Raphael Saadiq and Sam Sanders. Photo by Rommel Alcantara. 

Hey there, and happy Friday. There’s so much stuff I could to talk to you about this week. 

• All those Oscar nods for Sinners, as well as an acting nomination for Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue (a film I thoroughly and surprisingly enjoyed!) 

• My chat with Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman about whatever the heck is going on at Spotify these days. Spoiler: In spite of all the boycotts, the company is profitable, growing, and looking to expand into wellness videos starting soon. (Can you see my eyes rolling at that sentence?) 

• This really, really trippy jazz-pop song called “Pomeranian” from a new-ish band called Forager, full of wacky time signature shifts and chord changes that sound like drugs feel.

• The fact that my partner loved Hamnet and I… did not! 

Instead of diving into any of those topics right now, I’d love to linger a bit on the story behind one of my favorite songs of all time: “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” by D’Angelo. D’Angelo made the song with R&B legend Raphael Saadiq, who happens to be on my show this week, talking about his Oscar-nominated song from Sinners, “I Lied To You”. It’s the song in the movie that’s so powerful it summons spirits and sets of a time-traveling orchestra of song and dance in a Southern jook joint. 

Ironically, when Ryan Coogle and Sinner’s composer Ludwig Göransson pitched the idea of writing a song for the film to Saadiq, they didn’t mention all that. 

But back to “Untitled.” It’s my favorite song from one of my favorite albums, and it almost, maybe didn’t happen? Raphael saved the day with a bold request. And D’Angelo proved, yet again, that there will never be another him. The rest of our chat has Raphael talking about other megastars he’s worked with, including Solange AND Beyoncé, but here’s my favorite story from that chat: the one behind one of the sexiest songs of all time:

I have read about what I guess could be considered one of the most remarkable recording sessions of our era. You've talked about it at length. You and D'Angelo, making his biggest hit, “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” I did not know this: all the instrumentation is just you and him?

Yeah. Just me and him.

It is a classic of our time. Talk me through “How does it feel.”

We were gonna work on something else, like a month before that, and it didn't happen. I was in New York, and for some reason, he [D’Angelo] couldn't get there. So I left abruptly, and they were a little hot that I left. 

I came back to New York for some other reason. And I was walking through the Village, and I was walking with a friend. I was like, ‘Dang, it's nice and beautiful in the summer in the Village, I need a joint! Where can I get a joint from? Let me go just be rude…’ And we were walking past Electric Lady [Studio], and I was like, ‘I'mma just hit the button to see if this chump is here.’ 

D’Angelo? 

Yeah, I’m calling him a chump. [Laughter]

Let me see if D'Angelo is in studio – because he'll definitely have some weed?

Yeah. I was honestly real disrespectful. [Laughter] Because we kind of fell out for a quick second. And so I ring the bell to Electric Lady, and go, “Is D'Angelo here?’ And they go, yeah, yeah, hold on. Usually a second engineer comes up and runs up the stairs to the front door. He opens up the door. 

D’Angelo? 

Yeah. And he goes, he ‘What's up?’ I'm like, ‘You got a joint? He goes, ‘Yeah, I got you.’ And he's like, ‘Yo, let's do something.’ 

We go downstairs, and we do, “Untitled.” 

How high were you? 

Not really that high… you know, puff a joint… 

He had a piece of it [“Untitled”] together, and we started working it out. I think I played bass. First, he programmed the drum, then we walked into the live room. He played piano, and I played guitar. That was pretty much it. 

At the end of the record, it really builds. 

It swells! 

Yeah. So I’m writing the chorus to that part, and he goes, ‘You gotta go crazy at the end!’ So we build it up, and then we ran out of tape. 

Yeah, it just stopped.

I said, don't fix it, though. Just leave it like that. And I was like, ‘Name it Untitled. That was me. And I said, Don't fix the tape. [I told him] ‘When you play piano, you need to play like an old Baptist woman!’ 

People don't know about him. I mean, they know he's the old soul. But he is so much more. Rest in peace my brother. It's so much more to him. I miss him. He put a smile on my face. Everybody's not made for the industry, right? And I told him, I said, You're not gonna like it [the industry]. 

Why did you think that?

He was too good. He wasn't built for the structure of the music industry. To me, he was built to just love music and play it back to himself, yeah, if you can catch it on tape, you’re lucky. We were lucky.  

But [during the recording of “Untitled”], how high was he [D’Angelo]?

He wasn't that high. Not in the studio. He's a real professional. Yeah, he's a real professional. 

God Bless D’Angelo. See y’all next week.

Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe to Sam's Newsletter for more.