Raphael Saadiq: Soul For Real Interview

It’s pretty safe to assume Raphael Saadiq knows a thing or two about reinvention. After all, it was the Saadiq-led trio of Tony! Toni! Toné! whose “If I Had No Loot” sampled Ice Cube saying, “And you can New Jack Swing on my nuts,” when other R&B acts were still doing their best Guy impression. The last 21 years have seen the man formerly known as Charlie Ray Wiggins undergo enough transformations to draw comparisons to a certain purple-clad soul singer from Minneapolis.

Saadiq’s chameleon mentality has taken him from talent shows in his native Oakland, to early accolades with his fellow Tonies and through a brief stint with Lucy Pearl, only to re-emerge again as a soloist. The only constant has been what appears to be a need to keep himself fresh through his interpretation of classic sounds.

On a day when true Soul aficionados mourned the untimely passing of Motown innovator Norman Whitfield, Saadiq spoke about bridging the gap between old and new on his latest effort, The Way I See It [click to read]. The album continues his efforts to push his genre forward, by taking a quantum leap back via the dusty catalogues of Motown, Stax and Philadelphia International Records. After all the changes, maybe it’s only fitting that things come full circle.

HipHopDX: On the Ray Ray album, you shot this blaxploitation styled cover art before you recorded any music. The Way I See It has a picture of your performance at Sweet's Ballroom. How important is it to you to have that visual as you're going into an album?

Raphael Saadiq: You know it just kind of happened like that a couple times. I tried to do the cover afterwards, but it didn’t work like that. I took that picture, and I tried to take more pictures of what I wanted to do. This one just fit. But it’s very important to me to get that whole feel before I get started.

Read the whole interview here.....
http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/lifestyle-features/id.1237