Sons of Soul
Sons of Soul is the third album by American R&B band Tony! Toni! Toné!, released on June 22, 1993, by Wing Records and Mercury Records. It follows the success of their 1990 album The Revival, which had extended their popularity beyond R&B audiences and into the mainstream.
The band originally held recording sessions for Sons of Soul at several studios in California, including Westlake Recording Studios in Hollywood and Paradise Recording Studio in Sacramento. When they became jaded with the various people frequenting those studios, Tony! Toni! Toné! moved their sessions to Caribbean Sound Basin in Trinidad, where they ultimately wrote and recorded most of the album. It was produced entirely by the group, who worked with various session musicians and utilized both vintage and contemporary recording equipment.
Sons of Soul was recorded as an homage to Tony! Toni! Toné!'s musical influences—classic soul artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Its music incorporated live instrumentation, funk, and hip hop elements such as samples and scratches. Lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins handled most of the songwriting, which was characterized by quirky, flirtatious lyrics and reverent ballads.
A commercial success, Sons of Soul charted for 43 weeks on the Billboard 200 and earned a double platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. With the album, Tony! Toni! Toné! became one of the most popular R&B acts during the genre's commercial resurgence in the early 1990s. It was also a widespread critical success, ranking as one of 1993's best records in many critics' year-end lists.
Background
Inspired by live instrumentation, turntablism, and classic soul music, Tony! Toni! Toné! recorded and produced their second album, The Revival, mostly themselves and released it in 1990 to commercial success. The record broadened the group's exposure to fans beyond their initial R&B audience. However, they became ambivalent about their newfound mainstream success and their music being labeled "retro" by critics. In an interview for People magazine, lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins expressed his dissatisfaction with the music industry, saying that "every record company wants to get a group and put 'em in a Benz with a car phone and a beeper, show them dressing in three different outfits, put them in a video shot on a beach with lots of swinging bikinis. You won't ever see us on a beach. We're just down-to-earth, funky, like-to-play guys." Before considering a follow-up album, the band recorded several songs for film soundtracks, including "Me and You" for Boyz n the Hood, "House Party " for House Party 2, and "Waiting on You" for Poetic Justice.Having fulfilled their creative intentions with The Revival, Tony! Toni! Toné! wanted to pay homage to their musical influences with Sons of Soul. In a 1993 interview for The New York Times, Wiggins elaborated on their direction for the album, stating "We're paying homage to a lot of older artists who paved the way for us artists like the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind and Fire. They're the people who inspired us when we were growing up, people like Aretha Franklin, James Brown. We feel we're the sons of everything and all those people who came before us." He also explained the album's title as a declaration of them being descendants of those artists, "not in a grandiose sense, but from the standpoint that we really are the musical offspring of all that's come before us ... paying homage to our past, but creating in a contemporary environment."
Recording
The group began recording Sons of Soul in 1993. They initially held sessions at several recording studios in California, including Air L.A. Studios, Paramount Recording Studios, and Westlake Recording Studios in Hollywood, Pajama Studios in Oakland, J.Jam Recording in Oakland Hills, and Paradise Recording Studio in Sacramento, where Raphael Wiggins resided at the time. Wiggins, his brother guitarist D'wayne Wiggins, and drummer Timothy Christian Riley each played several instruments for the album. Raphael and D'wayne came up with ideas for songs by playing guitar and a drum machine, and working them into compositions with Riley and Carl Wheeler, an unofficial member and in-studio keyboardist for the group. They also created drum loops at their homes, with Raphael using an Akai MPC60 and D'wayne using an E-mu SP-12, and the group improvised their respective instrumental parts for songs at the studio to a certain loop.They also worked with various session musicians, including string arranger Benjamin Wright, saxophonists Gerald Albright and Lenny Pickett, trumpeter Ray Brown, arranger Clare Fischer, and audio engineer Gerry Brown. Brown engineered the group's previous albums, and later their subsequent output, including Raphael Wiggins' solo albums after Tony! Toni! Toné! Brown recommended for him to use a dynamic microphone when recording his vocals to thicken them with more bass, a practice Wiggins continued throughout his career. Wiggins sought after former Temptations vocalist Eddie Kendricks to sing on "Leavin'", but Kendricks died prior to the sessions. They also worked with two horn sections, The Fat Lip Horns and The SNL Horns, the horn section of the Saturday Night Live Band. Raphael and D'wayne Wiggins sang impromptu musical ideas to the SNL players, who in turn modelled their horn parts after their singing.
Trinidad sessions
Jaded with their lifestyles in California and the various people frequenting the studios, the group moved the sessions to Caribbean Sound Basin in Maraval, a suburb of Port of Spain, Trinidad. The studio complex was one of Trinidad's few high-end recording locations and was founded in 1990 by Trinidadian businessman Robert Amar, who wanted to attract both local and international recording artists with a state-of-the-art facility and the area's culture. The group intended to use to the studio only to polish their previous sessions' output, but ended up writing and recording what became most of the album for two months. D'wayne Wiggins said of the move in an interview for Musician, "the record company really wanted to put what we had out, but we ourselves didn't feel like the album was done."Caribbean Sound Basin housed three separate studios and several amenities, including a swimming pool, gym, sauna, photographic studio, and bedroom suites. In contrast to most recording studios, its interior was spacious and exposed to natural light. At the studio complex, Raphael, D'wayne, and Riley recorded extensively into the night and went out to enjoy the nightlife, before returning to the studio. They often dimmed the lights, burned incense, and drank wine to set the mood when recording, which D'wayne explained in Musician, "We try to make it real calm and mellow. 'Cause you want to be able to get into what you're singing." They also immersed themselves in the local dancehall scene and attended late-night block parties that lasted until dawn. D'wayne later recalled his nightlife experiences with the group in Maravel:
Their subsequent recording for the album was influenced by their experiences in Trinidad and Caribbean musical styles, including the rhythms and festive atmosphere of the local music scene. They enlisted Trinidadian dancehall artist General Grant, a regular at Caribbean Sound Basin, to perform a ragga rap on "What Goes Around Comes Around" and "Dance Hall", songs they developed in Trinidad. Raphael Wiggins recalled this in an interview for the Toronto Star: " was just hanging around the studio. We asked him to come freestyle on . After that, he just kept hanging around. Then we had the song 'Dance Hall' playing one night and he started again, so we just turned on the mic." "My Ex-Girlfriend" was also recorded there. According to D'wayne, they recorded "Tonyies! In the Wrong Key" in the studio at 3 a.m., and Raphael was "quite snookered" on an alcoholic beverage when delivering his vocals. Collectively, the group had written and recorded approximately 40 songs at the end of the sessions. In an interview for Billboard, D'wayne Wiggins said that they focused on the love songs when having to decide what songs would make the album.
Production
Unlike with their previous albums, the group produced Sons of Soul entirely themselves. They utilized both vintage and contemporary recording gear in the album's production, including a Hammond B-3, Clavinet, ARP String Ensemble, and Korg and Roland synthesizers. Riley viewed that hearing music played from the older instruments affected their songwriting. For his vocals, Raphael recorded with Neumann U 87 and AKG C12A condenser mics, as well as a vintage RCA Type 77-DX microphone. He used a custom five-string bass from a guitar and bass repair shop in San Francisco, as well as a Minimoog analog synthesizer for other bass lines on the album. D'wayne used a Microtech Gefell UM70 for his lead vocals and an AKG 414 for his background vocals. He played a vintage Gibson L6-S and a Fender Coronado guitar, modified with Gibson burst bucker pickups. Aside from his drumming, Riley played both Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos.Caribbean Sound Basin's main studio had both analog and digital equipment, a 60 ft x 70 ft x 18 ft live room, and three isolation booths, for vocals, piano, and drums. The group recorded original tracks using Studer 24- and 48-track recorders and transferred them to a Sony digital recorder. For most songs, MIDI keyboards were played live into a sequencer and left unquantized, while vintage keyboards were recorded to analog tape. Riley said of the process in an interview for Keyboard magazine, "even though we used a sequencer for some stuff, we'd still cut the song live from start to finish. See, the last record was all done with a Synclavier. But this time, we tried to keep it all live and raw."
Record producer and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad, credited for programming on the album, assisted in its production. He cited the group's fusion of hip hop production and live instrumentation for Sons of Soul as the inspiration for his subsequent work as a member of A Tribe Called Quest and The Ummah. Muhammad discussed his experience recording Sons of Soul in a 1998 interview, saying that "I'd just hooked this beat up, and picked up their instruments and started playing. Raphael was singing, and as soon as he touched the bass, it just blew me away." Raphael Wiggins explained how they valued instrumentation when recording the album, saying that "We want everyone to have something to relate to; a drummer will get into the live drums and so on."
Tony! Toni! Toné! tracked the final mixes of the songs at Caribbean Sound Basin. Its main studio used a 64-channel SSL 4064 G mixing console, the secondary studio used a 48-track Neve console with flying faders, and its third studio used an Amek BC2 console. The group mostly used the older Neve console. In tracking the songs, they started with a drum machine groove as a basic track and recorded it. The parts recorded with live instrumentation were then added to the mix. Live drums and horn sections were included to attain the sound of performing live. Sons of Soul was subsequently mastered by engineer Herb Powers at his New York City studio P.M. Entertainment.