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Producer Series: Raphael Saadiq

Forty-nine tracks and one clear argument: Raphael Saadiq is the most important producer in modern soul music, and he has been for thirty years.

The bassline underneath everything

Charles Ray Wiggins, from Oakland, has had roughly four careers. He was the bassist and co-frontman of Tony! Toni! Toné!, the most musically substantial R&B group of the early 1990s. He formed Lucy Pearl with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Dawn Robinson. He made a run of solo albums — Instant Vintage, The Way I See It, Stone Rollin', Jimmy Lee — that got progressively better and less commercial. And throughout, he has been the producer other artists call when they want a record to sound like it was played rather than assembled.

His method is consistent: real instruments, analogue warmth, and an unfashionable insistence on bass as the harmonic centre of a record. He is a bass player first, and it shows in everything he touches.

What to listen for

D'Angelo's "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" is the headline — Saadiq co-wrote it, and it is one of the most revered soul records of the last thirty years. "Lady" from Brown Sugar is the other D'Angelo collaboration and just as important.

The Solange work is the modern peak. "Cranes in the Sky" and "Where Do We Go" from A Seat at the Table won a Grammy and reintroduced him to an audience who had no idea of the history behind the sound.

Bilal's "Soul Sista" is a neo-soul cornerstone. Anthony Hamilton's "Ain't Nobody Worryin'" and John Legend's "Show Me" show the range within the genre.

Then the surprises, which are the real pleasure of this playlist: the Bee Gees' "With My Eyes Closed," Marcus Mumford's "Go In Light," The Isley Brothers, Total's "Kissin' You," TLC, and Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder on "So Amazing." Very few producers have a credit list this wide without a house style to show for it.

Go deeper

Tony! Toni! Toné!'s Sons of Soul (1993) is the essential listen and one of the great American albums of that decade — a band playing live in a room, at a moment when almost nobody was.

Of the solo records, The Way I See It (2008) is the Motown homage and the most immediately enjoyable; Jimmy Lee (2019) is the hardest and best, an album about his brother's addiction and death.

He also scored HBO's Insecure and co-wrote for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Follow the credits; they go everywhere.

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