Raphael Saadiq

A founding member of Tony! Toni! Tone! and the short-lived Lucy Pearl project, Raphael Saadiq has been lacing listeners with his smooth crooning since the late 1980s. Instant Village is his first solo LP, and it oozes with neo-soul niceness. Angie Stone, D'Angelo and T-Boz appear on the album, which has earned Saadiq five Grammy nominations.

As the frontman for Tony Toni Tone and R&B super-group Lucy Pearl and a producer for the
Isley Brothers, D'Angelo and Angie Stone, Raphael Saadiq has proven adept at making
memorable, radio-friendly songs inspired by old-school funk, soul, and gospel. And
Saadiq's first solo venture, Instant Vintage, offers more of the same. As a solo artist,
however, Saadiq takes his self-described gospeldelic sound to new heights -- fro... More >

Concentrate on it or f*ck to it--anything in between and it'll seem too hookless for pop, too quiet for funk, too slight for words. The structural strategy draws on erotic strategy--start off indirect and bloom into arousal, mouthwork, song. Individual tracks work that way, and so does the album as a whole, which honors the sacred memory of Tony Toni Toné more supplely than Lucy Pearl and may be more woman-friendly to boot. With Lucy Pearl, I could never concentrate long enough to notice--which is why I suspect that, effectively, Saadiq's album may be more woman-friendly than Joi's, too. (Grade - A-)