Hanging out in Sacramento not long ago on a trip to see his mother, Raphael Saadiq dropped into a crowded barbershop for a haircut.
“They didn’t know who I was for a sec, but they figured it out real quick,” says the 58-year-old musician: a crucial figure in R&B who’s performed, written, produced or played on an intergenerational array of songs over the last four decades — sometimes on his own, sometimes with a group, sometimes for a star more famous (if rarely more talented) than he. “They put on a playlist of my records, and eventually this guy asked me, ‘What do you think about when you hear your records playing?’” he recounts. Saadiq sat with the question for a moment. “What I realized is that they stood the test of time.”
Born and raised in Oakland, Saadiq led the hit-making trio Tony! Toni! Toné in the 1980s and ’90s, then formed an R&B supergroup, Lucy Pearl, before embarking on a solo career; in and among those gigs, he made records with D’Angelo, Bilal, Whitney Houston, the Isley Brothers, John Legend, Erykah Badu, Solange and Alicia Keys, among many others. This month he won his third Grammy Award for his work on Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter,” which was named album of the year, and on Sunday he’ll perform a musical tribute to his native Bay Area before the NBA All-Star Game at San Francisco’s Chase Center.
Saadiq, who operates these days out of a studio in North Hollywood — and who mentors students at USC’s Thornton School of Music as part of Dean Jason King’s Creative Vanguard program — recently announced a subscription service called Vinyl Club through which he’s reissuing material from his catalog, beginning with Lucy Pearl’s self-titled 2000 debut. As he drove back to L.A. from his mom’s place, he got on the phone to tell the stories behind five of his best-loved tunes.
Tony! Toni! Toné!, ‘Anniversary’ (1993)
Formed by Saadiq, his brother D’Wayne Wiggins and their cousin Timothy Christian Riley, Tony! Toni! Toné bridged R&B’s new jack swing and neo-soul eras. This sumptuous ballad reached No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart in its edited form, though the song stretches to nearly 10 minutes on the trio’s double-platinum “Sons of Soul” LP.
The thing that really made the song was Clare Fischer, the string composer. I knew Clare from the Rufus and Chaka Khan records and the Prince records, and I’d always wanted to use him. My thing was that if I ever got any money and if I found the right piece, I was gonna call Clare Fischer. He brought a sweetness that took the record to a different level — a level that made it feel like an anniversary. It felt so good to me that I said, “You know what? This song can’t be three minutes long — it has to be 10 minutes on the record.”
I remember mixing it at the Record Factory in New York. When I walked out of the studio early in the morning, I ran into Nile Rodgers — he was bringing his Porsche down in the elevator. It was raining, and he looked at me and said, “Hey man, you need a ride?” I love Nile Rodgers, especially as a kid. I was really into Chic and Bernard Edwards. So to see him that morning and just watch him take off in his Porsche in the rain — I was like, “Wow, this s—’s crazy.”
The “Anniversary” music video is built around a live performance scene. Was it important to the band to show that you all played instruments?
It’s all we knew, so it wasn’t even a thing. We never went anywhere without our instruments. It’s like you’re going outside to play with your friend — are you gonna bring your arm with you?
Your first two Grammy nominations were for “Anniversary”: best R&B song and best R&B performance by a duo or group.
It was a little shocking. Watching the Grammys as a kid, the people that won everything was Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. But even when we got nominated for the Soul Train Awards, we always lost. I remember we had like five nominations at the Soul Train Awards with “Sons of Soul.” I’m thinking we gotta win something on the concept, and we didn’t win anything. [The producer] Thom Bell heard I was a little bummed, and he asked somebody to send me a message. He said, “Tell him that when the IRS comes to take your house, they leave those awards on the mantelpiece.”
The Tonys reunited for a tour in 2023. How’d “Anniversary” go over every night?
It was the most beautiful thing ever. What I loved about it is that people were enjoying each other. I took away the phones on the tour — it was a no-phones tour. And people were a little upset. But I wanted people to experience what I experienced when I went to see Parliament-Funkadelic or Earth, Wind & Fire or the O’Jays. My recall from those shows is what I saw. I was looking dead at every musician, everything they did. At the Tony shows, people were dancing, hugging, kissing, then looking at us — and without a phone in front of their face.
Lucy Pearl, ‘Dance Tonight’ (2000)
After Tony! Toni! Toné! broke up in 1997, Saadiq put together a new trio with En Vogue’s Dawn Robinson and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest.
I didn’t want to be a solo act — I still wanted to be in a band. It’s like Bruno [Mars]. Bruno is a solo act, but he’s really in a band. He’s a modern Kool & the Gang to me. So I called people that were from popular groups before, sort of like the Traveling Wilburys, right? I don’t like the term “supergroup,” but that’s what they say.
Nobody who’s ever been in a supergroup likes the term. What’s so bad about it?
It just sounds super-corny — although somewhere in the back of our mind we probably were like, We are super.
You, Dawn and Ali Shaheed are credited as songwriters across the Lucy Pearl album. Did the collaboration click right away?
Well, some people we just gave credit to that didn’t write any songs. But for “Dance Tonight,” I have to credit the basis of the music to Ali Shaheed. He came to me and he played the chords to “Dance Tonight,” and it sounded so good. He couldn’t play it in time, but I could hear the chords.
I always get a kick out of the lyric where you say, “Let’s purchase two new Bentleys / I know that it looks trendy.”
That was a silly line to make silly people listen to the song. I’ve never owned a Bentley in my life.
Lucy Pearl didn’t last long. Looking back, did the group accomplish what you’d hoped?
I wish that we could have stayed together a little longer. We tried. I think maybe we were out for six months after the album, but at the end of the tour it was pretty much over. Dawn wanted to do a solo record.
D’Angelo, ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel)’ (2000)
Saadiq co-produced D’Angelo’s 1996 hit “Lady” then re-teamed with him for this Grammy-winning highlight from the singer’s 2000 masterpiece, “Voodoo.” Deeply indebted to the ornate soul-funk balladry of Prince — for whom Saadiq had played bass on the road in the mid-’80s — “Untitled” spawned an instant-classic video starring an extremely muscular (and seemingly naked) D’Angelo.
According to the internet, it’s just you and D’Angelo playing the music.
That’s true. What happened was I was walking through the Village, beautiful summer day outside, and I wanted to get something to smoke on while I’m enjoying New York. I went to Electric Lady [Studios], knocked on the door: Lemme stop and see if I can grab a joint from this dude real quick. D came to the door himself. Usually you’d have a second engineer or somebody run up and open it. But he opened the door. I’m like, “You got a joint?” He’s like, “Yeah, I got a joint — but come in, let’s write a song!”
Why was D’Angelo the guy to get some weed from?
Because we vibe like that. When you’re in the studio, you’re gonna be in there all night, so you have to have the good food, the good smoke, because you’re not leaving. You’re gonna be in there creating. So I walked in and he started playing piano. He’s an amazing piano player — plays with a different texture than anybody I know. I played bass, then he played something on keyboards and I played guitar while we had this drumbeat going. I’m a very spiritual person, so I’ll just say that it’s like we were placed together for that moment — for that song.
You wrote the song and cut it all in that one day?
Except his vocals. D cuts his vocals on his own.
How’d you dial in your guitar tone?
Wasn’t no planning. It wasn’t even my guitar — it was just some guitar that was there, and I picked it up and played it and those lines came out. We were basically trying to impress each other.
The lyric is pretty filthy, which you don’t necessarily catch because of how delicately D’Angelo is using his falsetto. You have to pay close attention.
D is a bad boy. But it’s no different than a song in the ’60s, where they’re saying, “I’m gonna wait till the midnight hour / That’s when my love comes tumbling down.” You just have to be clever with the pen.
Why’d you call it “Untitled”?
It became “Untitled” because of the way it ends. The tape ran out as we were playing. At the time we were recording on [Digital Audio Tape], and when a song’s not done, it says “Untitled” on the DAT. We didn’t really get a chance to finish the ending, so I was like, “You should just leave it like that.”
You ever think about how the song might have ended if the two of you had gone back and finished it?
Nah. We made the director’s cut. I do always wonder when I’m watching “Scarface,” when Al Pacino is about to get shot up on the balcony, what if he could just run around and kill the dude? But I ain’t never gonna see that. And you ain’t never gonna hear a different ending.
Raphael Saadiq, ‘Still Ray’ (2002)
Despite his initial reluctance to go solo, Saadiq did just that in 2002 with “Instant Vintage.” This single from the LP repurposed the hypnotic groove from Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.,” which had come out three years earlier.
I just got tired of putting my efforts into other people. I’ve found my career to be like football, right? I’m a quarterback and I have an offensive line that’s supposed to be blocking for me. But I feel like my team always turned around and tackled me [laughs]. So I was like, You know what? I might as well go ahead and just play golf. Lemme just hold the club and hit the ball myself. That’s how I became a solo artist.
How did the riff from “Still D.R.E.” end up in “Still Ray”?
The repetition of the triad, I wanted to take that and turn this hard Dr. Dre song into a beautiful lullaby — to grab everybody’s ears and then go, All right, but I’m not really about to go into the gunfight. I’m gonna make a right here and go into this florist instead.
I suppose the title just presented itself.
His name is Dre and my name is Ray. It’s not even nothing I thought about. I’m just full of jokes.
Very prominent tuba in this song.
I love Mexican music, and when I’m driving, I always listen to the tuba. So I was like, Man, we need a tuba on this. My friend Kelvin Wooten who played the piano on “Still Ray,” he plays tuba too. I told him to go grab a tuba, and we just went with it. At the time, the label was saying, “This is not a single — it doesn’t have a hook.” I kept telling them, “The tuba is the hook.”
Beyoncé, ‘Bodyguard’ (2024)
Saadiq is credited as a writer and producer on several tracks from “Cowboy Carter,” including this slinky, ’70s-style soft-rock jam that features him on guitar, piano, bass and keyboard.
It wasn’t originally for Beyoncé — it was for me. I put this groove together, kind of a Memphis slash Fleetwood Mac slash “Pretty Woman,” Roy Orbison type of vibe. I had it in my folder, and I was playing stuff for Beyoncé. She had me going through songs and ideas. I didn’t really want to play ideas because they weren’t worked out all the way, but she didn’t care. She was like, “Just play whatever.” So I played a little bit of it on accident, and she’s like, “Go back, go back — what are you doing with that?” I honestly couldn’t believe she picked it. I just didn’t see it. Then when she sang it, she did some stuff vocally that completely matched the era of what I was doing but that I would never have done. She took it and made it her own thing.
I had a small guitar solo in it, but she wanted the solo to be longer. She said, “I think we can go harder in the paint.” I was like, “Oh, damn.” I would have called my really good friend Eric Gales to play the solo, but he was on tour. And we were moving so fast that I didn’t have time to call anybody else. So I had to go back in the room and work out a solo.
Are guitar solos making a comeback? There’s another good one in Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.”
I’m waiting for the George Michael saxophone solo to come back.
