Stone Rollin’ by Raphael Saadiq

Stone Rollin', Raphael Saadiq's fourth album, came out on Columbia on March 25, 2011, and it's the sound of a soul classicist deciding to get his hands dirty. Touring The Way I See It had shown him how loud and ragged his songs could get on a stage, so he spent a year at his own Blakesee Recording Company in Los Angeles chasing that grit. He played most of the instruments himself, leaning hard on a woozy Mellotron, and with engineer Charles Brungardt back at his side he stretched vintage soul out into funk, blues, rock and a touch of psychedelia. Arranger Paul Riser and engineer Gerry Brown helped him lay strings and orchestral swells over the grooves.

Critics went for it in a big way, some calling it his finest work, and it climbed to number 14 on the Billboard 200, the best US showing of his career. He took it on the road from March to August 2011.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.