TBOZ: How did you get to the point where you knew you wanted to express yourself your way as Rapahel. You know, SAADIQ.

SAADIQ: When SAADIQ figured it out. (Laughter) I always knew that could be my own trump card if I had to. You can gamble on yourself better than you can gamble on anybody else. I just said it was time for me to do the solo record now. I am more mature, been through some stuff, been in a few groups, produced allot of people, got recognition, and now I felt like could put that energy into a record. I owed Universal a few albums and talked to them about doing the album. It took me about a month and a half to really get into my project and really find out how I wanted to make the record sound. My whole thing was to do an album like Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall. Not just like Michael, but the sequencing of his record was like song after song after song. My concept was to come up with an album that everybody is gonna like song after song. So after I got that first song, I thought everything should get better from there. I worked with TBOZ and the TLC album in the middle of working on my album. Then I hooked up with Angie Stone and Calvin on “Excuse Me”. I hooked up with Leslie, that cat from Newbirth you hear on “Uptown”. I had already sung “You Should Be Here” all the way through then I said D (Dangelo) would sound good on this so he flew out to LA. Instead of just having anybody on the record these were hand picked people I thought would add something to the project. It’s allot of people on the record, but it does not feel like because we are all one.

ED: It does have continuity!

TBOZ: What were your goals for the project?

SAADIQ: My main goal was to get out and perform in front of people so I went out on 12 dates already. I had a good rapport with people and they were feeling the record. I think I am gonna tour year out and do like 41 more dates.

TBOZ: I wanna see the show. He did a show in LA and I had women calling me saying, “I gotta get with him.”

ED: Raphael, you started a riot down here in Atl. I had all kinda voice mails about the show when I got back in town.

SAADIQ: Man, I am just playing and singing the songs. I hitem with the old and new stuff. When I write a song, I can hear how it is gonna sound on stage. I already know how the new TLC song “So Dumb” is gonna sound, and I can’t wait to see when that baby is delivered.

TBOZ: What would be your dream collaboration?

SAADIQ: Wow. I would have Donny Hathaway on keyboards. On drums I would have Ahmir from the Roots. I would have Stevie playing clavinet and Dangelo playing in it . I would play bass and Prince guitar. Singing background.. Aretha Franklin, Chaka Kahn, Whitney Houston, and TBOZ on lead.

TBOZ: ME?

SAADIQ: See people don’t know that’s the funk.

TBOZ: Oh my God!

SAADIQ: See she don’t understand.

ED: I have sat in studio sessions and people can’t pull that off. TBOZ, you have that gritty vibe you need on some of those songs. Now that’s funk. Everybody aint able.

SAADIQ: It me days to sing that song because everytime I came in on the TBOZ song I wasn’t really matching her right. That is why it’s called the TBOZ song cuz she dominates. I finally got close enough to put it om the record.

ED: The way you sing it you got thugs crying girl. Hard brothers in College Park is feeling it.

TBOZ: What explains soul music’s new found success?

SAADIQ: Soul music will never die. I think with all the boy bands and other music that’s out they sorta forgot about it and tried to rename it. They call it Neo Soul which is to me a disrespect to all the black soul singers like The Temps and Ottis Redding. I understand marketing and it’s cool they created some avenue for artists but it’s just soul music. There are only two styles of music. Good and bad. What I brought is that gritty soul where I sing a lyric and you hear a guitar like on Dangelo’s “How Does It Feel.” We know that people in audience black, white, latino, whatever have souls. And if you just know that, you can play on that and use it as your leverage. When I was five years old and my mamma would play Al Green, I would listen like it was Barney or somethin. Atlanta is a big part of that. I attribute allot of the kids listening to old soul in college to Ray Murray , Rico Wade, and Organized Noise. Allot of people look to the Tonies for bringing soul back but we did not reinvent the world. We just never knew that people was gonna stop playing instruments because we loved them so much. All my stuff comes from playing way back in elementary, middle, and high school. As years go by, you become seasnoned. You then know how to put baselines in different music and make it tasteful.

TBOZ: You do what is natural to you as opposed to what people “make”. I can see through some artists out there like Mabeline. People feel your music because it is heartfelt and it comes from a real place. I think that matters.

Award winning writer, educator, counselor, and activist Edward M. Garnes, Jr. is the founder of From Afros to Shelltoes: Art, Action, and Conversation, a nationally acclaimed series of cultural productions confronting the social divide between elders and hip hop heads, and holds a B.A. in English Writing from DePauw University and a M.A. in Counseling from Michigan State University . His seminal essay, ” Sweet Tea Ethics: Black Luv, Healthcare, and Cultural Mistrust,” currently appears in Not In My Family: AIDS in the African American Community, a 2007 NAACP Image Award nominated collection edited by Gil Robertson. (www.afrostoshelltoes.com).

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