Fantastic Negrito

Fantastic Negrito
At Byron Bay Bluesfest, Australia, 2016
Background information
Birth name Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz
Born 1968 (age 49–50)
Massachusetts
Origin Oakland, California
Genres Roots music, blues, R&B
Instruments Guitar, vocals
Years active 1996-present
Labels Blackball Universe
Website www.fantasticnegrito.com

Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz (born 1968),[1] better known by his stage name Fantastic Negrito, is an African-American singer-songwriter whose music spans blues, R&B, and roots music.[2] He released his new album Please Don't Be Dead on the 15th June, 2018.[3]

Early life

Negrito was born in western Massachusetts, the eighth of fifteen children.[4] His father was a deeply religious Somali Muslim who, Negrito recalls, had "a lot of rules" for his children.[5] Negrito and his family relocated to Oakland, California when he was 12 years old.[6] A lifelong hustler, he began selling drugs at a young age in Oakland, and in 2016, he told the Guardian, "We were all selling drugs, man. We all carried pistols. There was a crack epidemic."[5] He became inspired to teach himself how to play music after listening to Prince's album Dirty Mind and hearing that Prince was a self-taught musician. He learned to play music by sneaking into music classrooms at the University of California Berkeley despite not being a student there.[5]

Career

Negrito made a record deal with Prince's former manager, and later, in 1993, made another deal, this one with Interscope Records.[5] On January 9, 1996, he released his first album, The X Factor, under the mononym Xavier. The album was released on Lexington House Records and distributed by Interscope.[5][7] He was in a near-fatal car crash in 1999, which left him in a coma for three weeks;[2] he has since said that he felt that this crash "released" him because Interscope terminated their contract with him, after which he resumed hustling.[5] In 2007, he stopped making music, but he returned in 2014, describing his new musical style as "black roots music for everyone".[2] In 2015, he won NPR's Tiny Desk Contest.[6] In 2016, his album The Last Days of Oakland was released on the Blackball Universe label.[8] Negrito won his first Grammy in 2017, when The Last Days of Oakland received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.[9]

Discography

References

  1. ↑ "Fantastic Negrito 1968-". Worldcat.
  2. 1 2 3 McFarland, K.M. (2015-09-17). "7 Facts to Know About Fantastic Negrito Before He Blows Up". Wired.
  3. ↑ Ainscoe, Mike (2018-03-26). "Fantastic Negrito: Please Don't Be Dead – album news".
  4. ↑ Vaziri, Aidin (2015-04-28). "Fantastic Negrito: Oakland musician lives up to new name". San Francisco Chronicle.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Paphides, Pete (2016-08-02). "Fantastic Negrito: the drug-dealing hustler who became Bernie Sanders' favourite bluesman". The Guardian.
  6. 1 2 Heller, Jason (2016-05-26). "Review: Fantastic Negrito, 'The Last Days Of Oakland'". NPR.
  7. ↑ Borzillo, Carrie (1996-01-20). "Popular Uprisings". Billboard. Vol. 108 no. 3. p. 17.
  8. ↑ Loss, Robert (2016-07-13). "Fantastic Negrito's "Working Poor" Is the Soundtrack to the Summer of '16". PopMatters.
  9. ↑ Pereira, Alyssa (12 February 2017). "Fantastic Negrito wins first Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues album". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
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