It doesn't take a Hollywood screenwriter to picture a young Raphael Saadiq as Sammie. Like the blues progeny at the center of Sinners, the box-office breaking vampire horror, Saadiq found himself stuck at an early crossroads. He, too, was torn between a deep devotion to church — playing bass for local gospel quartets — and his love of the blues. Both of them were in his blood. But it wasn't until his dad explained that "'the key of E-flat in the blues is the same E-flat they play at church,'" that his soul was loosed.
Playing bass became his passport. "Music that I do can travel everywhere," he says. "I grew up playing for rappers, gospel, funk, jazz, everything. Sometimes your music can take you in rooms that most people wouldn't think that you'd be in. But I was in some really gully rooms when I was growing up. I'm from like the deep East Oakland. Ain't nothing pretty about it."
Swap out the Mississippi Delta for the Bay Area and Jim Crow for Just-Say-No. It's the same refrain. Tasked with beating a white devil of a different kind, trafficked heavily in the streets of his hometown, Saadiq watched members of his own family succumb to it. "When my brother died, the same person that was giving him drugs rode by his funeral on a 10-speed bike and I jumped in the car and called him [over] and said, 'Did you know my brother passed?' He's like, 'Who's your brother?'" he says, recalling the inspiration behind his last solo studio LP named for his brother, Jimmy Lee. "He didn't even know who my brother was."
By the time director Ryan Coogler summoned him to the studio the day before shooting on Sinners was scheduled to begin, Saadiq was three decades deep into his successful revamp as a modern-day blues journeyman. Somehow, while amassing a five-album solo catalog built on channeling ancestors and idols alike, he'd become responsible for pushing R&B forward as the songwriter, producer and mentor of choice for emerging and established talent intent on plumbing the depths of their own soul. With a stacked résumé and rep preceding him — D'Angelo, Total, Erykah Badu, Joss Stone, Solange, Beyoncé, Brent Faiyaz, etc. etc. etc. — Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson collaborated on the song that would score the most transcendent scene in Sinners, transporting viewers to Africa and back while encompassing the entire genetic code of Black music.
Nominated in the 98th annual Academy Awards, airing this Sunday, "I Lied To You" is the first pure blues number up for Best Original Song. The way Saadiq sees it, the genre that seeded American music even as its pioneers were systematically exploited, has finally won. A few weeks before the Oscars, we talked about his own deep blues lineage and legacy, why it took 30 years before he heard ever his dad sing the blues, and his own reluctance to being a frontman, dating back to his days as the bass-thumping, baby-faced lead of '90s soul-redux progenitors Tony! Toni! Toné! "I never wanted to sing," he says. "I never wanted to be that guy, which led me to be a journeyman."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rodney Carmichael: You've always been a son of soul, coming out of Oakland, steeped in the funk and R&B. But the blues really resonates throughout your discography. Have you always seen yourself fitting so squarely in the blues tradition?
Raphael Saadiq: Well, I don't think with blues I could get around it. It was in my house since I can remember, you know. My mother's from Monroe, Louisiana. My dad is from somewhere in Texas. And between the both of them, it was a lot of blues in the house. I had a stepdad, too, who was even more into blues. So I couldn't get away from it. And I loved it from the first time I heard it. First time I heard "The Thrill Is Gone" by B.B. King, it just made the house light up. You can see your mom walking around. You can smell the food and your sister walking around the house. People cleaning up. And B.B. King is in the back. It seemed like we had the happiest house in the world. So I'm hooked after that. I caught on. I knew exactly what it was every time I heard it.
They always say you can't really play the blues until you experience the blues. Could you feel everything that was bottled up in the blues that young?
Oh, I could feel it all. They called me "old man" when I was 10.
Why'd they call you that?
Because I wore suits at a very young age. I used to take my suits to the cleaners, which is like five blocks up the street, and I would go pick my suits up. And I would always hold them over my shoulder and walk back home. And all the older people in the neighborhood would go, "There go that old man!"
What were the suits for?
Church. I played in a lot of gospel quartet groups. So we would go see the Mighty Clouds of Joy, [Willie Neal Johnson &] The Gospel Keynotes. We had our own local groups and I played for a group called The Gospel Hummingbirds, which was a group that would have been like The Gospel Keynotes or The Pilgrim Jubilees. All those big groups would come from Chicago or from the South and do shows at the Oakland Auditorium. And my mother was always there. She would buy tickets and we would watch the legends come in and sing quartet. When I'd see the dudes come in, they would have on one suit. Then they would come with a suit in the bag. So they'd wear one suit to the show, wear one suit on the show and then have a third suit when they're done. I watched all of that. So I think I was just kind of following that path. I played for these groups so I've always had suits.
You've had such a unique career trajectory — from being a front man and a star soloist early on to becoming equally well-known as a journeyman songwriter and producer over the last 30 years or so. It's almost like you Benjamin Buttoned your way through the music industry backwards. Does it feel like it's been a non-traditional path to you?
Yeah, it does feel like that. It was definitely going to be that for me because I love so many different facets of the business. And I really respected people who had day jobs and worked really hard. I think that was the difference. I knew I was definitely blessed with a gift. And always like to say the gift wasn't just my gift. It was given to me. So I had to do something with that gift. [But] I didn't want to be a front man, either. People know that. I never wanted to sing. I never wanted to be that guy, which led me to be a journeyman.
Your sound has always been heavy — obviously you play the bass; that's your first instrument — but your voice has always been so bright. It makes for this beautiful contradiction.
Well, my father Charlie Wiggins' voice was really high all the time when he talked. Higher than mine. So I think I just had that natural tenor from my dad. And my mom sang a little bit in church, but my dad was singing the blues — but he never sang around me. [I had] this voice that I discovered at a young age that I never really used much. I sang in a couple clubs and a couple bands; I think I sang "Single Life" by Cameo in my high school band and a song called "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister. My tenor allowed me to have this radio-friendly voice that people talk about: It's not offensive. It's really high but right in the middle. The frequency just fits with records. And from me mimicking Stevie Wonder that kind of helped me out. I sang along with Stevie a lot when I was younger but I would never know the words. I would make up my own words. I think that's where the songwriting came from. When I listen back to my records, I'm like, yeah, you don't actually sound like him. But whatever makes you finish the record, you gotta go with it. And I think that sort of helped me.
Your dad never sang in front of you? Was he done with it by then? Why did he stop singing?
I think music left a nasty kind of memory in his mind, because he knew that the music industry was infested with drugs and we had a lot of issues in our family with drug abuse. So I don't think he wanted to push [music] on the kids. [Unless] you chose it yourself. Years later, he sang in front of me, but he never sang in front of me as a kid. He sang in front of one of my older brothers, Randy, 'cause they lived together.
My brother said, "Have you ever heard dad sing?" I'm like, "Nah, never heard him sing." He said, "Oh man! Oh man! You got to hear him!" That's how my brother talks; he's very old-school when he explains something. So I asked [dad] one day, "Hey man, sing something for me." I played some music that I wrote on a song called "Still a Man" on the Tony's album before I put lyrics on it. I start singing it to him and asked, "How would you sing this?" He sang it to me how he would sing it. I was like "wow." And he was telling me how I have to change my voice to sound more bluesy. He started singing like B.B. — "Thrill is gone, thrill is gooone awayyyy" [Saadiq lays some heavy, bluesy melisma on the end]. He knew how to change his voice. It's more acting and singing to change your voice. Then I started mimicking things and that's how I was able to change my voice on backgrounds and different leads.
A blues song has never won an Oscar for Best Original Song, which is kind of wild if you consider the blues being the root of American music. The Grammys didn't even recognize blues as its own category until 1983. An Academy Award for "I Lied To You" would be a big win for you and Ludwig Göransson, and Sinners overall. But what do you think it would mean for this genre that the industry's been so historically slow to credit and canonize?
That would be huge. I mean, it's up against some big records. For me, it would be about them winning. One of my favorite blues guys is Howlin' Wolf. I watched his videos a lot. I love the way he moved with his harmonica. I'm like, man, I wish that was my granddad so that I could have been sitting in the house and have him telling me about the blues. It would be huge for the blues community — for kids who left home at 14, 15, walking 10, 12 miles to Memphis [or] to get to the Delta in Mississippi. To all these people that still love blues, it would be the biggest honor. And it's really about them because they gave it to me. I've been listening to it since when my mom and stepdad would go fishing. And I would not even sit in a seat. I would sit on the cooler, where the eight-track is, in there listening to blues. That's how far I go back with it. Or my dad taking me to blues clubs and I had to sit in the closet until it's my turn to play because I was too young, drinking Shirley Temples.
I feel like the blues community already won because they've been doing it for so long, and that music will not go away. They keep pressing up vinyl on all these records. You would think when you go to a store like Amoeba and you see all these records, these records ain't selling. No, that means these records won't stop selling, because they keep repressing all these blues records. It's everybody's life. Everybody has the blues.
I played with Mick Jagger at the Grammys on the Solomon Burke tribute [in 2011], and all I wanted to talk to Mick about was Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. Because he actually had conversations with them. He was really kind and nice. He told me all the stories and then he pulled out his harmonica and played with my band. We had a better rehearsal than we did at the [show] for the Grammys because we jammed the blues for hours. I didn't need to see Mick Jagger to see how it was appreciated. I saw it at home. But to watch Mick talk about those guys was the best narration I could have gotten. Because he traveled to Chess Records to be in those studios where those guys recorded. And he said Howlin' Wolf would take him to meet guys and be like, 'Ok, this is the guy who wrote this song.' He was really breaking it down. So I think it would be the biggest honor for a blues song to win. I'd never thought about that until you just said that.
Hearing you talk about Mick Jagger's reverence for the Blues makes me wonder about the space blues occupies in Black music today. Is it still as resonant, and if not, do you think something's lost as a result of not having more of the Blues present in contemporary Black music?
Our people, we forget really fast about things that we create. Because, on one hand, we're just so creative. My mom's from the South; I mean, she was going to make her own cereal with cornbread and buttermilk. And I wasn't doing that; I wasn't doing it. And then in basketball, we're gonna create a crossover, then go to Hot Sauce and create a different type of crossover. And we're going to create an alley-oop, but we're going to forget about that and then we're going to start shooting threes. We're just so creative that we forget.
Is that hurting Black music?
Definitely. At this point, I won't say it's just hurting Black people; it's hurting longevity for artists. You don't have to be a blues artist. You don't have to be a jazz person. You could be a pop person [who] just wants to make something popular. I think what's hurting people is they're most likely hearing something that came out last week that's [charting] some number that don't even matter. They're following numbers that don't even matter. That's what's hurting people. When you follow things that don't matter, you're not going to matter.
At this point in my life, I'm not thinking about big albums and singles or anything like that. I'm just making music. I stopped thinking about that after I did "You Should Be Here" with D'Angelo. He felt the same way. We're just making records. My next record, I'm just making songs I like and putting them out. I don't think about having big records. When I work with somebody else, of course [I do]. But that's their journey. That's not the journey I'm on anymore.
Are you working on that next record now? What can we expect?
Yeah, I'm thinking I'm going to put out one record in March. I'm going to drop a single song, probably with this guy named TFOX that I work with out of Virginia. He's a writer I signed to a publishing deal. He's a family dude, but he's nuts making music. Then I'm just going to keep dropping records. I'm just having fun. Just working with other people and dropping music that I really like. I want to have an experience and also give people an experience. I just want to give back and also put myself up for the challenge of completing stuff and loving things that I love in this climate of music where I feel everybody's still trying to figure out streaming and how to get paid.
Because everybody knows what we're up against. We're up against sixty thousand records being released every day. How do you cut through? Every artist that's out now, I'll give all of them kudos for just thriving to get through that. They have a different competition than my era did. We had competition but we knew what records were coming out, which groups were coming out. They don't really know that. Somebody could just be at the house — a new Marvin Gaye — just drop something on Spotify in the morning and you're like, whoa, didn't see that coming.
I think the younger generation is going to figure it out — the Chance The Rapper dudes and Brent [Faiyaz] and Tyler the Creator, Mustafa. All these kids are going to figure it out. And I am around all of them. Daniel Caesar. I'm around all of them. My nephew Dylan Wiggins; he just produced on Justin Bieber's album but he works on a lot of records with Frank Ocean, The Weeknd. He's all over the place. This is [my brother] Dwayne's son.
Who you've also worked with a lot.
Yeah just kind of, you know, sharpened him up but he had the skills. I didn't have nothing to do with that. Now he comes back and helps me. He's telling me to do things, like, "You might want to structure this like this." That's what you want. You want people in your family to take it and go, and then come back and [school you]. We have conversations like that. Normally, it's real estate though.
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