Jimmy Lee (album)

Jimmy Lee is the fifth studio album by American R&B singer, songwriter, and producer Raphael Saadiq. It was released on August 23, 2019, by Columbia Records. Departing from the upbeat retro sounds of Saadiq's previous albums, Jimmy Lee explores complex themes of stress, addiction, domestic conflict, financial burden, and mass incarceration in a murkier, more modern R&B musical style. It was inspired in part and titled after the singer's brother, who died tragically young from a heroin overdose. While performing moderately on record charts, the album received widespread acclaim from critics, earning Saadiq some of the best reviews of his solo career.

Jimmy Lee
Studio album by
Raphael Saadiq
ReleasedAugust 23, 2019 (2019-08-23)
StudioBlakeslee Recording Co. (North Hollywood)
Genre
Length39:27
LabelColumbia
Producer
  • Raphael Saddiq (also exec.)
  • Brook D'Leau
  • Sir Dylan
  • Charles Brungardt
  • Charlie Bereal
  • Kevin Wooten
Raphael Saadiq chronology
Stone Rollin'
(2011)		 Jimmy Lee
(2019)

Writing and recording
Saadiq (pictured in 2011) played guitar on the album.

The album is Saadiq's first in eight years and a significant departure for him artistically.[1] Composed as a song cycle, it follow characters variously affected by stress, addiction, domestic conflict, inadequate love, loneliness, chronic financial burden, despair, AIDS, death, mass incarceration, and drug criminalization's relationship to African-American men.[1][2] Saadiq named the album after his brother, who died in the 1990s of a heroin overdose after contracting HIV, one of four siblings in his family to die tragically young.[3] As Dylan Hicks chronicles for City Pages, "brother Alvie was murdered in a dispute with a family member when Raphael was a boy; Jimmy Lee Baker, much older than Raphael, had a long struggle with heroin that eventually led to a fatal overdose; another brother, Desmond, a suicide, also battled chemical dependency; a sister, Sarah, was killed after backing her car into a police chase."[4]

When asked about writing the album, Saadiq told Entertainment Weekly in August 2019, "The thing I thought about really was dieting, trying to eat different foods and trying to eat clean. I would do it for a while but then I'd just fall off track. Then I started thinking about people who are addicted to drugs, like my brother, and how much people wanted him to stop, and I figured I couldn't even stop doing some of the things I was doing when it came to food. People don't realize that addiction can take over your entire life. This is a world epidemic. I stayed in that space and I didn't come back out until I was done [recording the album]."[5]

Saadiq recorded and produced the album at Blakeslee Recording Co. in North Hollywood. For certain songs, he collaborated with Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Kendrick Lamar, and Brook D'Leau, among others.[6] According to Jem Aswad of Variety in August 2019, "unusually for contemporary R&B, Saadiq's songs seem mostly to have been written on guitar or bass (he excels on both), giving them a rootsy core that's rare in most popular music today."[7]

The resulting music departs from the upbeat retro stylings of Saadiq's previous solo albums.[2] Instead, it features a wide range of R&B styles produced in modern fashion, albeit still employing soul and funk sounds from the 1970s.[8] From that period, Aswad cites influences in the socially conscious recordings of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder,[7] while Damien Morris from The Observer says the project strives to be a modern version of Gaye's What's Going On (1971) or Prince's Sign o' the Times (1987).[9] The album's soul songs have uniform rhythms overall, although "Kings Fall", "My Walk", and "I'm Feeling Love" feature dissonance in the form of clashing electronic sounds and erratic vocals, reflecting themes of distress in their narratives.[10] Greg Kot describes the tone as murky throughout the album.[1]

Marketing and sales

Columbia Records released Jimmy Lee on August 23, 2019.[6] "Glory to the Veins" and "Something Keeps Calling" were released as singles.[5] Saadiq also toured the United States in support of the album.[6] Commercially, it charted at number 25 on Billboard magazine's Top Album Sales in the week of September 7, its only week on the chart.[11]

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Album of the Year84/100[12]
Metacritic90/100[13]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[14]
And It Don't StopA–[2]
Chicago Tribune[1]
Daily Republic[15]
Knack[16]
The Observer[9]
Paste8.0/10[17]
Pitchfork7.8/10[18]
PopMatters9/10[10]
Q[19]

Jimmy Lee was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 90, based on 8 reviews.[13] It is Saadiq's highest-scoring solo work, according to the aggregate website.[20]

Q magazine hailed Jimmy Lee as "a dark album for darker times" and declared, "at 53, Saadiq is still ahead of the curve."[19] Writing for The New York Times, Alex Pappademas claimed, "As a solo artist, Saadiq has long been a master without a masterpiece for consensus to point to. Jimmy Lee could change that through sonic ambition alone."[3] Adriane Pontecorvo, for PopMatters, said of the album, "Saadiq puts his artistic skills to use in full, reaching new emotional and technical heights while delving into heartbreaking lows. Jimmy Lee shows why, even though he so often stays behind the scenes these days, his is one of the most compelling voices in modern-day soul music."[10]

Others were more reserved in their praise. While not finding it as successful in its ambition overall, Damien Morris of The Observer called the songs "brutally honest, occasionally impressionistic", and "beautiful", highlighting the "astonishing, soul-scraping laments This World Is Drunk and Kings Fall".[9] Reviewing the album in his Substack-published "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau said that only the song "My Walk" has a "surefire hook" on what is nevertheless a "one-of-a-kind album" that places the "slick modernist R&B" style of Saadiq's 1990s group, Tony! Toni! Toné!, "in a tragic vision of black life that's devoid of street and hood – of realities turned hip hop commonplaces that too often ignore the complexities".[2]

Track listing
No.TitleWriter(s)Producer(s)Length
1."Sinners Prayer"
Saadiq4:34
2."So Ready"
  • Saadiq
  • Brook D'Leau
  • Saadiq
  • D'Leau
4:19
3."This World Is Drunk"SaadiqSaadiq4:24
4."Something Keeps Calling" (featuring Rob Bacon)SaadiqSaadiq4:44
5."Kings Fall"
  • Saadiq
  • Dylan Wiggins
  • Saadiq
  • Sir Dylan
2:46
6."I'm Feeling Love"
  • Saadiq
  • D'Leau
  • Saadiq
  • D'Leau
3:04
7."My Walk"
  • Saadiq
  • Charlie Bereal
  • Saadiq
  • Bereal
2:16
8."Belongs to God" (featuring Reverend E. Baker)
  • Saadiq
  • Elijah Baker Sr.
Saadiq2:05
9."Dottie Interlude"
  • Saadiq
  • D'Leau
  • Saadiq
  • D'Leau
0:06
10."Glory to the Veins" (featuring Ernest Turner)
  • Saadiq
  • Charles Brungardt
  • Saadiq
  • Brungardt
2:05
11."Rikers Island"Saadiq
  • Saadiq
  • D'Leau
  • Wooten
3:39
12."Rikers Island Redux" (featuring Daniel J. Watts)SaadiqSaddiq2:57
13."Rearview" (featuring Kendrick Lamar)
  • Saadiq
  • Duckworth
Saadiq2:28
Total length:39:27
  • The vinyl edition ends "Rearview" with two minutes of silence and the hidden track "Angel".[21]

Personnel

Credits are adapted from AllMusic.[22]

  • Raphael Saadiq - bass guitar, guitar, percussion, additional synthesizer programming
  • Taura Stinson - background vocals
  • Chris Dave - drums
  • Rob Bacon - guitar
  • Thomas McElroy - additional synthesizer
  • Daniel Crawford - additional synthesizer
  • Lemar Carter - drums
  • Sir Dylan - piano, recording engineer
  • Ernest Turner - piano
  • Brook D'Leau - drums
  • Charlie Bereal - guitar
  • Jairus Mozee - guitar
  • Ali Shaheed Muhammad - congas
  • Kelvin Wooten - Upright piano, B-3 Organ
  • Gerry "The Gov" Brown - recording engineer
  • Hotae Alexander Jang - recording engineer, mix engineer
  • Charles Brungardt - recording engineer, mix engineer
  • Steve Rusch - recording engineer
  • Dave Kutch - mastering

Charts
Chart (2019) Peak
position
French Albums (SNEP)[23] 170
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[24] 90
UK R&B Albums (OCC)[25] 7
US Top Album Sales (Billboard)[11] 25

References

Footnotes

  1. Kot, Greg (August 23, 2019). "Raphael Saadiq bears soulful witness to his family's anguish on 'Jimmy Lee'". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  2. Christgau, Robert (November 13, 2019). "Consumer Guide: November, 2019". And It Don't Stop. Substack. Retrieved February 1, 2020. (subscription required)
  3. Pappademas, Alex (August 15, 2019). "Raphael Saadiq Finally Put His Past on the Record". The New York Times. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  4. Hicks, Dylan (February 20, 2020). "From Tony Toni Toné' through 'Jimmy Lee,' Raphael Saadiq has crafted a unique career". City Pages. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  5. Moore, Marcus J. (August 21, 2019). "Anatomy of a Song: How Raphael Saadiq wrote about addiction on Jimmy Lee". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  6. Slingerland, Calum (June 7, 2019). "Raphael Saadiq Returns with First New Album in Eight Years". Exclaim!. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  7. Aswad 2019.
  8. Aswad 2019; Pontecorvo 2019.
  9. Morris, Damien (August 25, 2019). "Raphael Saadiq: Jimmy Lee review – beautiful songs of loss and addiction". The Observer. Retrieved November 17, 2019.
  10. Pontecorvo 2019.
  11. "Raphael Saadiq Chart History (Top Album Sales)". Billboard. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  12. "Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee". Album of the Year. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  13. "Jimmy Lee by Raphael Saadiq Reviews and Tracks". Metacritic. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  14. Kellman, Andy. "Jimmy Lee – Raphael Saadiq". AllMusic. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  15. "Album reviews: Raphael Saadiq, Jay Som, Tyler Childers". Daily Republic. August 27, 2019. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
  16. Blondeel, Kurt (September 10, 2019). "Nooit kwam Raphael Saadiq straffer uit de hoek dan op zijn nieuwe plaat". Knack (in Dutch). Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  17. Reyes-Kulkarni, Saby (August 23, 2019). "Raphael Saadiq: Jimmy Lee Review". Paste. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  18. Gaillot, Ann-Derrick (September 19, 2019). "Raphael Saadiq: Jimmy Lee". Pitchfork. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  19. Yates, Steve (October 2019). "Raphael Saadiq: Jimmy Lee". Q (403): 110.
  20. "Raphael Saadiq Music Profile". Metacritic. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  21. Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee (Vinyl liner notes). Columbia Records. Catalog no.: 19075965501
  22. "Jimmy Lee – Raphael Saadiq – Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  23. "Lescharts.com – Raphael Saadiq – Jimmy Lee". Hung Medien. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  24. "Swisscharts.com – Raphael Saadiq – Jimmy Lee". Hung Medien. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  25. "Official R&B Albums Chart Top 40". Official Charts Company. Retrieved October 26, 2019.

Bibliography

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.