Raphael Saadiq (b. May 14, 1966): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, singer, songwriter, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teache

 

SOUND PROJECTIONS

 

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

 

EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU

 

SUMMER, 2020

 

 

VOLUME EIGHT  NUMBER THREE

 

HERBIE HANCOCK

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

GIGI GRYCE

(May 16-22)

CLARK TERRY

(May 23-29)

BRANFORD MARSALIS

(May 30-June 5)

ART FARMER

(June 6-12)

FATS NAVARRO

(June 13-19)

BILLY HIGGINS 
(June 20-26)
 

HANK MOBLEY
(June 27-July 3)

RAPHAEL SAADIQ

(July 4-10)

INDIA.ARIE

(July 11-17)

JOHN CLAYTON

(July 18-24)

MARCUS MILLER

(July 25-31)

JAMES P. JOHNSON

(August 1-7)

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/raphael-saadiq-mn0000402249/biography

Raphael Saadiq

(May 14, 1966)

Artist Biography by Andy Kellman

Raphael Saadiq has continuously rejuvenated and reshaped aspects of traditional black music since his breakthrough with Tony! Toni! Toné!'s "Little Walter" (1988). In retrospect, that number one R&B/hip-hop hit -- with its modern sound and clever incorporation of the melody from the spiritual "Wade in the Water" -- seems like a statement of intent that has guided the stylish retro-contemporary singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, and producer throughout a discography of tremendous depth. As the multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated Tony! Toni! Toné! wound down in the mid-'90s, Saadiq eased into a second life as an all-purpose collaborator. He didn't get around to making his first solo album, Instant Vintage (2002), until after hits with D'Angelo ("Lady," "Untitled"), Lucy Pearl ("Dance Tonight"), and Bilal ("Soul Sista"). Since winning a Grammy shortly thereafter as a co-writer of Erykah Badu's "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop)," Saadiq has balanced commissioned work and solo projects, alternating between high achievements beside peers and inspirations and imaginative throwback LPs such as the Top 20 hits The Way I See It (2008) and Stone Rollin' (2011), and Jimmy Lee (2019).

Raphael Saadiq grew up in a musical family and neighborhood. The Oakland native, born Charles Ray Wiggins, was engrossed in music as a child. He started playing bass at the age of six, taught by an older brother -- among a dozen other siblings in a blended family -- and received additional tutelage from some of the fellow budding musicians in his community. Before long, he was playing in groups, first as a kid with the Gospel Hummingbirds, and benefitted from the strong music program at Castlemont High School. Shortly after he turned 18, he successfully auditioned to join the backing band of fellow Oaklander Sheila E. for Prince's Parade tour. As a consequence, Wiggins, known at that point as Raphael instead of Ray, sometimes performed with the headliner at surprise after-show gigs. The same year Wiggins was heard as a bassist and background vocalist on Sheila E.'s self-titled album, he debuted with a group of his own, Tony! Toni! Toné!, flanked by brother D'Wayne Wiggins and cousin Timothy Christian Riley. The trio appeared in 1987 with the independently released "One Night Stand" -- an uptempo 12" in the realm of Cameo and the Time -- and then signed with Mercury subsidiary Wing. From 1988 through 1996, Tony! Toni! Toné! released four distinguished albums, all of which went gold, platinum, or multi-platinum. Among 12 supporting Top Ten R&B/hip-hop hits beginning with "Little Walter" were "Feels Good," "If I Had No Loot," and the Grammy-nominated "Anniversary," crossover smashes that cracked the Top Ten of the Hot 100.

Near the end of Tony! Toni! Toné!'s decade together, Wiggins adopted the last name Saadiq and recorded "Ask of You" for the Higher Learning soundtrack. Issued as a single, the song entered the R&B/hip-hop chart in March 1995 and reached the second spot. Rather than capitalize upon that success to launch a solo career, Saadiq was content away from the spotlight as a collaborator and even dipped into A&R as the operator of Pookie Records. Sought out in the latter half of the '90s by artists ranging from John Mellencamp to Snoop Dogg, he charted highest with D'Angelo's "Lady" (number two R&B/hip-hop), followed by the Roots' "What They Do" (number 21), Solo's "Touch Me" (number 28), and Willie Max's "Can't Get Enough" (number 20). He also scored with a second solo single, "Get Involved" (number 21), off the soundtrack for stop-motion sitcom The P.J.s. Still a couple years away from a solo LP, Saadiq had another hit as a co-writer and co-producer in early 2000 with D'Angelo's "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" (number two R&B, number 25 pop). Later in the year, the short-lived Lucy Pearl, featuring Saadiq, En Vogue's Dawn Robinson, and A Tribe Called Quest's Ali Shaheed Muhammad, delivered their lone, self-titled album. It went gold on the strength of "Dance Tonight" (number five R&B, number 36 pop), and like "Untitled" was nominated for a Grammy in the R&B field. Saadiq's songbook of early-2000s hits expanded with the likes of Bilal's "Soul Sista" (number 18 R&B) and Angie Stone's "Brotha" (number 13).
Fifteen years deep into an already remarkable career, Saadiq finally released his first solo album. Instant Vintage arrived on major-label Universal in June 2002. Evidently uninterested in being associated with neo-soul -- the marketing term turned subgenre he unintentionally instigated -- Saadiq branded the back sleeve of the expansive LP with the label "gospeldelic." Significantly wider in scope than any neologism applied to it, Instant Vintage still had mass appeal with a number 25 showing on the Billboard 200 and a number eight placement on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. No solitary effort, it involved Angie Stone and T-Boz, plus D'Angelo, the featured artist on "Be Here," the biggest single. Commercially, it was quickly eclipsed by "Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop)" (number one R&B/hip-hop, number nine pop), produced and co-written by Saadiq with long-term associates Glenn Standridge and Bobby Ozuna for neo-soul queen Erykah Badu -- the artist for whom "neo-soul" was termed. This hit prevailed over "Be Here" as the 2002 Grammy winner for Best R&B Song, nonetheless earning Saadiq his first award from the Recording Academy. He picked up more nominations that year: Instant Vintage was up for Best R&B Album, while "Be Here" was also among the first nominees for Best Urban/Alternative Performance.

Saadiq touched numerous additional recordings racked between Instant Vintage and second solo studio LPs -- high-charting entries by TLC, Kelly Price, Nappy Roots, Kelis, and Truth Hurts, for starters. In the middle of this flurry, released through Pookie, the two-disc live performance All Hits at the House of Blues, a career-spanning celebration with a short set of Tony! Toni! Toné! classics. Pookie was also the outlet for the proper Instant Vintage follow-up, Ray Ray. Issued in October 2004, the funkier, blaxploitation-inspired LP allowed room for a second Tony! Toni! Toné! reunion and drop-ins from Joi and Babyface. Teedra Moses, who had just debuted with the Saadiq-assisted Complex Simplicity, sang on two songs. The album entered the Independent Albums chart at number three. Saadiq soon picked up his third Best R&B Performance Grammy nomination, this time as the featured artist on Earth, Wind & Fire's "Show Me the Way," which he also produced and co-wrote.
Between solo projects, Saadiq expanded his side discography with contributions to another round of hit LPs, including titles from Anthony Hamilton, Mary J. Blige, Kelis, and John Legend, as well as Lionel Richie, Joss Stone, and Musiq Soulchild. Saadiq co-starred on Blige's "I Found My Everything," nominated by the Recording Academy for Best Traditional R&B Performance. After he struck a deal with a second major, Columbia, Saadiq returned in September 2008 with The Way I See It. The number 19 Billboard 200 LP was the product of a deepening fascination with the classic R&B of his early childhood, from the construction of the songs to the equipment and recording techniques. Motown legends such as Stevie Wonder, arranger Paul Riser, and percussionist Jack Ashford were on-board. Three more Grammy nominations resulted: Best R&B Album, Best Traditional R&B Performance ("Love That Girl"), and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals ("Never Give You Up").

Supporting work continued apace with Stone, Blige, Ledisi, and Rick Ross the primary beneficiaries of Saadiq's free time. Faster than normal, even with touring and additional creative obligations outside music studios, Saadiq was able to conceive and complete his fourth LP, Stone Rollin', for arrival in March 2011. Retaining some of the same players from his previous session while performing more of the instrumentation -- not just four- and six-string guitars, but Mellotron, clavinet, and some drums as well -- Stone Rollin' was a comparatively immediate and rawer throwback synthesis. On a commercial hot streak despite a willful ignorance of commercial R&B trends, Saadiq found himself in the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 again, achieving his career peak at number 14. The LP's "Trouble Man soul"-styled "Good Man," written with "Show Me the Way" songwriting partner and background vocalist Taura Stinson, was Grammy-nominated for Best Traditional R&B Performance.

Over eight years passed between Saadiq's fourth and fifth solo albums. The artist still seemed occupied for the duration, as he surfaced on recordings by collaborators crossing cultures and generations, from Larry Graham, Booker T. Jones, and Elton John to Andra Day, Big K.R.I.T., and Miguel. Most prominently, he was a key factor in Solange's number one 2016 album A Seat at the Table -- the co-writer and co-producer of eight songs, including "Cranes in the Sky," and also credited beside the singer as executive producer. Saadiq and Stinson then worked with Mary J. Blige on the Academy Award-nominated "Mighty River," written and recorded for the 2017 period drama Mudbound. After Justin Timberlake, Ne-Yo, the Midnight Hour (Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad), and John Legend each took a number for his services, Saadiq knocked out a fifth album, Jimmy Lee, in August 2019.

https://first-avenue.com/performer/raphael-saadiq

RAPHAEL SAADIQ

Raphael Saadiq is a Grammy Award winning musician, songwriter and go- to collaborator/producer for some of the biggest names in R&B. Solange Knowles, John Legend, Mary J. Blige, D’Angelo, Ne-Yo and Miguel are among the many artists who turn to Saadiq for his deep musicality, contemporary creative vision and encyclopedic knowledge of timeless pop music.

Born in Oakland CA, Raphael grew up singing gospel music in the church and started playing bass guitar at the age of six. On the strength of the musical and stage training he received at Castlemont High School, Saadiq auditioned for Sheila E and landed a spot in her band which supported Prince on his 1986 Parade world tour.
After honing his chops on the road, Saadiq returned to Oakland and formed the group Tony! Toni! Toné! with his brother D’Wayne Wiggins and cousin Timothy Riley. The trio went on to enjoy considerable success on radio and MTV in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, racking up several hits including “If I Had No Loot,” “Feels Good,” “Anniversary” and the iconic “It Never Rains (In Southern California).”

Following four albums with Tony! Toni! Toné!, Saadiq formed the urban supergroup Lucy Pearl in 1999 along with Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest and Dawn Robinson from En Vogue, yielding Dance Tonight. His solo career kicked off with 2002’s Instant Vintage and 2004’s Ray Ray. Critics began taking special notice with the release of his 2008 homage to Motown and Philly soul, The Way I See It, and it’s follow-up, Stone Rollin’ (2011), which landed on many year-end Top Ten best albums lists.

Consequence of Sound spoke for many critics in their review, writing, “Saadiq [is] a true soul master” who “revitalizes the...genre by taking nearly every step he can to create an almost flawless record.” Saadiq’s on-stage performances garner equal praise. NPR called his SXSW appearance in support of Stone Rollin’ “a full-blown soul revue....When a guy this cool exerts this much effort, it’s a joy to behold.”

While his solo career thrived, Saadiq honed his craft as a producer, working with a wide range of artists, including Snoop Dogg, Little Dragon, Erykah Badu and Stevie Wonder. He remains a true musician’s musician, with Justin Timberlake, Elton John, Mick Jagger and Lady Gaga among the many superstars who tapped him to play bass or guitar on high-profile projects, including Gaga’s memorable David Bowie tribute at the 2016 Grammy Awards. He co-wrote career-defining hits for D’Angelo (“Untitled (How Does It Feel)”) and Solange (“Cranes in the Sky”), and his compositions have been covered, sampled or referenced by everyone from Ed Sheeran to Drake.

In 2012, Saadiq was named to Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list and in 2017, he received an Academy Award nomination in the category of Best Original Song for “Mighty River” from the film Mudbound, which he co-wrote with Mary J. Blige. On television, Saadiq is the composer in residence for Issa Rae’s hit HBO show, Insecure. His highly anticipated next solo album, Jimmy Lee, was released in August 2019.

Raphael Saadiq Sets His Dark Meditation To Music With 'Jimmy Lee'

Raphael Saadiq Sets His Dark Meditation To Music With 'Jimmy Lee'
August 23, 2019
Heard on Morning Edition
NPR
by David Greene
by Lindsay Totty
7-Minute Listen
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• Transcript



"I feel like people are not educated at a young age to know like, 'OK, you have a choice to go behind bars and become a number and for somebody to profit off you for free labor and it's enslaving your brain," Raphael Saadiq says.

Aaron Rapoport/Courtesy of the artist 


Raphael Saadiq, the famed singer, musician, producer, music supervisor and former member of Tony! Toni! Toné!, has worn many hats over the span of his nearly 40-year career. One thing he hasn't done is take time to unpack his own traumas. But recently, the Grammy-winner took a step back to process his past and now, he's using a new album to work through it.

Saadiq's latest album, Jimmy Lee, is named after Saadiq's older brother who died of a heroin overdose years ago after contracting HIV. By creating Jimmy Lee, Saadiq's first album in eight years, the artist says it's helped him confront a lot of his reeling thoughts — from the loss of Jimmy and other unresolved childhood traumas to America's system of mass incarceration.

"When I came along, Jimmy was, well, he was pretty much an addict at that time," Saadiq tells NPR's David Greene. "But being a kid, you don't know what an addict is. So, I saw him as being pretty normal. I might have thought maybe he was an alcoholic or something ... I didn't know anything about heroin."



Tiny Desk
Raphael Saadiq: Tiny Desk Concert
As Saadiq looked back over his brother's life, he thought about how much he really didn't know Jimmy and it drove him to go down a "rabbit hole" of exploration on the topic of addiction. "The record is not really about just Jimmy Lee," he says, "It's more about everybody has a Jimmy Lee in their life, you know? It's universal."

As Saadiq explains, the album has a "dark filter" over it because of the opportunities lost in death. Saadiq has memories of visiting Jimmy a lot while Jimmy was in prison — "I just thought we were going to Disneyland on a weekend" — and not realizing the gravity of the situation until much later. Now, Saadiq is using his platform and this album to examine addiction from all sides. He sings about how the war on drugs has affected people like his older brother on "Rikers Island" and "Kings Fall" depicts the relationship between the dealer and the addict.

"I feel like people are not educated at a young age to know like, 'OK, you have a choice to go behind bars and become a number and for somebody to profit off you for free labor and it's enslaving your brain, your mind," Saadiq explains. "It's just taking so much away from you."


YouTube


The artist himself admits he's tried drugs before, which he sings about on the track "Glory To The Veins." He recalls having to physically stop himself from going down that road.
"Once I left Tony! Toni! Toné! in '97, I was introduced to ecstasy," he says. "And the first time I take it, nothing happened. Next time, Boom! I was flying in the air! Then I thought about my brothers and my mother who had already lost four kids. I looked at my friend and said, 'Man, you know what?' and threw everything on the ground smashed it up. I said, 'I don't want you to have to call my mother and say she found me dead. They've suffered enough.'"
Saadiq spoke with NPR's David Greene about the message of Jimmy Lee and the emotional toll of creating it. Hear their aired conversation at the audio link.
• Raphael Saadiq

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/new-yorker-festival/raphael-saadiq-soul-survivor

New Yorker Live

Raphael Saadiq: Soul Survivor

September 21, 2012

Raphael Saadiq has been putting out old-school R.&B. for the last quarter-century, since Tony! Toni! Tone! broke into the hip-hop-dominated scene of the late eighties and revitalized soul music. But that’s only the beginning of a long story. Start there, of course, especially with the 1993 album “Sons of Soul,” which fuses the energy and technology of nineties R.&B. with the warmth and humanity of seventies soul. That record was mentioned in this magazine in 1993, in advance of the group’s appearance at Madison Square Garden, opening for Janet Jackson, but all of the music that Saadiq, who then went by the name Raphael Wiggins, made with his brother and his cousin was joyful and heartfelt, without any of the cynicism or quick-fix thinking that marks much of pop culture.

The group broke up in the late nineties, after the release of the record “House of Music,” and Saadiq moved immediately into another project, Lucy Pearl, originally conceived as a collaboration with D’Angelo but, in the end, a trio with Dawn Robinson of En Vogue and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest. Saadiq did manage to co-write and co-produce D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” one of the standout tracks from the “Voodoo” album, and then he went solo, releasing “Instant Vintage,” in 2002, “Ray Ray,” in 2004, “The Way I See It,” in 2008, and “Stone Rollin’,” in 2011. As careers lengthen, many artists lose their inspiration, or fall into familiar habits, but Saadiq has managed to get better as he goes, never simply repeating the same set of seventies-soul gestures, never blindly embracing new trends, paying off a half-century of musical tradition as a songwriter, a singer, and an underrated guitarist. “Good Man,” from “Stone Rollin’” is a gripping late-career song, with dramatic strings and a cinematic narrative

I’ll be talking to Saadiq for this year’s New Yorker Festival, and there are hundreds of things I’d like him to discuss. The arc of his own career, for starters, and how his early albums set the stage for the so-called neo-soul revival; but also the way he processes his influences, always managing to make them sound personal; what he feels the role of soul music is in the broader cultural landscape; and what has been gained (or lost) as the Internet has rejuvenated (or devastated) the music business. In every interview with Saadiq I’ve ever seen, he’s been lyrical, analytical, smart, and soulful. Anyone who cares about soul music—and that should be anyone with a soul—should hear what he has to say about what he’s had to say. Here’s a brief snippet of one interview in which he discusses his upbringing and his recording process.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/raphael-saadiq-shows-his-range-and-his-impeccable-resume/2020/02/09/71ca4804-4b6d-11ea-967b-e074d302c7d4_story.html

Music

Review

Raphael Saadiq shows his range and his impeccable résume

Raphael Saadiq performs at the 9:30 Club on Feb. 8. (Kyle Gustafson/for The Washington Post)

by Julian Kimble

February 9, 2020 

The Washington Post

Singer songwriter and producer Raphael Saadiq’s evolution into a virtuosic artist has been nothing short of impressive, but the most amazing aspect of the multi­hyphenate’s 30-plus-year career is his nonchalance about an impeccable résumé.

Saadiq first broke out during the early 1990s as the energetic frontman of the Oakland, ­Calif.-based band Tony! Toni! Toné! He then embarked on a solo career that allowed the freedom his roving ambition desired. The songwriting and production credits, such as friend and collaborator D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” for example, piled up alongside his own work. Saadiq has ventured into composing, scoring HBO’s “Insecure,” yet he remains remarkably casual about it all. One thing he hadn’t done with music, however, is get personal — until 2019.

His fifth solo album, “Jimmy Lee,” is named for an older brother who died of a drug overdose in the 1990s. It’s intensely personal, but still relatable in its reckoning with generational trauma. After years of writing songs about everything, Saadiq made his catalogue more robust in an unexpected way.

Most concerts are driven by the thrill of what might come next, but Raphael Saadiq shows are exceptional because the excitement extends to hits he’s written for others as well. Saadiq is unpretentious about his accomplishments, but Saturday night’s sold-out show at the 9:30 Club was a refreshing reminder that he has his live act down to a science.

Saadiq made the wise decision to ease the audience into his heavier material. “Skyy, Can You Feel Me” and “Be Here,” from his 2002 solo debut, “Instant Vintage,” served as breezy introductions. He slunk over to the piano for a jazzy rendition of his first solo hit, 1995’s “Ask Of You,” then rose once again for his and rapper-producer Q-Tip’s sunny 1999 single, “Get Involved” — proof that R&B music was covered in his fingerprints for the entirety of the ’90s. After a lively warm-up, he was ready to address “Jimmy Lee.”

Through “Jimmy Lee,” Saadiq channels years of pain into music, examining his family with scrutiny and sympathy. “Everyone has a Jimmy Lee in their life, so this album was for anyone who needed it,” he said after shredding a climactic guitar solo on “Something Keeps Calling.” Meanwhile, his mellow approach to “I’m Feeling Love” captured the fleeting moments of optimism experienced by many addicts and their support systems.

Saturday night’s show may have been part of the Jimmy Lee tour, but there was plenty of time for his best-known work. “I have too many records; it’s a good problem to have,” he said in earnest. That allowed for options in both variety and style.

Saadiq turned the funky groove of Tony! Toni! Toné!’s “Let’s Get Down” into a rock song. His falsetto squeezed “Me And You” for every drop of its young-love, ­fever-dream qualities. He then offered much-welcomed tastes of the hits he’s written and produced for others, including Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky” and Erykah Badu’s “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop).”

It would be impossible for Saadiq to cover everything he’s conceived in the allotted time, but there’s one song he couldn’t leave the District without performing: “Still Ray,” infamous tuba solo and all. The gem has been canonized by legendary go-go outfit Backyard Band, which Saadiq acknowledged while closing the show.

“The cats in D.C. play this better than me,” he said, humble from beginning to end.

https://vanyaland.com/2018/07/25/in-life-and-music-raphael-saadiq-knows-how-to-succeed/ 

In MusicSpotlight

In life and music, Raphael Saadiq knows how to succeed

by Candace McDuffie

July 25, 2018

Vanyaland 

 

Legendary songwriting savant Raphael Saadiq possesses a career that many artists envy but could never emulate. The renowned performer — who has been making music for three decades — took the world by storm in the late-’80s with his R&B supergroup Tony! Toni! Toné! From there, he has gone onto collaborate with, and write for, countless other musical acts that reads like a hall of fame lineup: Whitney Houston, Erykah Badu, The Roots, Mary J. Blige, D’Angelo, Stevie Wonder, and others.
From releasing a string of solo albums to executive producing Solange’s critically acclaimed A Seat at the Table and serving as composer for the HBO series Insecure, Saadiq’s innovative aesthetic has shaped popular culture as we know it. Before his show at Royale in Boston this Thursday night (July 26), he talked to Vanyaland by phone about his thoughts on current R&B and how he ultimately wants to be remembered in music.

Candace McDuffie: From Tony! Toni! Toné! to Lucy Pearl to the artists you’ve written for and worked with, you’ve been a vital cornerstone in R&B music. But when people hear your name, they tend to categorize you as someone who is underrated or has never been directly in the limelight. Are you comfortable with that?

Raphael Saadiq: I hear that a lot — that I’m the most slept on artist. I sort of like it, though. It gives me a chance to be me and to not get caught up in what other people think or say. But the people who know my work… they understand. People know I’m a bad man. Actually, I think that everybody knows at this point.

And you’re everywhere! I saw you at Afropunk for the very first time last year. Can you talk about how it was performing there?

It was a great experience. I got a chance to play my whole library of music and educate some of the younger kids who haven’t heard it…
But they know it though —
Indirectly. It was just great to see so many people in the audience — it was electrifying. And from what I heard, people were leaving other stages to walk to my stage. 

I’m interested in hearing about your creative process with your solo material versus collaborating. Are you harder on yourself than you are with other artists?

I’m a lot harder on myself when I work with other artists. I really want to do a great job when I work with other people; it’s promo for me and when you’re creating with another artist you want them to be happy and excited about the project. On my own projects, I want to play things that some people wouldn’t play. You’ll hear it on my new song called “Too Many Niggas in Rikers Island” which I’m really excited about. I have another song that’s dedicated to my brother who was a heroin addict. The new record is more about addiction and I didn’t do it on purpose — it just sort of happened like that. 

Those kinds of topics can be difficult for people to hear.

When you have so many recognizable songs, it’s hard for people to want to listen to new songs. I’ve been very fortunate to have records come out and people at least want to hear four or five songs from them. I’m also hard on myself because I want to always uphold that standard.

What are your thoughts on modern R&B artists?

Like who?

Anyone in general who you think is doing R&B right right now. Who do you think will have long term careers in such an elusive and constantly changing industry?

I don’t really know who will last. I like Daniel Caesar. I like Solange, of course. Frank Ocean, Janelle Monáe, I like Miguel. There’s a lot of indie stuff I also like. I think it’s up to them if they want to be around; they just have to be really clever. I don’t think they have the label’s support when it comes to putting out albums and sustaining themselves as longevity artists like when I came out. Nowadays, a Black male singer is considered pretty much done at 27. You have to figure out ways around that. For myself, I didn’t go to college — this was it. I had to make the best of it. But these kids are also a lot smarter than we were. I think they have it in them.

I feel like modern R&B artists have gotten raw with their truths and their style. It feels less manufactured to me.

I think so too. I think that they’re rebels and they’re figuring it out. They can see the mistakes that were made within the last four, five years. They’ve seen artists come out, be hot and be gone. You come out one week and the next week you’re forgotten about completely.

Speaking of artists who want to be remembered, what do you want your legacy to be? How do you want to be remembered in music?

Like Frank Sinatra: I did it my way. I’m a great listener, but I did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. For those who want to pursue music, I want you to know it’s doable. You don’t have to be negative all the time… you don’t have to be positive all the time. I was never one or the other. I trusted my ideas always, whether it had to do with a sound or a look. I followed my own leadership and it led me to exactly where I wanted to be. You just have to make your own way.
 
https://www.timeout.com/newyork/music/interview-raphael-saadiq

Interview:

Raphael Sadiqq
 
The consummate soul man plays it cool

by Sophie Harris
April 29, 2011
Timeout


Raphael Saadiq Photograph:
Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
 
There's posh, and there's posh. At Sony's midtown headquarters there are two reception areas: one for the general public, and one for the Sky Lounge on the 35th floor, where a mustachioed gent in a bow tie directs me to the Raphael Saadiq photo shoot.

Saadiq is of course no entry-level musician, having fronted R&B troupes Tony! Toni! Ton! and Lucy Pearl; collaborated with Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu and the Bee Gees; and recorded five superb solo albums—the fifth of which, Stone Rollin', drops on Tuesday 10.
 
A style icon, Saadiq strides into the interview room in crisp wool slacks and red-and-white brogues. (He's been wearing suits since he was seven years old and singing in church, he says.) Poised in a leather armchair, Saadiq insists that music has always been "a gentleman's game" for him. "My music is more blues-oriented," he says. "It's never really been about the 'I'm too sexy for my shirt' thing." His charming, guarded demeanor supports this notion, as does his description of his first big break, touring as part of Sheila E.'s ensemble with Prince: "I was too young for it to blow my mind; I was more stuck on being professional out there," he says. "They had a lot of fun, but it doesn't seem like anybody was too wild."

So far, so businesslike, but Saadiq was basically touring the world with Mr. Sex. Similarly, the video for the Tony! Toni! Ton! smooth jam "It Never Rains (in Southern California)" had Saadiq shirtless and positively glowing with desire. In 2007 he posed naked, entwined with Joss Stone, for a portrait accompanying her album Introducing Joss Stone, which he produced. And in 2002, Saadiq cowrote D'Angelo's Grammy-winning "Untitled (How Does It Feel)," a song (and video) so sexy that its merits are still debated in Ph.D. dissertations.

Saadiq had quite a partnership with D'Angelo, but quickly dismisses the notion that they might be two sides of the same coin. "That's definitely not me," he says. "I'm only around for the creativity, then I'm gone." How does he feel, then, about his songs being used for seduction, as they surely have been since the get-go? "Some people use no lights for sex, some people use light, you know?" he shrugs. "Once they get the product in their household, they can do whatever they want with it. It's only up to me when I make it, then it's out of my hands." It's a wonderful gift, though, isn't it? Saadiq laughs. "I mean, I've heard people say, 'We've made babies to your songs,'" he adds. "That's flattering. A lot of people say they named their daughter Deja [from 'Ask of You']. I think that's cool."

There's plenty of baby-making music on Stone Rollin', from the outrageously slinky, harmonica-drizzled title track to the raw garage-rocker "Over You." "This is the beginning of a cycle of records that will really define me," Saadiq says with quiet confidence. "When I say, 'Go to Hell,' and I sing, 'I can see my name written across the sky'—I didn't write that down. I just started singing it, and it opened up, like, 'This is it!'"

Saadiq recorded the album in his own Los Angeles studio ("You can sit there and create and make all sorts of faces; it's a huge joy"), playing all the instruments himself and taking occasional breaks to go to the driving range. Is he good at golf? "Nah, I just like to hit balls," he says. "I'd rather be good at music than golf." Making the right choices early on is important, Saadiq asserts. "As a youngster you just have to pick those five or six things—and make sure you're pickin' 'em wisely because you're gonna pay for it [Laughs], whatever they are."

Saadiq chose wisely. He's an astonishing talent, and he knows it. Even so, his enduring success over three decades is unusual. He remembers a turning point in the early days of Tony! Toni! Ton!, when, as the band was about to walk onstage, he passed a promoter whose face was hidden in darkness. "And the guy said, 'Yeah, this is your first record. Let's see what your next single sounds like,'" Saadiq says, shaking his head. "He said single. He wasn't talking about albums. And that always stuck with me."

Accordingly, Saadiq's next single has always been good. He's a soul survivor. With the exception of some iffy fashion choices in the '80s, he got here without compromising his dignity, without scandals or bad music. He's built a career on solid, enduring tunes and killer live shows. Now that's a gentleman's game, well played.

Buy music by Raphael Saadiq on iTunes

S.O.B.'s; Mon 9;

Webster Hall; Tue 10;

https://laist.com/2009/03/04/interview_raphael_saadiq.php

Slapdash Interview with Raphael Saadiq at the House of Blues
by Molly Bergen in Arts & Entertainment
March 4, 2009
Race in LA


Photos by Leslie Kalohi/LAist

The talented soul man Raphael Saadiq headlined at the House of Blues on Monday night, and I arrived determined to dance until there were holes in my shoes. His latest The Way I See It had been on repeat in my car for most of 2008. Call it neo-Motown, retro boogie, soul revival, whatever, Saadiq had created one of the best albums of the year and I was thrilled to be able to review the show. Then I got to the box office.

"Oh good, you're here," a disturbingly polished woman with a clipboard greeted me. "You're interview will be in five minutes." I stared at her in horror as my lunch began to creep up my esophagus. I informed her that there had to have been some mistake, but the lady just smiled at me and said I was on the list. Five minutes. Five minutes to prepare and interview Raphael Saadiq. Jesus, I needed five minutes to prepare to meet Raphael Saadiq. In a panic, I whipped out my notepad and started scribbling. I cursed myself for forgetting my recorder. What sort of fool leaves the house without a recording device?

Five minutes later, this coiffed lady led me and my photographer up the labyrinthine stairs of the House of Blues, through a darkly lit corridor, and into Raphael Saadiq's lush dressing room. Mr. Saadiq, smartly dressed in a white button-down shirt and black tie, greeted me warmly and was kind enough not to laugh at my questions. Even when they were about aliens. Here is what was said.

100 Yard Dash

I warn you this is a very poorly researched interview.

(laughs) That's cool. Give me what you have.

How do you feel about this neo-Motown label people are giving the music off your latest album?

This is not a throwback album. I've been doing this since I was nine years old. I just had to warm you guys up to it. That's why I called it The Way I See It.

Was there anything specifically that inspired you to do a more retro sound?

No, no, you don't listen to an album to make an album. It's something that's in you. I've been listening to Motown all my life.

What was the fastest song you wrote on that album?

100 Yard Dash. I wrote that in the studio in one hour. It just came out.


Do aliens exist?

Yes, definately.

How do you know?

(laughs) I've seen them.

Where?

In Cleveland, they were looking for OJs.

If you could sing with anyone alive or dead who would it be?1

Eddie Kendricks.

What's your favorite cheese?

Pepper Jack!

What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen on stage?

In the audience?

Yeah.

It's always weird when you look out into the crowd, and there's this tall guy in the middle of it not moving. Everyone around him is partying, you know, getting down, but he just doesn't move. He's just trying to make your life hard.

What is your favorite thing to do in Los Angeles?

I like going down to Abbott Kinney in Venice and getting something to eat.

What question do you hate being asked the most?

(laughs) Well, I don't hate anything. Hate's too strong a word, but if I had to pick one question...Oh, "How did you get the name Tony! Toni! Tone! ?" People still ask me that.

What's the worst job you ever had?

Oh man, I used to work at this car lot when I was fourteen washing cars. I quit after one day.

What happened?

They asked me to make them coffee or some thing like that.

Was that the first job you've ever had?

No, I had my first job when I was nine.

Nine! What did you do?

I played bass in a gospel group.

What's your favorite place to eat late at night in LA?

Probably, 101 (Coffee House).

That's a really weird place.

I know! The weirdest people show up there.

If you could talk to anyone in the world alive or dead who would it be?

Martin Luther King, Jr.

What would you ask him if you had only one question?

Don't you hate it that people sit and smoke crack on your memorial in Atlanta?

At the mention of "crack" the well coiffed lady ended the interview immediately, whisked me out of the dressing room, and dumped me and my photographer into the hallway. Giddy and discombobulated, Leslie and I had our first Spinal Tap moment, trying to find the stage. We bumbled upon the noisy, hot kitchen, back up musicians tuning, and some sort of VIP smoking room with glittery women and stern looking gentleman peered at us over their martinis.

Eventually we found the right door and joined the throngs that had gathered around the stage. Raphael Saadiq appeared half and hour later and shimmied, whatootsied, and I believe, mashed potatoed his way into the audience's heart. The polite, kind man I had met upstairs became a show-stopping Casanova as soon as the limelight was on him. Within two minutes of Keep On Marchin' Raphael Saadiq had the whole room doing the shuffle. You couldn't keep your butt from wiggling if you wanted to. It was like it had a mind of it's own.

If you ever have a chance to see Raphael Saadiq, (and seeing as how he lives in North Hollywood, you will) be sure to take that opportunity. Even if it means losing control of your butt for a couple hours.

1. What actually came out of my foolish mouth the first time was "If you could sleep with anyone in the world, who would it be?" Which made me turn scarlet for the rest of the interview and drew snorts from Saadiq's manager. Saadiq, just smiled and said, "You're going to get me in trouble."

https://www.grammy.com/grammys/news/raphael-saadiq-talks-insecure-solange-kendrick-lamar

Photo: Raphael Sadiqq. by Evita M. Castine

Interview
Raphael Saadiq Talks "Insecure," Solange and Kendrick Lamar

GRAMMY winner discusses his foray into TV and film scoring, Kendrick Lamar, restaurant and TV show favorites, and what he's insecure about

Bruce Britt

GRAMMYS
September 12, 2017 - 1:03 pm 

In a secular sense, Raphael Saadiq has been born again. Born Charles Ray Wiggins in Oakland, Calif., the singer/songwriter adopted his current nom de plume in a gesture that seemed to symbolize the metamorphic aspirations of his career.

Emerging nearly 30 years ago as frontman for the chart-topping R&B trio Tony! Toni! Toné!, Saadiq nimbly pivoted into a solo career that has thus far yielded four critically acclaimed albums. He's also produced recordings for a range of hit makers, including Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, D'Angelo, and more recently, Solange. And now, he's transitioned into scoring with the hit HBO series "Insecure" and the documentary Step.
On the heels of his Oct. 6 performance at the world-famous Hollywood Bowl with Maxwell and Jazmine Sullivan, we caught up with Saadiq to discuss the addition of TV and film scoring to his résumé, working with Solange, where he keeps his GRAMMY, his style, favorite TV shows, and his go-to L.A. restaurant.
Congratulations on your recruitment as composer for the HBO series, "Insecure." Can you describe your scoring process.

I just look at the characters like Issa Dee and Lawrence [Walker], and frame out what I think the characters are. After that, you just go into the [studio] knowing you've got to get a job done. Musically, I just want to keep the flow going, because it's a great story, a strong point of view from a woman’s voice. It’s great that [I] get a chance to write music for people where I have to still prove myself. I like the process … it's nice to actually stay home and work sometimes, you know?

You scored the feature documentary Step. Was the process different than scoring for TV?

It was a little different, because it's one big piece. It's not episodic like "Insecure," so you have to marry everything at one time. I would get raw footage, and I would translate the emotions the footage brought out in me. You have to let the dialogue be the vocal, that's how I look at it. It's not very easy, but it was interesting because the story reminded me of some of the girls that I grew up with. Their innocence … brought out a lot of different emotions for me to listen to.

How did you come to be involved with Solange's album, A Seat At The Table?

We had already been talking for years about making music together. I always liked that she wanted to do her own thing, no matter what — just finding herself. She had actually finished working on a lot of the album, so she asked me to help her put it all together, sonically. The process never felt like work. I just remember talking to her, and all of a sudden we had this product, a finished record. It was perfect for me, because she did a lot of the heavy thinking.
What do you recall about recording her GRAMMY-winning single, "Cranes In The Sky"?

I remember playing drums. I remember Solange really liking the drums and the chords. Sometimes, I work on musical ideas that other people never pick up on. That's no [criticism] on them, but I love making music for me. But every once in a while, you meet the kind of people who feels the same way you do, and Solange … she heard it. She was like, "I love that!" She wrote that amazing top line over my part. She has the ear.

Can you name a recent song you weren't involved in that really impressed you?
 
I'd have to say "Alright" by Kendrick Lamar. That song helped me get through a whole lot. It's very solid musically, the instrumentation. To Pimp A Butterfly — that whole album was like that to me. I can still listen to that entire album.

You won your first GRAMMY with Erykah Badu for Best R&B Song for "Love Of My Life (Ode To Hip Hop)." Where do you keep it?
 
At my mom's house. She's in Sacramento. She has all the gold albums from the Tony! Toni! Toné! days, and from other people I've worked with. From what I hear, people will walk into the house and say, "That's your son?" And my mom, She’s like, "Yeah … that's him with Obama!" She won't do it in front of me. I'm like, "Mom, don't be bragging about anything, because people are not happy for you!"

What’s your favorite Los Angeles restaurant?

My Two Cents. Everything is good, and it's clean and healthy.

You are quite the clothes horse. Who's the biggest influence on your style?

When I was about 9 years old, my mom worked in housekeeping. She used to take care of this Asian family, and they would give me clothes, like Mohair sweaters and stuff. That's where I learned my fashion from, this older Asian man in the family. I like to have pieces. Since I don't have that many clothes, I can't make any mistakes in my closet. Everything [coordinates].

Aside from "Insecure," what's your favorite TV show?

"Game Of Thrones." I like the stories of the families. I like stories of betrayal, because there's so much of that in life. I also like "Narcos" and "El Chapo." I can watch any Latin crime show. I grew up around dope dealers in Oakland, so by watching these TV shows I can see all the inner-workings, all the negotiations between the guys, the women, the drug dealers, the DAs, the government. I can see how the whole circle works, not just the street level.

Speaking of "Insecure," what are you insecure about?
 
I'm insecure about being famous. I never really wanted to sing, or be up front. I've never wanted to live next door to people that are famous, or live behind gates. I've never wanted people to treat me like I'm famous, so I make sure that doesn’t happen. No matter how much money I ever make, I'm always going to keep it basic. Maybe it's because of the way my parents raised me.

(Bruce Britt is an award-winning freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Chronicle, and other distinguished publications. He lives in Los Angeles.)

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13810633/from-tony-toni-tone-to-insecure-rb-star-raphael-saadiq-is-timeless

Arts

From Tony! Toni! Toné! to 'Insecure,' R&B Star Raphael Saadiq is Timeless

by Tonya Mosley
October 5, 2017
KQED

If Raphael Saadiq could have his way, he would have been born in the same era as early R&B greats like Ray Charles and Etta James. “I don’t mean to sound funny, but I’m timeless,” says the Oakland native in a phone interview. “I came out in ’88 but I would have preferred to come out in the ’50s.”

It’s an interesting, but not surprising, revelation from an artist whose impact on R&B transcends the early ’90s, when he became known for hits like “Anniversary” and “It Never Rains (In Southern California)” with his multi-platinum selling group, Tony! Toni! Toné! Saadiq is responsible for some of the biggest songs of the past two decades, and the roster of artists he’s worked with as a producer reads like a “best performers of all times” list: Stevie Wonder, D’Angelo, Solange, John Legend, Whitney Houston, and the Isley Brothers, just to name a few.

“I’m really surprised about my whole career a little bit,” says Saadiq, reflecting on his influence in the music industry. “I just went to get some coffee and this guy was like ‘Yo man, you’re a genius!’ The 'genius' word is so crazy to me because I know so many people who I think are geniuses!”

Today, you’ll hear Tony! Toni! Toné! songs sampled in two of this year’s biggest rap hits, “Whatever You Need” by Meek Mill featuring Chris Brown and Ty Dolla $ign and “OTW” by DJ Luke Nasty. And Saadiq recently made headlines with his soundtrack work on the popular HBO show Insecure, where he serves as a music composer. The series is known for its popular Spotify playlist, a mix of curated tracks that highlights Saadiq’s ability to write and select music based on the essence of a character.

Main character Issa Dee "has three different personalities, and you have to change the vibe of the music, so like, one part of her is ’90s hip-hop, another is a little jazzier, and one is a little more soulful,” he says. “You have to play music that will speak to their minds and everyone’s mind who is actually watching it on TV.”

Following a stretch of behind-the-scenes work, Saadiq is headed back in the spotlight. He has a sixth studio album in the works and is slated to perform on Oct. 8 as the opening act for Maxwell at the Concord Pavilion -- a homecoming show for the musician, who now lives in Los Angeles.

“I love the Bay,” he says. “I can’t wait to get back home.”

Saadiq says his music is a peek into his own humble beginnings as a boy growing up in Oakland, where local gospel groups shaped him in addition to mainstream influences like Earth, Wind & Fire. “There were so many beautiful singers and musicians like the Hawkins family, the Gospel Hummingbirds, Superior Angels -- local groups that don’t get the notoriety but are really responsible for my career.”

The youngest of 14 children, Saadiq discovered his musical ability early and began playing bass guitar at just six years old. His dad, however, was more of a talk radio kind of guy. “You’d get in my dad’s car and all you’d hear was ‘dah, dah, dah,’” laughs Saadiq. “Every once in a while there would be music, but not much.”

 
Raphael Saadiq. (Evita M. Castine)
 
But Saadiq says his musical talent was something everyone around him could see. His friends, teachers, and classmates -- even the guys in the neighborhood -- always encouraged him to continue on his musical path. “Those guys saw something in me, they would always let me know that I should keep going.”
 
As Saadiq got older, music became an escape. “One of my brothers killed himself. He couldn’t stop doing drugs and he was embarrassed about it,” Saadiq recalls. When he was 11, another brother overdosed on heroin in the garage. Saadiq still remembers riding in a limousine to the funeral. “It’s why, to this day, I don’t like limos.”
Then, in 1990, while Saadiq was writing “It Never Rains (In Southern California),” his sister, an Oakland parole officer, was killed when a man fleeing police in a high-speed chase crashed into her car as she backed out of her driveway.

Raphael Saadiq. (Evita M. Castine)
 
Despite the tragedy he’s endured, Saadiq looks to his religious roots as a source of strength. “There is a saying in church, ‘This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me and the world can’t take it away,’” he reflects. “I just never let the world take away the joy I had as a kid and I just put that into my music.”

By 18 years old, Saadiq had already made major strides in his career: He was traveling the world as a bassist for another Oakland R&B icon, Sheila E., as part of Prince's Parade Tour. Singing came later, after he returned from touring and formed Tony! Toni! Toné! with his brother Dwayne Wiggins and cousin Timothy Christian Riley. Saadiq says he never really wanted to be the lead singer, but when the group went out in search of a record deal, their producers, Tommy McElroy and Denzil Foster, decided Saadiq should be front and center.

“I felt like I was naked without my bass, like the guy in Charlie Brown that had the blanket,” Saadiq says. “So all of those things I learned from those Bay Area gospel groups and quartet groups were all the techniques I used to stand in front of a mic without my bass. It was really annoying in the beginning!”

Still, Saadiq never let his love of bass guitar fade away. You hear it on the Toni! Tony! Toné! albums and on Saadiq’s 2009 solo album, The Way I See It, where he played most of the other instruments including the drums, piano, guitar, and sitar. “I’ve always had a respect for other genres. Rock, blues, country, reggae -- even Middle Eastern music.”

So how does Saadiq know when he has a hit? The answer, he says, is complicated. “When I wrote 'Anniversary,' I just kept humming to myself over and over the line, ‘It’s our anniversary, it’s our anniversary’ and I thought, ‘Oh this sounds good, it just rolled off my tongue.’ I had no idea it was going to turn into like, a ‘Happy Birthday’ song for everybody,” says Saadiq. “But the line I liked the most was when I said ‘Victoria will be no secret.’ I just thought I was the best! My ego kinda came out a little bit, I was like ‘I am killin’ it right now!’”
For a man who feels like he should have been born in a different era, Saadiq has solidified himself as a major influence to contemporary R&B while also serving as a futurist of sorts, setting the mark for what’s considered hot.

With a laugh Saadiq says, “It’s almost like I shapeshift, I can turn into different things when I want to.”

https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/the-meaning-of-soul-music-according-to-raphael-saadiq/

The Meaning of Soul Music According to Raphael Saadiq 

The singer, songwriter, and producer has quietly soundtracked Black America for the last 30 years.

by Marcus J. Moore
Contributor
Interview
Pop/R&B
October 2, 2017

Raphael Saadiq is 51 years old. He doesn’t look it. On a recent Saturday afternoon at the Ace Hotel in midtown Manhattan, the fashion-forward savant is Zen chic in a denim shirt, dark brown Fedora, and gold-rimmed glasses. There aren’t any noticeable gray hairs or prominent wrinkles. In fact, Saadiq looks uncannily similar to his younger self, the crooner who sang about ageless topics like anniversaries, pillows, and Southern California’s lack of rain as a member of R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné! in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Across several other collaborative projects, four solo albums, and his work as a go-to studio guru, Saadiq has embodied an earthy style that pays homage to the funk and soul he loved as a kid while also keeping an ear out for modern-day trends.

He’s helped to write or produce many of your favorite R&B cuts, including D’Angelo’s “Lady” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” and Erykah Badu’s “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop).” And he’s still on the pulse of what’s popular: Most recently, Saadiq co-executive produced Solange’s A Seat At the Table, where he lent vocals, bass, and production to 10 of the album’s 21 tracks. He also works as the lead composer for HBO’s hit series “Insecure,” the Issa Rae-led show that’s as much about Los Angeles—where Saadiq lives nowadays—as it is about its characters.

Throughout his career, Saadiq has always been near the spotlight but never directly in it. His name rings bells, though he’s still underrated amid the pantheon of great soul musicians. He’s only done his own thing, eschewing momentary shine for something longer lasting. “I’ve always wanted my music to be like great furniture,” Saadiq tells me, “something you can go back to and reuse all the time.”

He’s currently working on a new solo album, his first since 2011’s Stone Rollin’, which he describes as “a little bit of everything that I’ve done in the past.” He’ll be returning to an industry where younger artists like Anderson .Paak, Leon Bridges, and BJ the Chicago Kid are taking a similar strategy, thriving on the dusty funk/R&B hybrid Saadiq created all those years ago. Perhaps the world is finally coming around to Saadiq’s genius.

Pitchfork: Do you think modern soul music is catching up to the things you did years ago?

Raphael Saadiq: It’s definitely making its loop, and I’m not surprised. For a while, black people got scared because they felt they couldn’t do true soul. But that’s shifting now. More than anything, I just enjoy making it. You can go to sleep and dream about making that music, then you look up and it’s been 30 years! When you’re making music that you really like, you don’t really think about it, you just enjoy the moment.

Even in working with Solange [on A Seat at the Table], I couldn’t tell you that her record was gonna do that. I wasn’t thinking about it. She has a huge mind for production. She’s a lady with a child and a husband, so on a lot of levels, I wanted to be very respectful to her as a producer. At the same time, I was going through all these changes myself, so it was good to work with someone who works a little differently. Me and Solange would sit and talk for hours. She caught me when I was pissed. She had to hear it all. Afterwards, I thanked her for letting me be a part of it.

You just have to show up and be there with an open mind to make music. The biggest reward in making Solange’s album was watching girls and young women have an anthem—and then see the guys come and join in. That was huge. I feel like people are still coming to join in every day.

With the release of albums like D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, and Kamasi Washington’s The Epic, there seems to be a resurgence in powerful black soul music—the kind you’ve always created. How did those albums resonate with you?

To Pimp a Butterfly, which I loved, hit me at a critical time in my life—that record really held me up. When I heard “Alright,” that was my anthem. I was in my car damn near tearing up listening to that song. At that moment, I had a long-time friend who was my manager, but everything became stagnant. Also, I was still single and I knew I had to make some changes. I was losing my dad. I’d been in the music industry for 30 years. I started looking at my life a little differently. That record had a lot of development, from people like Thundercat, Terrace [Martin], and others. These were people who really wanted to play and wanted to be heard. I’m a huge hip-hop fan, so any time I can hear those categories come together and breathe, it opens up the sound for broader interpretation.

Then you have Kamasi, who was a breath of fresh air for the whole world—for everyone, all shapes, sizes, and colors. When we need something, it manifests. It manifested through these people who practiced their craft for a long time. It manifested through Kendrick and his love of jazz. [Sly and the Family Stone bassist] Larry Graham said something to me a long time ago: There’s a family tree of music with all these different branches. Kamasi played with me, and of course I played with D’Angelo. We’ve all been in each other’s circles. So to see soul, jazz, and hip-hop fuse together, it’s very exciting.

How much did losing your father impact you? 
 
I lost my father, but I gained everything. My pops was so adamant about being straight-up—not being good, but being straight-up. I remember being sad but not as sad, because he took care of his kids. He didn’t play any games with us. He told me how he talked to Malcolm X, like how me and you are talking now. He just knew people; he used to show up.

It was a challenge for my parents to raise kids in East Oakland, especially back then. But as stern as he was, he wanted to save everybody. So when he passed, I gained even more respect for him. I never looked at any record executive like they were some type of god, but I looked up to my father so much that I thought there’s nobody higher but God. He was such a force in my life and in the lives of so many friends I grew up with. He would give advice to people in the way they needed it.

Your dad was a blues singer in his youth, what did he teach you about music?

He’d always talk about honky tonk. He was big on blues and singing. When Sam Cooke died, he said they wanted him to be the next Sam Cooke. I didn’t know if that was true, but he did say that. My dad had a high tenor voice. That’s one thing I learned from my father; I learned how to use my voice as a tenor.

Out of all the things you could’ve done creatively, how did music become your outlet?

I like the feeling of people getting together and I like harmonies: “You try this note, you try this note, you try the lower note.” And with music, there was a sense that everyone was OK—if you were in school or going to college, my parents were fine with that. I would hear my mother speak on the phone about other kids when they did really bad shit, and I didn’t want to give them any problems, so music seemed like the thing they’d let me do by myself. They didn’t actually come watch me do it though. They would hear about it from other people. My mother saw me perform in church. I’d play bass with a small amplifier, nobody could really hear me. Later on, we did “The Arsenio Hall Show” with the Tonys. We had a deal—she didn’t know what a deal was—but she saw us on TV. She said, “I didn’t even know you could do that.” I’d just started singing; I’d never sang before that.

Was it difficult to explain your career to your parents?

My mama used to say, “Go get the government job, by the time you get my age, you can retire.” I wasn’t against that. Or at least I didn’t say I was. I was never going to be disrespectful to that idea. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I just did the music thing and I didn’t make a big deal about it. I said, “Let me just work through this step by step.” Then, when it happened, I never looked back.

Do you feel like you still have something to prove?

I never felt like I had anything to prove until the Tonys’ second album. We had never produced our own album, and we had to make some hits, songs that people like. The next time I thought I had something to prove was [2002’s] Instant Vintage, when I went solo. But at that point, I wanted to make the best record possible for me. After that, I fell back into being just like a jazz musician—I made music only for me. I never made it for certain people. I’m just very lucky that people liked it.
You haven’t released a solo album in a few years. With all the great soul music coming out, have you felt pressure to put out your own material?

Not really, but I am working on a record right now. I’ve never felt like that kind of pressure. I’m always excited to hear someone doing something I may have done. That’s how it should be. Somebody asked me back in the day, when the Tonys were out, “How does it feel to be in the only band out?” At that time, there was no Roots, no Mint Condition. So to hear Anderson .Paak, Kendrick, BJ, Leon Bridges, Little Dragon, and all these things that I love? It’s super exciting. I’ve heard people say, “Leon is doing exactly what you did!” I’m like, “Dude, that’s why I did it.” Because somebody did it for me and I followed. I’ve had the biggest smile of my life watching him do that, getting dressed in ’60s clothes. His album cover was basically Stone Rollin’, same label and everything. I ended up talking to him and I said, “Bruh, run with it. Get it.” We need more, way more.

Do you feel you were ahead of your time?
I don’t think I was ahead of my time. I’ve done ’60s records, then five or six years later, everybody did Motown records. I can’t say it’s my sound, but I think that every time I did it, people weren’t ready.

Do you feel we’re living through a pivotal moment in black music right now?

It’s always a pivotal time for black music. We do it well. We do everything well. We just have to pick the right things to do.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/apr/24/raphael-saadiq-interview

One step back, two steps forward

Many an artist owes their career to Raphael Saadiq's pioneering work, but now he wants urban music to embrace its heritage, as rock'n'roll so often does. Angus Batey meets him 

by Angus Batey
23 April 2009
The Guardian (UK)
 

Raphael Saadiq, American songwriter, singer and producer. Photograph: Sarah Lee

As a teenager, he got a job on Prince's Parade tour by accident. In his 20s he was a member of one of the biggest pop-R&B outfits and in his early 30s, he wrote and produced a Grammy-winning masterpiece one afternoon when he popped in to a studio to cadge a spliff. If he thinks a song really needs a Stevie Wonder harmonica solo, he picks up the phone and an hour later, Stevie's in the studio, laying down the part. Today the erstwhile Charlie Ray Wiggins is relaxed and dapper in the London office of his record company, yet despite all the evidence, it's not always easy being Raphael Saadiq.
"I like to say it's like bein' a smart person that's very good at math, but you don't really need your friends to know that you're really that good," he says, as he starts to explain why it's only on his third solo studio album, The Way I See It, that he's been able to make music that directly references the classic soul sounds he grew up with. "You could engineer a bridge, but people don't really need to know that, so you don't let that part out. I felt like, at this point, I'll just let you know, 'This is what's left for me, to really explore what I like to do.'"
It's perhaps a strange revelation from an artist who appears to have done more than most to reimagine soul and R&B as future-oriented musics. After years alongside his brother and cousin in the group Tony! Toni! Toné! and pioneering production work for the likes of D'Angelo, Bilal and John Legend, The Way I See It finds Saadiq getting in touch with his inner Motown. It's not the recent successes of the Winehouses and the Duffys that have turned his head: the majority of the album was made three years ago, before Back to Black made retro-sounding new-school soul one of the most saleable musical commodities. And anyway, he argues, it's about time black musicians felt able to reference their musical heritage more directly.
"I feel like a lot of white bands do it all the time," he says. "I didn't want to see another white-boy band come out and do a Motown sound, while all the black dudes are singin' with that thing [autotune] on their voices, rappin' and doin' all kindsa tap dancin'. I was like, 'No! I'm not gonna let the Killers come out and be in some suits an' some ties, and somebody else comes out doin' the Beatles, when I eat and sleep that!' Not to take anything from them - I love it when bands like the Killers or the Kings of Leon go back and pull somethin' from the past and make it theirs, I think that's the best thing. But I don't see too many urban groups doin' it."
 
If it requires the kind of cast-list that Saadiq has assembled, maybe the lack of competition is easier to comprehend. As well as Stevie Wonder's late-night dash to answer his distress call ("He picked up the phone and said 'What's up, fool?' He called me 'fool'! I said, 'Man, I need you on this record really bad.' He said, 'When do you need me?' I said, 'An hour,' thinkin' maybe he'd say 'I'll come next week.' And he just came right over that night"), he also called on Joss Stone and veteran Motown percussionist Jack Ashford.

"On Sure Hope You Mean It, Jack played the bells," Raphael recalls. "He was supposed to play a different line, but he did his own thing, and it was magical. When you've got a veteran in the room, you don't say anything. And Joss? The Brits need to not be so hard on her. I've been around a lot of soulful people, and she has it. When she opens up her mouth to sing, you feel it."
Saadiq was born in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, the second-youngest of 14 siblings and half-siblings. "I grew up in a neighbourhood where I was the rare person," he reflects. "I was the person drivin' a moped, listenin' to Dirty Mind or Octopus's Garden. You're drivin' through a ghetto, but you're listenin' to Prince or the Beatles. I was makin' my own little movie in my head."
His obsession and aptitude for music put him in the right place at the right time shortly after his 18th birthday in 1984. He was hanging out in an Oakland studio when a call came in announcing an audition was being held the following day in San Francisco, with places in the touring band for Prince protegee Sheila E up for grabs. While others were decked out in Prince-inspired clothes, working on their dance moves in the queue, Wiggins, in baseball cap and jeans, quietly went about his business. Unimpressed with Sheila's sister, who he felt had too much attitude, he gave a spur-of-the-moment false name; and rather than lose face when Sheila told him he'd got the job, he had to quickly learn to answer to the name Raphael.
"Next thing I was in Tokyo, in a stadium, singin' Erotic City," he marvels. "We were in huge venues with the biggest sound systems in the world; all these roadies throwin' me basses, and a bunch of models hangin' round Prince to party. For almost two years. That was my university."
With Prince's band, the Revolution, "on the outs,", the teenage newcomer often found himself playing bass with the headliner at after-gig club shows. "I think he liked my feel, otherwise he wouldn't have invited me to play," Saadiq reasons. "He introduced us to some nice girls, too. He was really cool about that: he'd always walk up to you and say, 'There enough girls here for you tonight?' Yes, sir!"
"University" over, he returned to Oakland, and got serious about Tony! Toni! Toné! Initially, Raphael was content to let other members produce, but by the time of their second album, in 1990, all the band were involved in crafting the sound. He adopted the surname Saadiq - it means "man of his word" in Arabic, though he is not a Muslim - to avoid confusion in writing and production credits with his brother, Dwayne , who was also in the group.

"I started feeling the at-homeness," Saadiq says of becoming a producer. "You could go outside, get something to eat, go back in the studio: no 'Flight out at four, Raphael - meet you downstairs in five minutes ... ' In my heart I love performing just as much, but I think producing is somethin' everybody should do."
 
By the time the Tonys made their last album in 1996, Saadiq was established as a songwriter, producer and session bass player, roles he has sustained alongside projects such as the short-lived supergroup Lucy Pearl (with A Tribe Called Quest producer and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and En Vogue singer Dawn Robinson) and a solo career that began with the acclaimed Instant Vintage album in 2002.
 
In 1998, he spent a few days working with D'Angelo on the singer's second album, but the painful pace of the protracted sessions at Electric Lady studios in New York meant Saadiq couldn't hang around to complete anything.
"His manager said he was a little upset," Saadiq smiles, "but I'm an Oakland boy - we don't care! A month and a half later I was in New York, walkin' through the Village with this girl, and I wanted a spliff. I was really bein' a little disrespectful - just knock on the door and be like, 'Yo, gimme a spliff,' when he's supposed to be mad at me. But that's what I did! He ran up to the door and said, 'Aaaaah! We gotta do somethin'!'" By the time Saadiq left a few hours later, the pair had finished a track. Untitled (How Does It Feel) won best male R&B vocal at the Grammys in 2000.
After so many years being so many different things to so many different people, helping others find a voice for their own hurts and heartaches, it's a little odd that, aside from a brief mention on Instant Vintage's first track, Saadiq has kept his own pain and loss out of his music.
"My brother was murdered when I was seven," he says, matter-of-factly. "Then another brother ODed - heroin - and my other brother committed suicide because he couldn't get off drugs. My sister was a singer, she sang blues. A cop was chasin' some kid through a residential neighbourhood, and the kid killed her when he ran into her car. And through all of that I was makin' records, but it wasn't comin' out in the music. I did it to kinda show people you can have some real tough things happen in your life, but you don't have to wear it on your sleeve."
There are no dark clouds hovering over The Way I See It; the record is a euphoric celebration, made by someone who has spent a lifetime getting to trust his intuition. "I was more or less makin' a record that I like," he says. "Goin' on stage and playin' these songs is the most natural I've ever felt in my whole career. It took me a while to be able to say that; I've made so many records and performed so many times I wasn't sure what I was feelin' was true. But I'm more open with myself on the stage, and I feel that everybody's there with me and we're all gettin' something really big out of it, together. The energy goes both ways, from the listeners to me and the band, and everybody has the same feeling. Through rough times we're getting this vibration - which is how it's supposed to be."
• Raphael Saadiq plays at the IndigO2 in London on Monday 27 April.

https://www.thefader.com/2019/08/22/raphael-saadiq-interview-jimmy-lee-addiction

music / R&B
 
How Raphael Saadiq pushed through pain to make his best album yet

The R&B genius talks about Jimmy Lee and the ills of the world.

by Larry Fitzmaurice
August 22, 2019
The Fader

Photo by Aaron Rapoport

Over the last two decades, R&B impresario and former Tony! Toni! Toné! member Raphael Saadiq has charted a solo career lovingly steeped in retro stylings, effortlessly drawing from previous eras of popular music like water from a well. Jimmy Lee is different, sort of: Saadiq's fifth and, quite possibly, strongest solo album still carries threads of the smooth R&B, holistic soul, slithering funk, and early-era rock guitars that he's explored from 2002's neo-soul stunner Instant Vintage up to the '50s-evoking Stone Rollin' from 2011.

But through impeccable production textures and an impressively varied sonic palette, Jimmy Lee also joins the rank of recent old-but-new classics from veteran artists like A Tribe Called Quest's We Got It From Here...Thank U For Your Service and Erykah Badu's dual-headed New Amerykah releases — music that sounds new even as it identifiably comes from an artist whose sound is still readily recognizable within what they've created. When I tell Saadiq his album is reminiscent of these recent luminaries, as well as the work of former collaborators like Miguel and Solange, his brief puzzlement cuts through the noisy din of the Standard Hotel's East Village lounge.


Read Next: Raphael Saadiq shares “Glory to the Veins” featuring Ernest Turner

"I don't hear it that much," he admits, elaborating that Jimmy Lee is his way of encapsulating everything he's accomplished in his career thus far: "I always go back to go forward, for some reason — I don't know where I get that from." If the new album is an embodiment of Saadiq's time-tripping approach, it's even more so a personal work addressing the scourge of drug addiction — a subject directly inspired by one of his brother's (whose name adorns the album itself) passing after a fatal overdose. "It's not so much a record dedicated to Jimmy as it is saying everyone has a little bit of Jimmy in them," he explains. "Whether it's sex, chocolate, drugs, or coffee, everybody has some type of addiction. I wanted to spread these stories of things that I went through over the last eight years."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Saadiq
 
Raphael Saadiq

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Saadiq at the 2012 Time 100

Raphael Saadiq (/səˈdiːk/; born Charles Ray Wiggins; May 14, 1966) is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. He rose to fame as a member of the multiplatinum group Tony! Toni! Toné! In addition to his solo and group career, he has also produced songs for such artists as Joss Stone, D'Angelo, TLC, En Vogue, Kelis, Mary J. Blige, Ledisi, Whitney Houston, Solange Knowles and John Legend.
He and D'Angelo were occasional members of The Ummah, a music production collective, composed of members Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, and J Dilla of the Detroit-based group Slum Village. He is a co-founder of independent video game developer IllFonic, which developed Friday the 13th: The Game.
Saadiq's critically acclaimed album The Way I See It, released on September 16, 2008, featuring artists Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone, and Jay-Z, received three Grammy Award nominations. His fourth studio album, Stone Rollin', was released on March 25, 2011.[1] For the album, Saadiq worked with steel guitarist Robert Randolph; former Earth, Wind & Fire keyboardist Larry Dunn; Swedish-Japanese indie rock singer Yukimi Nagano (of Little Dragon fame); funk artist Larry Graham (on the bonus song "Perfect Storm")[2] and Taura 'Aura Jackson' Stinson.[3][4]
Music critic Robert Christgau has called Saadiq the "preeminent R&B artist of the '90s".[5]
References
Template:Url=https://www.raphaelsaadiqmusic.com/
External links



Wikimedia Commons has media related to Raphael Saadiq.


Official website

Raphael Saadiq on IMDb

The Stone Rollin' Sessions Interview With Raphael Saadiq, co-producer Chuck Brungardt, Taura Stinson & Ron Fonksa Bacon on Soul Jones (July 2011)

Interview of Raphael Saadiq on SoulRnB.com (June 2011)



Steffen Hung. "Raphael Saadiq – Stone Rollin'". austriancharts.at. Retrieved July 13, 2014.


Jones, Soul (June 13, 2011). "Soul Jones Words: Like A Rolling Stone – Raphael Saadiq Interview (Featuring Rob Fonksta Bacon, Taura Stinson & Chuck Brungardt)". Souljoneswords.blogspot.com. Retrieved July 13, 2014.

Batey, Angus (April 24, 2009). "One step back, two steps forward". The Guardian. London. Retrieved December 31, 2010.

"Raphael Saadiq: Putting the cool in ol' skool". Bluesandsoul.com. Retrieved July 13, 2014.

Christgau, Robert (October 2008). "Raphael Saadiq: The Way I See It". Blender. Alpha Media Group. Retrieved March 30, 2012.

Perry, Clayton (November 27, 2008). "Interview: Raphael Saadiq – Singer, Songwriter and Producer". Blog Critics. Archived from the original on September 27, 2012. Retrieved December 31, 2010.

Buskin, Richard (June 2009). "Raphael Saadiq: Producing The Way I See It". Sound on Sound. Retrieved December 31, 2010.

Bianculli, David; Tucker, Ken (October 10, 2008). "Saadiq Revisits R&B Past In 'The Way I See It'". Fresh Air. NPR. WHYY-FM. Archived from the original on January 1, 2015. Transcript. Retrieved April 7, 2012.

Lorez, Jeff. "Raphael Saadiq 2008 Interview". SoulMusic.com. Archived from the original on September 17, 2008. Retrieved September 27, 2008.


Lewis, Pete. "This Year's Vintage – Pete Lewis Interviews Raphael Saadiq". Blues & Soul. Blues & Soul. Retrieved September 10, 2009.

Whitburn, Joel (December 1, 2004). Top R and B/Hip-Hop Singles, 1942–2004 (5, illustrated ed.). Record Research Inc. p. 507. ISBN 0-89820-160-8.

"Music: Voodoo (CD) by D'Angelo (Artist), 106263815". Tower.com. January 25, 2000. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 13, 2014.


"Rocklist.net Rolling Stone (USA) End of Year Lists". Rocklistmusic.co.uk. Archived from the original on July 23, 2010. Retrieved July 13, 2014.


Boylan, J. Gabriel (September 2008). "Who Will Save R&B?". The New York Observer. Retrieved September 18, 2012.


Jones, Soul (May 15, 2011). "Soul Jones Words: Innervisions – Raphael Saadiq Interview". Souljoneswords.blogspot.com. Retrieved July 13, 2014.


"Mick Jagger Added To GRAMMY Lineup". grammy.com. National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. February 3, 2011. Retrieved February 3, 2011.


"The Official Raphael Saadiq Site". Raphael Saadiq. Archived from the original on January 9, 2011. Retrieved April 24, 2012.

Myers, Gina. "Motown Revival – A Review of Raphael Saadiq's Stone Rollin'". Frontier Psychiatrist. Archived from the original on May 13, 2011. Retrieved May 10, 2011.

Bentley, Jason. "First Listen: Raphael Saadiq, 'Stone Rollin". NPR. Retrieved May 13, 2011.


"Concert review: Raphael Saadiq at Park West". Chicago Tribune. June 4, 2011.


Kot, Greg (December 2, 2011). "Top albums of 2011; Wild Flag top album of 2011". Chicago Tribune. Tribune Company. Retrieved December 25, 2011.

"Album review: Raphael Saadiq, "Stone Rollin'" (Columbia)". Archived from the original on June 7, 2011.


"American Epic Sessions interviewees & performers" (PDF). Thirteen.org. 2017. Retrieved February 27, 2018.

"American Epic: The Collection & The Soundtrack Out May 12th | Legacy Recordings". Legacy Recordings. April 28, 2017. Retrieved February 27, 2018.

Arena, B. B. C. (June 8, 2017). ""The truest sound you could ever get" - @RaphaelSaadiq performs for @AmericanEpic THE SESSIONS". @BBC_Arena. Retrieved February 27, 2018.

Aswad, Jem (February 23, 2018). "Raphael Saadiq on His Oscar-Nominated 'Mudbound' Song, Working With Mary J. Blige and Declining Prince's Record Deal". Variety. Retrieved May 21, 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/arts/music/raphael-saadiq-jimmy-lee.html

Raphael Saadiq Finally Put His Past on the Record

From his days with the ’90s R&B band Tony! Toni! Toné! through his work for Solange and Mary J. Blige, he’s hesitated to bring his personal history into his music. That’s changing now.

PHOTO: Raphael Saadiq’s new album, “Jimmy Lee,” explores his personal history like never before.Credit...Peter Prato for The New York Times
 
by Alex Pappademas
August 15, 2019
New York Times

LOS ANGELES — “My first funeral, I was 7 years old,” Raphael Saadiq said. “They called my name: ‘Charlie Ray Wiggins, limousine three!’ I never liked limousines after that.”

He was sitting in a control room at his studio, Blakeslee Recording, surrounded by totems of the past — a trophy from the first talent show he won at Elmhurst Junior High in Oakland, Calif., an Amy Winehouse prayer candle and enough vintage guitars to stock three pawnshops.

Saadiq, 53, wore a pale-blue T-shirt and periodically tugged at his twists of hair. He was talking about family and addiction and loss, about a life marked by a string of tragedies, and about why it took him until now, more than two decades into his career, to bring these stories into his music.

His new album “Jimmy Lee,” out this week, is his first in eight years. It is named for his brother Jimmy Lee Baker, who overdosed in the 1990s after contracting H.I.V., but uses his story to tell a broader one about lives under pressure. It wasn’t Saadiq’s plan to make a concept album, let alone one that digs into stories this personal. But over the course of a few nights in this studio in early 2019, he began to hear the ghosts speak.

That first funeral was for his older brother Alvie Wiggins, who was murdered in 1973 in a dispute with a family member. Saadiq’s brother Desmond Wiggins, like Jimmy Lee Baker, struggled with addiction, and killed himself in 1987. Three years later, his sister Sarah backed out of her driveway and into the path of a police chase. Saadiq was working on the second album by his R&B band Tony! Toni! Toné! when he got the news that she had been killed; he walked back into the studio and sang “It Never Rains (in Southern California),” a yearning long-distance love ballad that would top the Billboard R&B singles charts in the fall of 1990.

None of this has ever been a secret. Saadiq has had a tattoo of Alvie, Desmond and Jimmy’s faces on his arm for 20 years. But from his time with the band he affectionately calls “The Tonys” up through his solo career — four albums between 2002 and 2011, each more joyous, and consummately crafted than the last — he’s always prioritized hooks and concision over self-expression.
“My compositions had to go farther than me,” he said. “I just thought about delivering.”
For two decades, he’s done it, over and over. As a producer, he’s pulled concise statements out of performers who often default to the diffuse, such as D’Angelo (“Lady” and “Untitled [How Does It Feel]”) and Solange (“Cranes in the Sky.”) But as one of relatively few major figures of the hip-hop age who grew up playing in bands, he’s just as adroit at leading from behind as a sideman, steering Mary J. Blige to an Oscar nomination (for “Mighty River,” from “Mudbound”) or playing bass behind Mick Jagger on a Grammy salute to Solomon Burke.

“Raphael manages to defy time by being continuously culturally and musically relevant,” said Rob Stringer, the chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment, which includes Columbia, the label releasing “Jimmy Lee,” adding, “he always has his finger on the pulse without ever being overexposed.”

Saadiq has been more underground than usual lately, writing music for films and TV, including the score for HBO’s “Insecure.” The work is gratifying because it involves producing music on time and to specification, a skill Saadiq takes pride in having cultivated: “They need a pink elephant on Sunday,” he said, “you’ve got to give it to ’em.”

When Saadiq left Tony! Toni! Toné!, he wanted to explore his creative options. “If I was free to do anything I wanted to do? I’m my own best bet. I’ll bet on me all the time.”Credit...Peter Prato for The New York Times

As a solo artist, Saadiq has long been a master without a masterpiece for consensus to point to. “Jimmy Lee” could change that through sonic ambition alone. Several tracks have an icy Europop sheen, a nod to Saadiq’s past as an “early MTV kid” who dug Duran Duran and Level 42. The Kendrick Lamar feature “Rearview” finds Saadiq quavering on the chorus like David Bowie or the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. The choir on “Rikers Island” — 30-plus voices railing in blunt language against the mass incarceration of black men — is actually all Saadiq, multitracked to infinity.
Saadiq has always bent time-tested pop idioms into supple, modern shapes. But he’s never populated his tracks with desperate characters on the run from themselves and the world’s harsh judgment, forever getting in their own way. The album title “is a reference to everything — I couldn’t name it after all of them,” he said, but Saadiq himself is a newly raw and vulnerable presence too.
“It’s probably the most honest record I’ve ever made,” he said. While he’s talking about a few people on the songs, “a lot of it relates to me. It was like a mirror.”
Saadiq’s father, Charlie Wiggins, was a former super-lightweight boxer who played blues guitar sang in a voice like Sam Cooke’s, but chose family and a steady job over a career in music. He worked for decades as a sheet metal man at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, Calif., but always kept a battered guitar and a little tweed Fender amplifier around.

Charlie had been married and divorced by the time he met Edith James, Saadiq’s mother. Collectively, his parents had 14 children, but Saadiq was the only child they had together. He came along late, when many of his siblings were grown. (His father would tease him, “You were a good mistake, but you were a mistake.”)
As a child, Saadiq often caught a ride between his families’ houses on the handlebars of his older brother Randy Wiggins’ bike. “He sang better than all of us,” Saadiq said of Randy. “That’s how I learned about the Delfonics and the Stylistics.”
Randy sang with Alvie in talent shows but never pursued music professionally, and is now retired after a long career with Kilpatrick’s Bakeries in Oakland. Asked in a phone interview about the present state of his falsetto, he offered an impromptu demonstration, singing the first few bars of the Stylistics’ “Betcha by Golly Wow” into the phone in a voice that was high and powerful.
Saadiq was a child when Alvie was killed; he had more time with Jimmy Lee, a heroin addict who didn’t get along with their stepfather, Ed Nelson, Saadiq said, and would sometimes break into the Nelson house and steal whatever he could. “For me to title my album ‘Jimmy Lee’ — people in my family will wonder, Why him,” Saadiq said.
Saadiq said his brother Desmond also fell into addiction and shot himself in Saadiq’s father’s apartment, and matter-of-factly described the family cleaning up the aftermath. “We didn’t know what to do,” he said. “We just did it.”

Saadiq described himself as an observant kid. Witnessing his brothers’ travails informed his own decisions. Street life didn’t beckon him. “I never could have sold dope,” Saadiq said. “I didn’t think some dude my age could be my boss and tell me what to do.”

Instead, when he was still in grade school, he found his first professional music gig, backing the Gospel Messengers, who’d met as custodians at the hospital where Saadiq’s mother worked. At age 9, he became the bassist of his uncle Elijah Baker’s group, the Gospel Hummingbirds, and carried a stack of business cards identifying himself as such.
Oakland was a musical hotbed back then. Natalie Cole’s band lived around the corner from his mother’s house; once, at the supermarket, a preteen Saadiq encountered his idol, Larry Graham, the Sly & the Family Stone and Graham Central Station bassist, who was shopping in platforms and leather with a Lincoln Continental parked outside.
Saadiq spent hours in his room, teaching himself to play Graham’s busy bass lines — particularly “Pow” and “Release Yourself,” which Saadiq said were essentials for any bassist looking to sit in with a pickup band — as well as songs by the Commodores and Earth, Wind & Fire.

Saadiq formed Tony! Toni! Toné! with his brother D’Wayne Wiggins and the drummer Timothy Riley at the end of the ’80s. Hip-hop had crews, R&B had groups, but neither one had bands; the skills they’d honed on the competitive Oakland garage-band circuit set them apart at the peak of the age of sampling. But Saadiq also sought out the Queens rappers A Tribe Called Quest and quizzed them about their gritty drum sound.

Tony! Toni! Toné;! featuring Saadiq, left, and D'Wayne Wiggins, center, on “Saturday Night Live” in December 1993.Credit...Gene Page/NBC, via Getty Images
Tribe’s DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad contributed to the Tonys’ fourth album, “Sons of Soul,” and said watching them work out the song “Couldn’t Keep It to Myself” at a recording session in Trinidad inspired him to learn an instrument.
“He just said, ‘Yo, follow me,’” Muhammad said. “He started playing a bass line and singing — just humming, freestyling like a rapper. I was just staring at them — they had not said a word to each other but they all joined in and started playing.”
“Sons of Soul” yielded the Tonys’ biggest hit, the rollicking “If I Had No Loot.” Saadiq said he effectively left the band after that, although they made one more album together in 1996. He wasn’t, as he put it, “trying to be Bobby Brown or something” when he left. He hoped to go broader, not bigger.

“I wanted to be able to shoot from anywhere on the court,” he said. “I didn’t think it was just singing. I didn’t think it was just producing. If I was free to do anything I wanted to do? I’m my own best bet. I’ll bet on me all the time."

On the 1995 soundtrack for John Singleton’s “Higher Learning,” the newly solo Raphael Wiggins is credited for the first time as “Raphael Saadiq.”


“I just wanted a little separation — some branding, different from the Tonys, different from a Wiggins,” he said. (He had become “Raphael” on an audition to play in Sheila E’s live band in the mid-80s.) Also, he was told an executive at PolyGram asked: “Who wants to hear an artist named Raphael Wiggins?”

He was not, for the record, trying to be Bobby Brown. His aspirations as a performer continued to be band-shaped. There was the unrecorded Lynwood Rose, whose various incarnations featured Saadiq playing bass alongside D’Angelo and A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip and Muhammad. A less theoretical supergroup, Lucy Pearl — with Saadiq, Muhammad and Dawn Robinson, formerly of En Vogue — released one self-titled album, in 2000.


“I’ve always been making music for me,” Saadiq said.Credit...Peter Prato for The New York Times

That same year, D’Angelo released his years-in-the-making second album “Voodoo,” a work of moody postmodern R&B that played mostly like deep-space transmissions from a nebula of Nag Champa smoke — except for the sensual, soaring “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” the first indelible soul single of the 21st century, which happened to be the one track Saadiq co-wrote.
“I don’t think he gets credited enough. Raphael is not the type of person to look for credit,” said Muhammad, who added that it was Saadiq who first played him D’Angelo’s demo tape in a car in Manhattan in 1992.
“‘There’s Stevie, there’s Michael, there’s Marvin and then there’s D’Angelo,’” Muhammad remembered him saying. “What a setup, for a brand-new artist who was just walking around with a demo tape.”

When asked, toward the end of the day in North Hollywood, if he felt he’d been properly credited for his contributions to D’Angelo’s success, Saadiq answered, “I do,” and then he said “I do” again, and then he said he really didn’t worry much about it, and then he talked about it for a while longer.

Postmodern R&B

How the Soulquarians Birthed D’Angelo’s ‘Voodoo’ and Transformed Jazz
Aug. 8, 2018


Saadiq said that even D’Angelo has called him underrated.

“He says, ‘Man, I don’t feel like the whole world knows that you’re dope,’” Saadiq said, approximating his friend’s gravelly delivery.

Saadiq also said this was how he preferred it: “People aren’t watching until I hit ’em in the head with something like this album. I like to pick my punches, when I want to hit you at.”

“I’ve always been making music for me. Only for me,” he continued. “I understood how lucky and fortunate I was, for people to listen to me and like me and to buy a ticket to come see me — I knew that was very special, because I didn’t make the music for them.”

So where does the satisfaction come from? “Right here when it comes off your speakers. That is already the Grammy.”

Saadiq skipped the Grammy Awards in 2017, the year Solange won for a song he helped write. When it was suggested that “Jimmy Lee” is the kind of record that might mandate his attendance at next year’s ceremony, he laughed.

“Grammys are beautiful things,” he said. “I just think you have to start wanting to win it right here first, before it gets to them."

He stood up, walked to the console, and stood with his arms outstretched, as if surveying an invisible kingdom on the other side of the control-room glass.
“When you feel it in here,” he said, “you should be feeling like, I just won.”

Correction: Aug. 16, 2019

An earlier version of this article misidentified the school where Raphael Saadiq won his first talent show. It was Elmhurst Junior High, not Castlemont High School. An earlier version of the article also misstated the surname of the drummer for Tony! Toni! Toné!. He is Timothy Riley, not Timothy O’Brien.

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 18, 2019, Section AR, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Raphael Saadiq’s Ghosts Speak. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper

  

THE MUSIC OF RAPHAEL SAADIQ : AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH RAPHAEL SAADIQ:

Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It (Full Album)

Raphael Saadiq - Something Keeps Calling

Saturday Sessions: Raphael Saadiq performs

Raphael Saadiq - So Ready (Official Video)

Raphael Saadiq - Ask of You (Official Video)

Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin' (Video Version)

Raphael Saadiq: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Raphael Saadiq ft. D'Angelo - Be Here (Official

Raphael Saadiq - Good Man (Video)

Raphael Saadiq - This World is Drunk

Raphael Saadiq - Radio (Video Version)

Raphael Saadiq - Something Keeps Calling

Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin' (Video Version)

Raphael Saadiq - Good Man (Video)

Raphael Saadiq - This World is Drunk

Raphael Saadiq - Radio (Video Version)