Fantastic Negrito, the Oakland blues howler who’s already scored two Grammys in the last five years, mixes in a healthy dose of retro soul on his third album, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? All that groovin’ sweetens his gritty street tales.
“How Long,” already released as a single for the record set to drop Aug. 14, is a slow-burning story of survival that really thrives with the ‘70s bombast. Guitar solo? Check. Falsetto bit? Check. A honey-sweet chorus makes “Searching for Captain Save a Hoe” irresistable. And I’m not sure, but Negrito might be suggesting a captain save a hoe isn’t the simpleton he’s often made out to be.
After surviving a brutal car crash and being threatened at knife point while hustling, Negrito won’t shy from a little iconoclism. At 51, Xavier Dphrepaulezz (Negrito’s real name) is actually on his second career. He was signed to a major label in ‘90s, dropping a record in ’96 as Xavier before dropping music altogether in 2007 after years without success.
In 2014, he burst on the scene as the blues-roots artist Fantastic Negrito, besting 7,000 contenders to win NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2015. The following year he released The Last Days of Oakland. That record and 2018’s Please Don’t Be Dead both scored Grammys for best contemporary blues album.
Like Michael Franti, Negrito has a Big Love ethos, noting in an interview published in this blog that “How Long” may decry violence, but is addressed to a scared shooter. For “Have You Lost Your Mind,” he recruits 2017 Tiny Desk Contest winner Tank Ball for a rap interlude on the gospelish “I’m So Happy I Could Cry.”
Negrito’s own band, not credited anywhere, pushes out a lot of fine sound, from rowdy choruses to the big guitar solos to a heavy organ presence.
Fantastic Negrito is definitely reaching on his third release, and that’s a good thing. If you’re going to talk hard, topical stuff like equity and social justice, calling for personal accountability even as you condemn systemic injustice, it’s nice to seduce with the funk and soul of simpler times.
- Claude Iosso
