Raphael Saadiq has been playing music for most of his life -- since age seven, at least -- but on some level, he's always been beholden to someone else's expectations and wishes.

At eighteen, he hit the road as a member of Prince's touring band. As a member of the platinum selling group Tony! Toni! Tone! Saadiq (formerly Raphael Wiggins) brought R&B firmly into the Nineties, paving the way for soul men like D'Angelo and Maxwell. Next came his one-off supergroup disc Lucy Pearl with En Vogue's Dawn Robinson and A Tribe Called Quest DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad. And in recent years he has been writing and producing some of R&B's greatest tracks -- from D'Angelo's "Untitled" and "Lady" to Angie Stone's "Brotha" -- and working with the likes of TLC, Macy Gray and the Isley Brothers.

So, at age thirty-six, Saadiq is finally ready to step out on his own, with his debut solo album, Instant Vintage (Universal). "I like band situations," he says. "Even right now, as a solo act, I'm putting my band together myself . . . I don't need a music director. But to hell with the groups, the groups aren't what's important right now."

On Instant Vintage's opening track, "Doing What I Can," Saadiq sets the stage -- this is his show and people better listen -- by revealing, among other things, that four of his siblings have suffered tragic deaths. Pain like that needs to be explored, and he does throughout the course of the nineteen-track disc. "All of those things, growing up, I paid attention to them, but it wasn't until I got older that I realized how much it affected me," he says. "There's so much outside of what people normally see -- even when I'm singing a love song or a funk song. That bluesy, gritty stuff comes from all the stuff that happened when you were a kid."

But Instant Vintage isn't a morbid album. The combination of soulful dance numbers, slow-burn love songs and funked-up hand-wavers is classic Saadiq. "I didn't want to let down the fans of the Tonys and Lucy Pearl," he says. "I like to give people a whole album of songs that seem like they could be singles. When I listen to the way Quincy Jones produced Off the Wall for Michael Jackson, every song could be a single, whether they were or not." And in true svengali style -- Saadiq is the P. Diddy of the new soul movement -- a number of friends stop by to help out: D'Angelo, Angie Stone and T-Boz all guest on tracks.

Saadiq calls his music "gospeldelic," and he hates the term "neo-soul." But neither term fully encapsulates all of the musical influences Saadiq brings to the table. There is as much rock & roll in these tracks as hip-hop or R&B. "When I was younger, instead of reading a book on academics, I was reading a book on Kiss -- their stage production, their performance. Earth Wind and Fire. Journey -- I used to live behind Oakland Coliseum and I could hear 'When the Lights Go Down in the City' from my backyard. All of it helps set up what I'm trying to do."

On "Still Ray," Saadiq nabs the piano lick from "Still D.R.E." and turns out a wholly different love song than Dr. Dre ever envisioned -- one that features a tuba player. "I'm taking the guy on the road with me to play tuba on one song," Saadiq says. "It was on the record, it has to be on the tour," he says, laughing. And on "People," the former child of Oakland's protest-past delivers a terrific homage in music and lyric to the layered psychedelic funk of the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" and Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues."

Even with a solo album and tour on the way, Saadiq still finds time to write music nearly every day -- usually on the guitar, however. He's not quite ready to graduate to writing on piano. "If you wanna write a song song, you sit at the piano," he says. "When I sit down at a piano I want to write something like Aretha would sing thirty years ago. When I'm ready to sit down at the piano all the time, I'll be ready to write some real big songs. I'm not ready for 'A Natural Woman' just yet."

While Saadiq doesn't completely ignore the idea of the Tonys getting back together, his focus is firmly on the release of Instant Vintage and its attendant promotion duties. But even with that focus, you can almost hear the ideas churning in this guy's head. "I'm always thinking about what comes next," he says. "I'm always trying to stay a few steps ahead of myself."

ANDREW STRICKMAN
(June 10, 2002)