They were church boys who also found their spirit on Saturday nights in Oakland clubs, and had originally dubbed themselves, Black Police, after Sting’s original band. In fact, their original intention wasn’t even to become a group, they told music writer Michael Gonzales when he interviewed them in 1997. In 1988, when Raphael’s group Tony! Toni! Tone! debuted with Who?, an album that would eventually go gold (selling more than 500,000 copies), there was no indication that Saadiq (born Charles Ray Wiggins) would become the band’s stand-out member. “He’s not doing what he was doing before, what he was doing on his last album, never mind when he first started out,” noted the late Gary Harris, an industry veteran who signed D’Angelo to a record contract and was long-time advisor to A Tribe Called Quest, when I interviewed him about Saadiq in 2008. And part of the reason he falls under the radar may be because he is a master of reinvention and always looking forward. It’s almost become a cliché to say that Raphael Saadiq is among our most under-appreciated musical artists.
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