Raphael Saadiq Finally Put His Past on the Record
@stomachlines
Raphael Saadiq Finally Put His Past on the Record
On his first album in eight years, named after his brother “Jimmy Lee,” the singer and producer brings his family’s tragedies into his music.
By Alex Pappademas
- 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 Castlemont High School 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.
“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.”
“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 O’Brien 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.
“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?”
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 wonfor 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.”
@stomachlines
.
