his own Curtom label and moved away from the pop-soul of the Impressions toward funk and a psychedelic-influenced sound. Mayfield said it let him be more personal for himself. It has eight songs, among them the long Move On Up, The Other Side of Town and We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue.

It spent five nonconsecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard black albums chart and reached number 19 on the pop albums chart. Reviews at the time were mixed: Rolling Stone's John Wendell was disappointed, while John Abbey of Blues & Soul described its US reception as the most exciting project since Isaac Hayes's Hot Buttered Soul. Bruce Eder of AllMusic later called it practically the Sgt. Pepper's of 70s soul. Petridis wrote that it was the first of the great auteur-driven soul albums of the decade. In 1972 it won the Prix Otis Redding for best R&B album from the Academie du Jazz, and Rolling Stone placed it at number 275 in 2020.