Raphael Saadiq Returns to Oakland with a One-Man Show

Sure, the Bay Area has big names and colorful personas who’ve made their mark on pop culture — E-40, Green Day, Sly and the Family Stone. But an equally powerful yet less visible mover and shaker is Raphael Saadiq.

Not only did he and his family band, Tony! Toni! Toné!, record some of R&B’s all-time classics in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but Saadiq has continued to define the soulful sounds of the next generation. Most recently, that’s through his songwriting and production on Beyoncé’s Renaissance and Cowboy Carter, and his soundtrack work for the highly anticipated, Oakland-set thriller, Freaky Tales.

On Tuesday, Saadiq announced a new one-man show that will look back at his illustrious career, No Bandwidth: One Man, One Night, Three Decades of Hits. The production has only three stops: New York’s legendary Apollo Theater on May 31, L.A.’s United Theater on Broadway on June 6 and a hometown finale at Oakland’s Fox Theater on June 7. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Feb. 21 at 10 a.m., with an artist presale that begins on Feb. 19.

“I’ve always wanted to do a one-man show. I want to challenge myself,” said the artist in a statement. “My one-person show has three acts; I will be talking about my career, bringing a couple of instruments to express myself, singing my original music as well as covers of songs I wish I had written, and more. I want it to feel magical and like a Broadway show.”

Fans got a taste of Saadiq’s dynamic stage presence at Tony! Toni! Toné!’s sold-out reunion at the Paramount Theatre in 2023, where the band performed hits like “Feels Good,” “Anniversary” and “Let’s Get Down,” all executed with top-tier instrumentation and buttery-smooth vocals. In a testament to the band’s cultural impact, surprise guests included former Black Panther Elaine Brown and hip-hop veteran DJ Quik.

Mostly Black Oaklanders of different ages — whether they danced to Tony! Toni! Toné! at prom or first heard their music as babies — two-stepped in sharp suits, cocktail dresses and other finery. With everyone’s phones locked away in pouches, it was a truly intentional night of music, one where the audience and artists alike became fully present as they beamed at one another in appreciation.

With an intimate storytelling approach on No Bandwidth, Saadiq follows a format that other stars, including Madonna and John Legend, have adopted at their recent concerts, letting fans in on the personal stories behind the hits. The Oakland show, especially, promises to be sentimental.

“You know, we’ve not just played music in that city, but we’ve lost family members in that city,” Saadiq told KQED in 2023. “We ate a lot of cheeseburgers in that city. We ate a lot of donuts. We’ve had a lot of fights with people. We dodged bullets … We watched karate movies at Eastmont Mall at the Lux. We got to watch buildings go up and go down. We watched the whole city change from Black to what it is now.”

Tickets to Raphael Saadiq’s No Bandwidth: One Man, One Night, Three Decades of Hits go on sale to the general public on Feb. 21 at 10 a.m., with an artist presale that begins on Feb. 19 at 10 a.m. Details here.