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Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Raphael Saadiq

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.72.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Raphael Saadiq returns to Bullseye to talk about writing one of the biggest movie songs of the year for Sinners. He also chats with us about playing bass guitar as a teen in church bands, the origins of Tony! Toni! Toné!, and the final tour he got to go on with his late brother D’Wayne.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,

0:05.4

investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish.

0:11.1

More information is available at Hewlett.org.

0:15.7

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximum fun.org and is distributed

0:20.8

by NPR.

0:35.2

It's Bolzai.

0:36.4

The movie Sinners has been out for a little less than a year.

0:41.0

In that time, it has brought in $370 million in ticket sales. It has climbed to the top of countless best of the year lists.

0:50.8

And now it is nominated for 16 Oscars. Sinners was directed by Ryan Cougler. It stars Michael

0:57.6

B. Jordan. Jordan plays twin brothers. They come home to the rural South after a sort of gangland

1:04.2

sojourn in the big city. And they open a juke joint. And then the juke joint gets attacked by vampires.

1:12.1

Now, maybe that sounds like a campy horror movie?

1:15.7

Yeah, I mean, it has some campy horror movie elements.

1:20.5

But it's also an enormous story about faith and the black experience in the Jim Crow South

1:27.3

and the black experience in the Jim Crow South and the black experience in America

1:30.8

forever ago, forever into the future. And maybe even more than all those things, it is about the

1:36.6

transformative and hypnotic power of music. So it is not a huge surprise to learn that among

1:43.7

those 16 nominations, there was one for Best

1:46.5

Original Song. The song is I Lied to You, written by composer Ludwig Gorensen and by my guest,

1:53.9

Raphael Siddique. Who is Raphael Sadiq, aside from being the guy who wrote one of the biggest

2:00.5

movie songs in recent history.

2:02.7

He's a singer and songwriter who has made five acclaimed records under his own name.

...

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