The Tony! Toni! Toné! reunion tour has been one of the most anticipated music events of the year, and now, fans can look forward to a new album from the beloved trio. Raphael Saadiq announced that the group will make a new album after the tour.
Saadiq, co-founder of the R&B trio revealed the news while discussing the reunion during an interview with Vulture. The singer-bassist-producer stated that the group has already initiated plans to record new music. “We definitely gonna do an album after this tour,” Saadiq said from his rehearsal compound. “We’re working on it as we speak, in all these rooms.”
While Saadiq gave no timetable for the album’s completion or release, this would mark the first new Tony! Toni! Toné! album since 1996’s “House of Music.” That album featured one of the group’s biggest hits, “Let’s Get Down,” featuring DJ Quik.
In the meantime, Saadiq and his bandmates, brother Dwayne Wiggins and cousin Timothy Christian Riley, have just kicked off their “Raphael Saadiq Revisits Tony! Toni! Toné!: Just Me and You Tour” last week with shows in Birmingham and Charlotte. The 25-city trek will include stops in cities like New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Greensboro, Los Angeles, and their native Oakland.
Saadiq first announced the tour back in March, posting new photos of he and the group on social media. The group became R&B hits in the late 1980s after the release of their debut album, “Who?” They released three more albums in the 1990s, “The Revival (1990),” “Sons of Soul (1993),” and “House of Music (1996).” During that time, they released hits like “It Feels Good,” “If I Had No Loot,” “Anniversary,” and “Whatever You Want.”
The “Just Me and You Tour” is the first time Saadiq has toured with Tony! Toni! Toné! since their 1996 break-up. Wiggins and Riley continued to tour as Tony! Toni! Toné! without Saadiq between 1998 and 2018, although they briefly reunited for Saadiq’s 2003 live album, “All the Hits At the House of Blues.”
Since the break-up, Saadiq has chiefly been a solo act, releasing five solo albums. He became an award-winning songwriter and producer for other artists, including Total (“Kissing You”), D’Angelo (“Lady,” “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”), Erykah Badu (“Love of My Life”), and Solange (“Cranes in the Sky”). He was an original member of the production team The Ummah featuring Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and J Dilla, and made a collaborative album with Muhammad and Dawn Robinson as the band Lucy Pearl in 2000.
Aside from being a successful producer and performer, Saadiq has thrived in Hollywood as well. He served as a composer on the hit HBO comedy series, “Insecure.” In 2018, he received his first Academy Award nomination for co-writing “Mighty River” from “Mudbound,” and in 2021, he won an Emmy for composing for HBO’s “Lovecraft Country.”
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