RAPHAEL SAADIQ OPENS FOR JOHN LEGEND AT ROY THOMSON HALL (60 SIMCOE) FRI, NOV 28. $50.50-$70.50 FROM TICKETMASTER, ROY THOMSON HALL BOX OFFICE. 8PM.
In lesser hands, The Way I See It might be received as an exercise in necrophilia. Dropping a record into 2008 that’s so steeped in the classic Motown sound, featuring guest spots by Tamla vets like Stevie Wonder and Funk Brothers percussionist Jack Ashford, could easily be seen as a pose. But Raphael Saadiq’s been defining and redefining R&B for decades, from his time in new jack swingsters Tony! Toni! Toné! and supergroup Lucy Pearl through his work with soul giants like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu and hip-hop legends like Q-Tip and EPMD. Though The Way I See It is unabashedly retro in sound and design, it’s consistent with Saadiq’s body of work, and features some of the most infectious music of the year. EYE WEEKLY called him at his Los Angeles studio to get the skinny.
Did this album start with a set of songs that demanded a classic treatment, or did it start with the idea to explore that classic R&B sound, with the songs following?
From the first instrument down, the songs were in my mind and the sound was in my mind. I thought about it in one step. I wanted to write songs like the ones that I grew up loving, and they sounded a certain way.
You’ve got your own studio — did you go get any particular gear or equipment to help you get that sound?
No, not at all. I’ve got a lot of good vintage guitars and bass guitars and drums and stuff like that. But I tell everybody, you can have all the equipment, you’ve got to have the chops. I mean, you could buy a brand new Jaguar guitar — certain types of Fenders, they’re already halfway there. You plug a nice Jaguar in a nice Fender twin reverb, you’re pretty much already there. But you gotta be able to get on there and play it.
What’s your most prized possession among all that vintage gear?
That ’62 P Bass. It’s probably the thing that drove me to make this album this way. I already had it — I played it on [my 2004 solo album] Ray Ray. I played it on that thing for Mary J. [Blige] called “I Found My Everything.” Everything I played it on, it’s always been true to me, like a really dear friend to me. Every time I picked it up, it never let me down.
It was the sound of that one instrument that inspired you.
Yeah, the sound that you get from it. And I’m a [Funk Brothers bassist] James Jamerson fan. That’s the closest I could get to him in my mind. Maybe not to listeners, but in my mind, that’s what it’s about — how, you know, how you like to dream. As an artist, when you pick up the instrument it should make you dream. It should make you be able to go where you want to go, and that instrument, when I pick it up it makes me feel like I’m in that time, like I’m in that zone.
Back in Studio A in Detroit. Speaking of which, how did Jack Ashford get involved?
I just figured if I was doing a record like this then I wanted to add the pioneer who was there, who lived it, who ate it, slept and drank it, to put a stamp on it of what I’m doing. I just invited him in and let him do exactly what he wanted to do.
Playing the tambourine, the bell, he’s making subtle contributions. What does a player like Jack bring to the recording?
He brings touch, playing where you may not think to play. It’s placement. I call it product placement. His product placement is unchangeable. You can’t begin to think like him, because of what he knows and where he’s been and the records he’s played on. He’s just that soul, he’s got that spirit in him. He’s seen this mood that I was trying to create, and when he was playing for Motown it was his feeling, his placement that made him who he is. And that’s the reason why people like me call him. On top of all the playing he’s a brilliant person to talk to.
I bet he has stories.
Yeah, stories, man. It’s like being in Barnes & Noble through him, you know. That’s the book right there.