The Rolling Stones have stated they have removed one of their biggest hits from setlists due to criticism over its lyrics about slavery, fearing that 21st century listeners may not understand that the song is about “the horrors of slavery” rather than celebrating it.

After a writer observed the song’s noticeable absence from the group’s current “No Filter” tour, guitarist Keith Richards confirmed its status in an interview published last week in the Los Angeles Times.

“You picked up on that, huh?” Richards said.

The renowned rock band has continued their No Filter tour with a series of North American gigs, and Sir Mick Jagger confirmed the song’s removal in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

The 78-year-old said: ‘We’ve played Brown Sugar every night since 1970, so sometimes you think, we’ll take that one out for now and see how it goes. We might put it back in.’

The song has long been chastised for its portrayals of Black women, as well as disturbing connections to slavery.

Brown Sugar, the group’s 1971 number one song, which is widely regarded as having one of the finest guitar riffs in history, will no longer be heard during the band’s live shows.

The song is now off the airwaves, although Richards and Mick Jagger have stated that it will not be dropped forever.

“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is,” Richards told the paper. “Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? But they’re trying to bury it.”

“At the moment I don’t want to get into conflicts with all of this s***.

‘But I’m hoping that we’ll be able to resurrect the babe in her glory somewhere along the track.’

In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger said of the song, “I never would write that song now. I would probably censor myself. I’d think, Oh God, I can’t. I’ve got to stop. God knows what I’m on about on that song. It’s such a mishmash. All the nasty subjects in one go.”

According to critics, the song has “some of the most stunningly crude and offensive lyrics ever written” and is “gross, sexist, and stunningly offensive toward black women.”

The opening line of the song paints a vivid image of the slave trade:

“Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields. Sold in the market down in New Orleans. Skydog slaver knows he’s doin’ all right. Hear him whip the women just around midnight.”

Between 1717 and 1721, slave ships carried 2,000 African slaves to New Orleans, and the Omni Royal Orelans hotel on St Louis Street was built on the site of one of the city’s most renowned slave marketplaces.

The song was last played by the band at a concert in Miami in 2019, which also happened to be the final stop on that leg of their North American tour, and not long before the group stopped touring completely.

According to setlist.fm, Brown Sugar is the band’s second most performed song on tour, trailing only Jumpin’ Jack Flash, with the group’s most recent tour beginning off in the United States.

Daphne Brooks, head of graduate studies at Yale University’s Department of African American Studies, is a longstanding Stones fan, but the fetishization of Black women in “Brown Sugar” — and of Puerto Rican women in another Stones song, “Miss You” — has always bothered her.

“It’s the most popular song about the systemic rape of Black women in slavery and the celebratory anthem of this unspeakable crime,” said Brooks, author of “Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound,” concerning the representation of Black women in music.

“So this is a good moment.”

The second verse refers to the ‘lady of the house’ and the ‘house boy,’ alluding to a man receiving sexual fulfillment from the slave in the house, while the third verse shifts to the current day, where the narrator ‘knows what he likes’ and has sex with black women.

On the chorus, Jagger sings: ‘Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?… Just like a black girl should.’

The Stones resumed their tour last month following the loss of drummer Charlie Watts in August.

The tour is the veteran rockers’ first set of performances in two years, when live shows resumed in the United States following the epidemic.