Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you are here. On today's show, Ethan Slater will be here to talk about his new play, Marcel on the Train, along with his co-writer and director, Marshall Pailet. We'll also learn about the life of a musical great who is the subject of a new documentary. The director and producer of Billy Preston, That's the Way God Planned It, joins us in studio. That's an amazing film, by the way.

We'll hear a live performance from Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter August Ponthier. That's the plan. Let's get this started with Oscar nominee Raphael Saadiq.

[music]

If you've seen the 16-time Oscar-nominated film Sinners, you've heard this song.

[MUSIC - Miles Caton: I Lied To You]

Alison Stewart: It's called I Lied To You, and it comes at a pivotal moment in the film, and it is an Oscar nominee for Best Original Song. In the film, the character Sammie, sometimes called Preacher Boy, serenades those in attendance at his cousin's newly opened juke joint. Something happens that can only be described as supernatural. The song was written and produced by Swedish Ludwig Göransson, and my next guest, Grammy-winning musician and record producer, Raphael Saadiq.

After being part of the successful group, Tony! Toni! Toné! Saadiq launched a successful solo career, released five solo albums, worked with some of the biggest names in the music industry, and composed songs for several films. He joins me now as part of our ongoing series, The Big Picture, celebrating Oscar nominees who work behind the scenes. Raphael, welcome back to All Of It.

Raphael Saadiq: Hello. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: So good to talk to you. How did you meet Ludwig and director Ryan Coogler?

Raphael Saadiq: I met Ludwig just because I met him through a friend of ours, and I visited him one time, and we just had a conversation about music and producing. Then I met Ryan also through film, too, from him when he did Fruitvale. We'd never met in person. We met over phone, and I worked with his brother. His brother is also an artist, and I worked with him. We're both from Oakland, California, so we have mutual friends. My late brother Dwayne and Ryan Coogler's dad was really good friends.

Alison Stewart: From what I've read, they just rolled up on you and said, "Hey, do you want to help us with Sinners one day?" [laughs]

Raphael Saadiq: Yes. That's exactly how it happened. They called me over to the studio, put an outline of the script in front of me. Ludwig went through the script, and Ryan went through the script, and they said, "It's a different movie. It's a small independent film, and we need a song for it, and we need it today. If you can write it right now before you leave." That's how that went.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Could you do that literally, like right now?

Raphael Saadiq: Right now, I'm thinking I got a chance to go back to my studio, which is in North Hollywood, maybe 20 minutes from Ludwig's beautiful studio. They said, "We leave in three days to start shooting in New Orleans, and we would like it if you could do it now." That happened, and right there me and Ludwig just grabbed some rubber-mounted blues guitars, acoustic guitars, and started riffing. Started going for guitar licks, and from there, next thing you know, I'm on the microphone writing and singing lyrics to the song.

Alison Stewart: That's wild.

Raphael Saadiq: Yes, it's wild.

Alison Stewart: What kind of guitars did you use?

Raphael Saadiq: It's this place in Los Angeles in Silver Lake. It's a little small house that sell these rubber-mounted acoustic guitars. There are just no names. He takes these guitars and restores them. I had one, and Ludwig, he had some too. The Muppicans, the British band-- I don't know why I'm messing up their name, but I worked with them. The lead singer once, he came to my studio, and he had this beautiful guitar. I'm like, "Where'd you get that from? In London?" He said, "No, I got in the Silver Lake." Mumford & Sons.

Alison Stewart: Got you.

Raphael Saadiq: Yes. I went right there, and I bought this guitar, and who would know I got a chance to use it in centers, and Ludwig had one too. That's how I got it. It's a no-name guitar, but it sounds damn good.

Alison Stewart: Director Ryan Coogler, he's known for having a very specific vision of his films, and he executes them with meticulous attention to detail. What is something that you learned about the process of creating art after working with him?

Raphael Saadiq: I think I learned that having great people and great DPs and everybody around him is very crafty, and he has a vision. You want to get it done, so you have to have great creative people around you to pay attention to detail, to film people, to study film, and study music. You have to love all the facets in film. Not just your script. You got to love everything about film. You got to respect other films that came before you and other creative people that are around you at the same time, that are creators. That's what I learned.

Alison Stewart: How common, or what was different, I should say, between working on Sinners versus some of the other movies that you've worked on?

Raphael Saadiq: Sinners was a little different because it happened so fast, but I work with John Singleton a lot, too, the late John Singleton. He also would just tell me, "Give me a scene without giving me the script." I had some practice, but this was different because I was writing a song for someone to sing, versus just putting music to film. This one really lived in the film. It was almost like Purple Rain to a Prince movie. It really tells the story of the Sammie character. I didn't know that going in. I just started singing, "Someone take me in your arms tonight."

I didn't really think about the character had this problem with his dad being a Pentecostal pastor who didn't believe anybody should sing the blues. With Ryan's uncle, who he dedicated the movie to, he was a blues lover. When Ryan was telling me about it, he was saying how in the South, when you sing blues, it was almost like the devil's music, and church was God's music. Growing up in Oakland, California, I grew up with a lot of preachers' kids. That was the story when a lot of us, your parents would tell you you shouldn't play secular music.

I was up against that a lot. It was easy for me to visualize this character and sing in that voice and push that narrative, at the same time thinking about Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. I'm a huge Delta blues guy too, because my dad used to sing blues and play a lot of Howlin' Wolf around me. I wanted to put it in the spirit of that. To my knowledge, knowing they picked so much authentic music for that movie, that was the struggle they would be up against. They really went and got the best people out of Clarks and out of Mississippi. I think that was the difference for me.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to musician, songwriter, and producer. Raphael Saadiq about his career and his Oscar-nominated song from Sinners as part of our ongoing Oscar series, The Big Picture. Let's start with I Lied To You. Which came first, the music or the lyrics?

Raphael Saadiq: The lyric came first. I Lied To You. I don't know. That just popped out of my head. I Lied To You. I was telling Ludwig I have this idea, while we were talking, just saying, "In my mind, they say the truth hurts, so I lied to you." When you talk to somebody, you want to tell them you don't want to lie. I always knew that blues songs are very hooky, and they always have these different type of hooks that you have to catch somebody after the guitar solo. I was like, "They say the hurts, so I lied to you. I love the blues."

I don't know. Out the blue, I think the ancestors just came down and grabbed me because I don't know why I should start screaming, "Somebody take me in your arms tonight." Once I saw the movie because I actually didn't-- Me and Ludwig wrote the song, and I didn't see the movie until I screened the movie with Ryan and some of the staff. When I saw it, "Somebody take me in your arms tonight," how the character Miles Caton would have his arms up, and like singing to the heavens, "Somebody take me in your arms tonight," really gave it a different meaning when I listened to the song against pitcher.

It was really different. It took me a minute to go like, "Wow, how did that happen?" I said it couldn't have been me. It's just got to be a vessel. Things that just coming through me, maybe through with Ryan, and put together with their movie. Coming from his uncle to him, coming from probably my father to me. Ludwig's dad is all the way in Sweden, and he's a huge Muddy Waters fan. I think the love of the music and just being very authentic just poured through the whole film and the music.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a little bit of I Lied To You.

[MUSIC - Miles Caton: I Lied To You]

Alison Stewart: Miles Caton sings the song. He was a guest on our show a couple weeks ago. What do you find unique about his voice and the way he sings that song?

Raphael Saadiq: Miles Caton has a huge, unique voice, and he's like 20 or 21. I don't know if he's 21 yet. He just has a very unique, strong, sort of like second tenor, I would say, voice. It fits the world that he wants to be in as far as records he want to make going into the future, but for this movie, he could have been in those times singing a song. His voice uniquely fits everything about the film. Every shot of it. When he's walking, he's talking, his acting voice blends right into to a singing voice for this film.

It goes so good with the song. Certain instruments sound good with voices, and his voices sounds good with a blues acoustic guitar before it became electric. It worked out perfect.

Alison Stewart: I Lied To You is about Sammie forsaking his father's religious teachings to play secular music. We're going to talk about Billy Preston next, this documentary, who started in the church. There's a whole lot that goes on when you start in the church and you move on to other kinds of music. How did your background with the church help you understand Sammie better?

Raphael Saadiq: I grew up with a lot of preachers' kids, and it's called COGIC, Church of God in Christ, and also fellowship with Sly and the Family Stone, with Sly's dad, Sylvester Sr. They would visit our church a lot, and we would visit their church. Sly was pretty much our example because he was so big, and he was the world. Everybody wanted to be Sly, but the pastor, his dad, would see me at the church, and he would look at me because he saw me playing. He knew it's possible that I could be in the world and playing secular music.

He would look at me and say, "Hey, you be careful if you go out there in that world." I know this story so many times, but my father was also a blues guitarist, and he had three jobs. My dad had a janitorial service. He was a working guy. He's a sheet metal guy. He told me, he said, "Look, son, I don't want you to be scared to go play in the world because the key of E flat is the same key of E flat in church as it is in the blues." That really helped me out. My family wasn't as strict. I went to the type of church where my mother would go to church and come home and drink a Hamm's beer.

[laughter]

It wasn't like go fishing and put on B.B. King. Most of my friends went home, they couldn't listen to any blues. They couldn't play any games. They had to shake the dice, or the girls couldn't wear any pants, any fingernail polish. It was very strict in my house. It was strict as far as what I had to do for school, and be in the house at a certain time. Be respectful. Don't bring any girls to your house. If you want to visit a girl, you got to visit the girl where her parents is at. I had that kind of house. As far as music, I had everything.

Ohio Players, Parliament-Funkadelic playing loud, and I grew up listening to a lot of Mamas and the Papas, the Carpenters. It was a lot of music. The Doobie Brothers were right in Oakland. Carlos Santana was there, Sheila E. I had just epic collage of music and posters. I didn't have that problem, but I did see it a lot, so I did relate to the Sammie's character 100%.

Alison Stewart: I want to mention Sheila E. Raphael, when you were like 20 years old, you played a few concerts for Prince alongside Sheila E. You were like 20 years old at the time. How did that even happen?

Raphael Saadiq: I was actually 19 going into-- We did the Parade Tour with Prince and Sheila. It was the end of the revolution. They had their Purple Rain. They both had the same band. Sheila lost her band after, I guess, the Purple Rain tour. She hired myself, Timothy Riley, which was a member of the Tonys, and also Carl Wheeler, two of my friends. Both of them was preachers' kids. Those are the kids I'm talking about. We toured with Prince and Sheila in Japan on the Parade Tour. It was amazing. It was amazing to see Prince at the top of his game right after Purple Rain.

I got a chance to, you know, meet Wendy and Lisa a lot. Mark Brown, which they were all in Purple Rain, Jerome, the whole band, the whole cast. Some of the light crew, some of the biggest productions I had ever seen in my life. It was the best training I could ever get. I got a lot of time to hang out with Prince by myself, go out to lunch with him. He really loved Oakland musicians, so he was really helpful to me. Things he would tell me, and he would say, "Hey, man, you want to come jam tonight?" Because Wendy and Lisa, that was like the end of the band.

After gigs, I would play with him. We would go to a club, and it would be like a concert, because he basically had brought the concert to another venue after every show. I got the opportunity to sit and play with him, talk to him about some of the music that he loved. It was amazing to see the Prince I saw in the movies and on record and then talk to him and then see him tell girls, you know, "You should put on some clothes."

Alison Stewart: Yes, you know what? He didn't like swearing, right?

Raphael Saadiq: Oh, no. He did like swearing, but he started working with Larry Graham, which is a hero to everybody in Oakland and a hero to him, too. Larry asked him one night, "Have you ever thought about not swearing on your show?" He said, "No, he never thought about it," and then two days later, he came back, and he never sweared again.

Alison Stewart: Wow, and you met Jerome.

Raphael Saadiq: I met Jerome. Jerome told me I couldn't hang out with him. The first night in Japan, we went out. Everybody was going out. He was like, "Yes, you guys, you can't hang out with us." We go to the club, and Prince walks up to me, and it's all these Ford models there. Of course, I didn't know what Ford models were at this age, but I just knew it was a lot of beautiful ladies there. Prince walks up to me, and he said, "Hey, man, is there enough girls here for you tonight?" I'm looking around, like, "Yes," but they weren't interested in me.

Prince walked up to me, and when Prince walked up to me and talked to me for, like, maybe, 10 minutes. He took me to a speaker and said, "I want you to hear this record." He said, "Let's go by the speaker." He told the DJ to start playing it, but he said, "We got to stick our head inside the speaker." That's probably why I'm hard to hear in my left ear today. They put on a record called Housequake. It was before the record came out. I remember when Prince walked away, maybe like 10 girls started talking to me for the rest of the night. Then Jerome Benton said, "Okay, now you can hang with us."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Prince was your wingman?

Raphael Saadiq: He's my wingman. Yes. It was amazing. Sometimes I look at his album covers, and I'm like, "Man, how lucky, how beautiful that was for me." Then, after that, anywhere I would see him, he would have somebody come get me. I've always given him the respect and felt like he was the Prince. He was Prince. He deserved his space. I would never try to-- if I seen him somewhere, walk up like I want to say, "What's up?" I would never do that, but he would always find me and tell somebody, go get me.

He go, "Go get him." Then he would sit and talk, and we would just talk about music independence, the things he liked to talk about. He loved talking about Earth, Wind & Fire. He told me he saw Verdine White at this club, and he looked at me, he said, "See that? You see Verdine White," he said, "you can't put a price on that." We love some of the same things. We both love Larry Graham, we both loved Sly, we both loved Earth, Wind & Fire, we both loved Joni Mitchell. It's good to see as a youngster how music is so international if your ear is open and exposed to, like Neil Young, and the Beatles.

You just enjoy it all. I enjoy it all, and encompasses so many things. That's why when it was time to write I Lied To You for Sinners, I'm just grateful that I was so well-rounded that I knew exactly what I was supposed to do at what time and when I was supposed to do it. I contribute that to a lot of the greats that I've listened to.

Alison Stewart: You're one of the greats for folks. You've been a musician and a producer for a minute now. What draws you to other artists that you're interested in collaborating with?

Raphael Saadiq: The one thing that draws me to other musicians is that they have a vision beyond calling someone. I work better with musicians who know exactly what they want to do, and then I can live in that world. If they can create the narrative and talk to me about it, then I could be a part of that type of band. I'm from a band. I love band culture. When I'm producing, I don't really like to call myself a producer. If I'm working with you, I try to make it feel like we're just a band. If you play like you're just a band, it takes all the pressure away from it.

That's what I love. That's why I love collaborating. I tell people all the time I think I'm the best collaborator in the world. I just did a one-man show called No Bandwidth last year, and so part of the show, and I say, "I'm the best collaborator there is and the best collaborator in the world." I said, "You want to know why? Because I've never won a Grammy or anything for my own music, only when I collaborate with people." [chuckles] I think that says a lot why I love to collaborate because I'm from a band culture.

I've looked at a ton of album covers, and I'm attracted to groups of people making music and creating narratives that's going to go forward.

Alison Stewart: I have been speaking with musician and sometimes record producer Raphael Saadiq. He's up for an Oscar for the song I Lied To You from the film Sinners. Raphael, it was really nice speaking with you.

Raphael Saadiq: Thank you. Have a nice day.