Really Got A Hold on Me

Let me preference this by stating that the Motown Sound and me have had a thing going on since my Uncle Mike (bass player par excellence) taught and drilled me to play “My Girl” to the point that it has become second nature. To put it simply, if it has that hit record, Motown sound, I will be a fan. That being said, former Tony! Toni! Toné singer/bass player Raphael Saadiq’s latest album The Way I See It is one of the best albums that I have heard in 2008. While Metallica’s Death Magnetic was an unbelievable return to everything I liked about Metallica when I first heard the group in between Michael Jackson and Nirvana songs on MTV, Saadiq’s latest studio effort managed to be a looking glass to the vintage Hitsville USA sound while not sounding dated or trite.

The Way I See It is Saadiq’s third solo release and he makes no bones about it; Motown in the order of the day. From first glance, Saadiq’s images on the front of the album and in the liner notes calls to mind images of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles or early Marvin Gaye. The Motown feeling goes deeper than Sharkskins and skinny neckties. The first song on the album Sure Hope You Mean It, just exudes that late 60’s Northern Soul feeling. I can’t stand this term but it sounds very “authentic” to the period to which he is modeling the sound, even to the old P-Bass sound that made the Motown sound what it was. As the album goes on, the 60’s Hitsville sound stays present until Saadiq takes a sudden turn south for the fourth track Big Easy, a song in which Saadiq’s narrative in the song is from the perspective of a victim of Hurricane Katrina struggling with the loss of a child in the storm, touching on a subject matter that has rarely been broached in the medium of popular music (the notable exceptions are Jay Z and to a lesser extent Lil Wayne [I say lesser extent because Wayne has yet to release a single on the subject, while Jay Z’s Minority Report was released as a single for Kingdom Come]) while featuring The Infamous Young Spodie & the Rebirth Brass Band of New Orleans, incorporating a sound that can only come from NOLA and making the song all the more meaningful (the song would be more meaningful as a single, in my opinion). The record goes on to feature some pretty big names such as the great Stevie Wonder (on Harmonica) and Joss Stone, both adding to the Motor City Sound of the record. Towards the end, the album incorporates some of today’s sound by featuring the aforementioned Jay Z on its closing track.

I think this album is brilliant. It was released at the perfect time. The 60’s are becoming ‘cool’ again, as opposed to the over arching 80’s trends in music and fashion that have been the order of the day as of late. Saadiq managed to take an enormous step in the direction of what I think is a growing trend before the rest of the pop music world. While some have taken the 60’s soul revival sound to success before Saadiq, very few have been able to capture it, along with the image and not seem silly or out of place. Indeed, Saadiq dressing and singing like the Four Tops are at #1 on the Billboard charts was a huge gamble, but it seems that it has become quite a pay off. As I stated earlier, the 60’s are cool again. I am not going to attribute this all to Saadiq. The 60’s resurgence is’ like most trends coming from multiple direction, including the latest slew of mock instrument playing videogames such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero have brought about a renewed interest in guitar, drums and bass in urban America. Although Saadiq didn’t invent this new 60’s trend, he was able to make it work for him better than anyone else doing it now.