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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
