Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It

The album is aight. "100 Yard Dash" and "Big Easy" and "Oh Girl" are jams. This kind of stuff lives and dies by the songwriting, though.

The album starts rockily, however, with "Sure Hope You Mean It", a clever rewrite of "How Sweet It Is" that suffers from a bad mix. Against Saadiq's exuberant delivery (he's a superlatively smooth vocalist), the percussion sounds slightly off-beat: The tambourine shakes before hitting on the beat, creating an audio illusion of being too fast, while the snare rolls into the verses sound too slow, like they've been manipulated from a faster performance.

^^^this is dumb

yeah i read that graph a couple times before i gave up on trying to understand it

can you imagine if every indie record with a shaky rhythm track got evaluated that way on PF?

Against Saadiq's exuberant delivery (he's a superlatively smooth vocalist), the percussion sounds slightly off-beat: The tambourine shakes before hitting on the beat, creating an audio illusion of being too fast, while the snare rolls into the verses sound too slow, like they've been manipulated from a faster performance.

This sounds awesome

I got to do some work in the old Toni!Tony!Tone!/En Vogue studio and it was awesome. love this guy, have yet to hear the album PF reviewer as usual doesn't know wtf he's talking about.

I mean lolz what does he think of all the weirdo syncopation on Voodoo fr instance

yeah, the track feels good and it's intentional. great laid-back shuffle on the drums and some nice raw tambourine.

still loving this record btw.

good convo between me, Bozelka, and Crutis about this here album (with some tangents)

kjb (11:09:58 PM): treat yourself to RAPHAEL SAADIQ!!!!
rev (11:10:41 PM): love saadiq but his new album is so worthy and boring
kjb (11:10:56 PM): worthy? what do u mean?
crut (11:10:56 PM): worthy and boring
rev (11:11:41 PM): it's a well-made but boring and formalism
rev (11:11:56 PM): haha that barely made sense at all
rev (11:12:37 PM): basically, fine craft but no excellence
crut (11:12:43 PM): yeah
kjb (11:12:50 PM): gotcha but I love the shit out of it
crut (11:12:53 PM): that's a good description
kjb (11:13:05 PM): u don't dig it either, crut?
crut (11:13:06 PM): it's not funky enough
rev (11:13:26 PM): "Still Ray" >>>>> The Way I See It
crut (11:13:59 PM): it's prob better than sharon jones
crut (11:14:05 PM): I need to listen to it again
kjb (11:14:13 PM): oh big time even though I love her...amazing live!
rev (11:14:26 PM): sharon jones: much better live than on record
rev (11:14:35 PM): actually, prob best live show I've ever seen
kjb (11:14:36 PM): it's the truth
kjb (11:14:46 PM): just brilliant
crut (11:14:47 PM): awesome
rev (11:14:49 PM): ^^^
rev (11:15:28 PM): when I saw her, she covered "There Was a Time" which is my favorite JB song
rev (11:15:32 PM): XD
kjb (11:15:50 PM): when I saw her, she was critizing Bush/Iraq and this dude came up to her (small club) and said something like "I"m an Irish-American and I fought for this country and I hate what you're saying!"
kjb (11:16:05 PM): and she just stared this fucker down and started ripping him a new one
rev (11:16:17 PM): hahaha
kjb (11:16:23 PM): and the band started to hold her back and she was "no I"m all right"
kjb (11:17:28 PM): "hey that's all well and good 4 u but I have every right to say my piece and tons of African-Americans fought for this country and got no parade, etc."
kjb (11:17:41 PM): intense shit but i loved it
rev (11:18:14 PM): v awes
kjb (11:18:28 PM): what I LOVE about The Way I See It is now short it is....it's almost scandlous.....the 2-minute songs make me guffaw at the end
kjb (11:18:38 PM): scandalous too
kjb (11:19:13 PM): one of the many things I love about it, that is
rev (11:19:42 PM): another problem is I kinda feel like he subsumed his personality to the period pieces
rev (11:20:38 PM): like, he could write better, more personal songs, but he felt it wouldn't be in line with the concept
kjb (11:21:45 PM): true but I'm a sucker for hooks and songs and I guess craft
rev (11:23:06 PM): I don't really feel like the hooks and songs are there tho
rev (11:23:23 PM): they are, but they're so perfunctory
crut (11:24:01 PM): it's not raw enuff
kjb (11:24:28 PM): well it IS a Motown (not even Stax) simulation
kjb (11:24:53 PM): what did u thnk of TTT's House of Music?
crut (11:25:38 PM): it's not catchy/hooky enough to live up to the Motown sound
rev (11:25:38 PM): the fact that it IS a Motown sim is reason #1 it has no excuse for weak tunage!
crut (11:25:44 PM): ^^^^ rev otmm
rev (11:26:04 PM): HoM: v good, but prefer Sons of Soul
rev (11:26:31 PM): "Let's Get Down" and "Thinking of You" are prob my fave TTT singles tho
kjb (11:28:04 PM): well there ya have it...as a hooks/song guy, I can't stop playing the thing
rev (11:28:44 PM): it prob has more in common with northern soul obscurities than the sound of young america
kjb (11:29:19 PM): true
kjb (11:30:15 PM): speaking of which, Bimble told em today that Joy Division stole a riff from (northern?) soul obscurity Nolan Porter!!!
kjb (11:30:19 PM): em = me
rev (11:30:58 PM): wouldn't surprise me that much

love the sound, performances and production of this album but the songwriting is pretty weak, as are the lyrics. its motown lite, for duffy fans.

i forgot about bozelka, is he still on the board or is he just under some unrecognizable username now?

he actually sounds bored tbh, like it was a rote exercise in retroism, and he had to hold back while making it. not that thats a bad thing - some of his lyrics and songwriting has really gone downhill since leaving TTT (dwayne needs to come back) but saadiq sounds like he just went down this road cos there was no other option for a guy like him these days, so he took the starbucks soul route.

i like this album and the songs sounded very good live, but really the 2 at the end that kind of break out of the production aesthetic a little ("Never Give You Up" and "Sometimes," not the terrible Jay-Z remix), totally destroy the rest.

im surprised its not being promoted more. youd think theyd sell him as the 'authentic' retro soul artist.

you're thinking way too fucking hard about the motives and marketing behind this album. guy's been paying tribute to the same music for 20 years, he's just doing it a lil more overtly and slavishly now, for better or worse.

errrr that overtness/slavishness is precisely what makes it so different to anything hes done before. before it was always balanced with a bit of modernity.

"Big Easy" will likely make my top 15, but the rest is masterful cryogenics.

He's starting a tour of the states at the end of the month. recommendations from anyone whose seen him live before?

I don't tremendously care for the album, but I imagine this stuff would play v. well live.

I saw him open for John Legend a couple months ago...pretty sharp set, although it was pretty much only the new album (+ that Lucy Pearl song), done in that style with the band in retro costumes and everything. i imagine as a headliner he does a wider variety of material.

I can't wait for CJ's album whenever that comes out.

I saw him open for John Legend
― some dude, Monday, February 2, 2009 4:23 AM (1 week ago)

this is so RONG btw

watching him perform on pbs @ lol harvard - who knows who his sidekick lady is omg ws

i hounded CJ for an interview for like 2 months and kept getting the runaround...maybe i'll start bugging his sister again, i still wanna talk to dude.

There's this song on his myspace "Losing You" that just blows my mind and I can't find an mp3 of it anywhere, I've been looking for months. I read somewhere that he had an entire Marvin-esque album ready to be released but it got canned and the stuff he's doing now is more modern-sounding.

anyone see him play live? he's coming next week

GO GO GO GO GO GO

FUCKING FANTASTIC LIVE SHOW

^^^seconded

lex has he played in london and i missed out?

amazing!!

can't wait!

aw, he's playing in chicago on thursday, wish i could go

holy SHIT was that a great great show

yayyyyyyy im so happy he's coming next week.

I was going to see him live with Janelle Monae but I had a class that I couldn't afford to miss :-\

he played london in...november or december, i think? at the jazz cafe. i remember seeing him and solange at the pigalle really close to each other.

saw him last night. it was o-k. i mean, the band sound great and his backing singers, the girl esp, really put their guts into it, but those new songs are just SO inoffensive. still, was surprised hes a pretty nifty dancer when he wants to be, he sounds great live, but the show was too made up of the new album for my liking (and yes i know hes there to promote the new album but still). he did a few lucy pearl songs, and some from the previous two solo albums, but waited til the encore to do TTT songs, which made my night, even tho he only really did like one verse/chorus/bridge/chorus for most of them. but there were so many songs he left out that i wish he had done instead of stretching out the newer ones unnecessarily. the band just seemed to be chugging away half the time in classic 60s motown revue style but without any real climax or anything. i know he really wants to get that winehouse/duffy/ronson money but i hope he puts his limp retro exercises away for the next album.

Almost everyone I know who's seen him on this tour reports a different set list (not song-for-song, just different emphases each time), which is something I like.

I still play the album a lot--the songs are great.

i think i prefer the "gospeldelica" of Instant Vintage--btw, Rev, you need to hear this...NOW!--these days, tbh. this is still a terrific album, tho. afrofutureism vs. retro-soul?

instant vintage wasnt futuristic.

if thats what you were implying.

kinda, yeah. retro-futuristic?

dunno. what makes it futuristic? i think ppl overuse that term wrt black music. it was just a good R&B/neo soul album. quite of its time when it came out imho.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/24/raphael-saadiq-interview

"I feel like a lot of white bands do it all the time," he says. "I didn't want to see another white-boy band come out and do a Motown sound, while all the black dudes are singin' with that thing (autotune) on their voices, rappin' and doin' all kindsa tap dancin'. I was like, 'No! I'm not gonna let the Killers come out and be in some suits an' some ties, and somebody else comes out doin' the Beatles, when I eat and sleep that!' Not to take anything from them - I love it when bands like the Killers or the Kings of Leon go back and pull somethin' from the past and make it theirs, I think that's the best thing. But I don't see too many urban groups doin' it."

says it all right fucking there

why cant the-dream be more like kings of leon?

;_;

Raphael Saadiq led a band reminiscent of Motown soul — and for an unexpected bit of Detroit, also belted a protopunk song from Iggy Pop and the Stooges, “Search and Destroy.”

A review of Saadiq at Bonnaroo

ha! he rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYuyeAnSLsM

^ that is pretty great.

his daytrotter session is outstanding:
http://www.daytrotter.com/dt/raphael-saadiq-concert/20030483-3737977.html

Instant Vintage is a fucking classic. I don't like dude's recent stuff.

Did he play all the instruments again?

this pops on a first spin.

That NY Times piece has me looking forward to this

This is a JAM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDOtGrjSlzs

dude has put out a protest album with an honest to god unadorned downtempo guitar gospel track stuck in the middle of it and it works. this album should maybe have a devoted thread if anybody feels inclined?

there is a lot here to unpack for sure

i had actually just been beating myself up as basic for thinking the most obvious comparison here is To Pimp a Butterfly when i finally got around to the uncredited Kendrick feature

that's a fair comparison

ok second time through. This is damn good!

Riker's Island tho

Awesome album. The bass playing throughout is quite something. Looking forward to spending more time with it.

the production on 'so ready' is elite

Saadiq is one of the quiet minor geniuses of modern music of the last 25 years (TTT, D'Angelo, Solange).

had a beer and a couple vape hits at lunch, this album is fucking me up so much! god damn he killed it

Truly looking forward to listening. "Instant Vintage" is a peerless classic for me.

wow @ "Kings Fall". Incredible performance and production

yeah, i've been listening to this all weekend; time for a dedicated thread
Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee- "He Was My Mama's Son"