Retro Perspective

Soul visionary Raphael Saadiq revisits classic black pop on his new album, The Way I See It.

By K. Leander Williams Photograph by Shannon Taggart

Raphael Saadiq is in the back of a minijeep that is shuttling down Madison Avenue. The 42-year-old singer, bassist and producer is en route to the radio station WBLS for a drive-time chat with Wendy Williams. This is the tail end of the third day of assembly-line interviews to promote his forthcoming disc, The Way I See It (Columbia). He’s stylishly serene in pegged trousers and mod suede ankle boots, and yet, as Saadiq scans the tape recorder between us and then looks out the window, it’s worth wondering if he’s wishing he were elsewhere.

The Oakland native’s next utterance is surprising: “Y’all writers are killing me with these prefixes,” Saadiq sighs into a half chuckle. He sounds more like an editor than a hit-making L.A.-based producer who has helped reinvent contemporary R&B—both as a solo artist and through his work guiding everyone from D’Angelo and Mary J. Blige to Joss Stone and John Legend. “The music on The Way I See It is gonna be called ‘retro-soul,’ ” he explains. “Several years back, when I had my group Lucy Pearl, they were calling our stuff ‘neosoul.’ ” Saadiq pauses. “I guess I understand it, but it’s also kinda wack. It’s just not how I see what I do. People use the phrases old school and new school all the time, but I think of it like what Isaac Hayes once said: ‘The terms are irrelevant.’ What matters is that you either went to school or you didn’t.”

Perhaps fittingly, The Way I See It (the third album under his own name—though he was born Charlie Ray Wiggins—following 2002’s Grammy-nominated Instant Vintage and 2004’s hit-and-miss blaxploitation epic Ray Ray) is a clear indication of Saadiq’s erudition, which encompasses the history of classic black pop music. On the surface, each song seems as if it might have been plucked from a time capsule. The opener, “Sure Hope You Mean It,” and the first single, “Love That Girl,” are multitracked doo-wop worthy of the Temptations or Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, while “Just One Kiss,” a groovy duet with Joss Stone, has the springy feel of Memphis funk awash in swirling strings, akin to the Spinners. Saadiq’s music is enlivened by urban sonics from the present, however. Much as he did in the group Tony! Toni! Toné!—the Wiggins family band that made him a star in the early ’90s—Saadiq fastidiously tweaks the old with the new. He grins with pride when asked about the fleet-footed Hurricane Katrina remembrance “Big Easy,” which cleverly hangs a tale about the broken levees onto a plea generally associated with the lovelorn (“Somebody tell me what’s goin’ wrong / I ain’t seen my baby in far too long”). “I’ve watched people dance to that song in a club,” he says. “It made me feel like I’ve done right by the New Orleans tradition, which is to turn a funeral into a party.”

Saadiq is well aware that new listeners may see his record as part of a trend spearheaded by the runaway success of troubled Brit singer Amy Winehouse. He’s unfazed by it, even though his penchant for giving latter-day music the snap of the elders clearly predates hers—the Tony! Toni! Toné! discs Sons of Soul (1993) and House of Music (1996) chart his lifelong interests. “Someone who’s been at this as long as I have doesn’t stress about that,” he says. “I mean, I do a lot of things—play, perform, produce—and to a certain extent I think all of it is risky whether it fits a trend or not. In the end, audiences are still going to have to come to my records by other sources than radio and big-chain record stores—and the major stores are closing, anyway.” Saadiq gazes out the window again, taking in the bustling pedestrians near WBLS’s Park Avenue headquarters. “What I find interesting, though, is that listeners now seem more open to all kinds of music without any barriers,” he says. “It can be different, familiar, old jazz, new rock and everything in between. As a musician, it kinda makes you feel like trying anything.”

Listen: "Love That Girl"

Listen: "100 Yard Dash"

Want more? Check the blog on August 29 for another track off Raphael Saadiq's upcoming album, The Way I See It out Sept 16

NEXT: M-I-C-K-E-Y M-U-S-I-C Deep inside the Disney castle, a group of chart-busting elves is cranking out the tunes that are guaranteed to have you humming—or drive you crazy—this fall.»

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