I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. Today I'm bringing you an interview I just did with one of the most important musical figures in the past few decades, Raphael Sadiq. He was of course a co-founder and key creative force of the legendary RMB band Tony Tony, who just reformed for a big tour. And he went on to be a soul artist.

He's got a lot of great albums. But as we discuss, my favorite is probably 2011 Stone Rowan, and a writer, producer, musician for other artists. He's worked with De Angelo, including on his career-defining hit,

Untitled. He worked with Salange Knowles on her incredible 2016 album

was seat at the table. And lately, he's been working with Salange's sister, Beyonce.

Ray won a Grammy for his work on the instant classic Renaissance track,

Cuffet, and he also co-wrote and served as a producer and musician on multiple songs for Cowboy Carter.

So there's a whole lot to talk about and we got into just about all of it.

He broke some news about the future of the Tonies and DeAngel's current project along the way.

Here's my conversation with Raphael

Sadiq. First of all last I heard there was talk of a new album with the Tonies.

What is the status of that? Is that still a plan?

No, it's not a plan anymore.

Okay. No, it's over. What went down?

Not that. Honestly, we just got overzealous a little bit. We, the bucket list was really the tour. And we were just over, like I said, we were a little over zealous in thinking we could do an album.

That can't happen.

But the tour was amazing.

We had a beautiful time.

We enjoyed each other on the road.

We know, I guess some of the confusion is probably we don't get along, but we get along well.

We have fun.

We're just at that point where we all don't feel the same when it comes to working on the album. I'm probably the only one who really want to work on records, like every day.

I'm still, I'm like a, I'm like a gym rat.

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