Raphael Saadiq: Stone Rollin'

At first I was interested in it as a matter of retro. The twinkling piano and twanging guitar of "Day Dreams" sounds awesomely anachronistic in 2011, and Stone Rollin' as a whole seems like a textbook case study for retro music. The call-and-answer guitar of "Radio" sounds very jukebox, and there's something so 70's about the oozing sex appeal of the title track (an ode to Boo-tay.)

But of course, there is no textbook, no standard method, and Saadiq borrows and rearranges and takes and leaves elements of the past like any artist of today: here and there is Chuck Berry or Ben E. King or Marvin Gaye or Prince, but of course it's really all Raphael. Is retro an acknowledgment that the old ideas are better than the newer ones? An attempt to strip music down to basics? Or just dusting off a few tricks and techniques that never lost their effectiveness? Maybe it's an assertion of individuality: there's such a wealth of influence in the past, that you can stand out in the present by mining it. If you're as good as Raphael, buddy, you can work it.

The groove is the thing. I love the break neck opener "Heart Attack," where the man throws himself headlong into the song sparks fly from the guitars. On songs like "Go To Hell" and "Over You," Saadiq sings with pure urgency and immediacy. He's got that rhythm & blues intuition and spirit that makes superstars out of plenty talented singers, (Cee-Lo comes to mind) but his hook is his ability to push his vocals right to the brink, matched thunder-rolling drums, funked-up guitars and, of all damn things, pipes and winds airing the sound out.

It's no wonder to me that so much music has at least some retro aspect to it. Though Stone Rollin' doesn't harken to a specific time, it calls back to a lot of familiar song styles and binds them together excellently based on their common ground, that R&B soul funk that flows in the veins of much music, African-American or otherwise. IT sets something off in the mind: familiar but fresh, inviting and exciting at once. It's got a good hard groove, and it rolls.


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