Fantastic Negrito
Generally speaking, the artists I will feature in these posts are people that I never hear others talk about and I feel are far too unknown. One would expect these artists to be relatively unknown not only to the public but to the critic community as well. However, Fantastic Negrito fits only one of those categories, as he’s won three Grammys in recent years. This fact is both heartening to me, and baffling, as that success has not led to more widespread popularity.
If you’re unaware, Fantastic Negrito is an Oakland-based musician who’s found success relatively late in his life. Born in Massachusetts in 1968 as Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, his family moved to Oakland, California, when he was an adolescent. Here he was in and out of trouble when he was young. Working under the name, Xavier, he was signed to Interscope records in 1993 and released his first album in 1996. However, a near fatal car accident in 1999 resulted in both a three-week coma and being dropped from the Interscope label. He also suffered crippling injuries to his hands that seriously affected his ability to play guitar. Following this tragedy he left the spotlight and ran a nightclub in Oakland, eventually leaving the music industry altogether by 2007.
Since then, he’s recovered and returned to music, putting out a self-titled EP under his new name, “Fantastic Negrito,” in 2014. Since then, he won three consecutive Grammys in the for Best Contemporary Blues Album category:
And he’s continued to put out strong records at a fairly consistent pace.
And last week he released SON OF A BROKEN MAN that I just learned existed and haven’t even been able to hear yet.
His music is being classified as “Blues” and it certainly is in the blues tradition, but I find his style to be much more oriented to traditional Rock forms (see the other posts for my feelings about genre classification) ranging from gritty to thoughtful. He’ll also take it down to do softer acoustic work. His lyrics reflect his story, as you’d expect, and the WHITE JESUS BLACK PROBLEMS album deals heavily with the weight of 400 years of black experience in North America. Few individuals are putting out music at a faster clip that he is. Perhaps he’s making up for lost time, or perhaps he’s just moved by the spirit. We don’t know. We just hope your are listening.
MusicHead 
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