Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee

The Guardian 80

(Columbia)

Raphael Saadiq says he didn’t want to make this album – he had to. After collaborating with stars such as Solange, Mick Jagger and D’Angelo, playing in R&B bands Tony! Toni! Toné! and Lucy Pearl and trying to write the perfect vintage soul-love song as a solo act, Jimmy Lee is his passion project. Dedicating it to a brother lost to drugs, and three other dead siblings, the producer/frontman serves up a series of brutally honest, occasionally impressionistic meditations on addiction and loss, with just enough positivity leavening the sorrow and cynicism. There’s helplessness in his tales, but defiance in his ability to tell them.

Like his mentor Prince, Saadiq uses melody and space beautifully over radio-friendly rhythms, slipping between genres with authority and authenticity. He sounds as good delivering So Ready’s gentle funk as on dusty spiritual Belongs to God. It feels like he’s aiming for a 21st-century version of classic albums such as Sign ‘O’ the Times and What’s Going On and, on astonishing, soul-scraping laments This World Is Drunk and Kings Fall, he almost gets there.

Pitchfork 78

The soul singer’s latest is a multi-perspective, multi-genre examination of addiction and family breakdown.