Raphael Saadiq

By the time he was 6, old-school soul stirrer Raphael Saadiq (nee Wiggins) was already learning to play a variety of instruments. At 9, he was singing gospel professionally, and landed on a Prince/Sheila E. tour just after high school. With his brother D’wayne Wiggins and cousin Timothy Christian, he then formed Tony! Toni! Toné! in the late ’80s, became a superstar, and went solo by the mid-’90s. After a couple of movie-soundtrack singles (“Ask of You” from Higher Learning and “Me & You” from Boyz N da Hood) he formed Lucy Pearl with En Vogue’s Dawn Robinson and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad, then turned to producing. “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” his collaboration with D’Angelo, earned a Grammy in 2000; he’s also worked with Macy Gray, the Roots, Whitney Houston, Joss Stone, Stevie Wonder, Q-Tip, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and John Legend, to name a few.

He released his first solo album, 2002’s Instant Vintage, on his own Pookie Entertainment label; it was the first non-major label album to earn five Grammy nominations. Ray Ray followed in 2004; the triple-Grammy-nominated, iTunes Album of the Year The Way I See It came in 2008. He began working on a new album early in 2010, and appeared at South By Southwest on a bill with Smokey Robinson that prompted an AOL Spinner writer to tweet: “Dear Raphael Saadiq: When you open your School of Cool, we'll submit an application for acceptance.”

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