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}} ''Sons of Soul'' is the third studio album by American R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné!, released on June 22, 1993, by Wing Records and Mercury Records. The group originally recorded at several studios in California, including Westlake Recording Studios and Paradise Recording Studio. When they became jaded with the various people frequenting those studios, Tony! Toni! Toné! moved their sessions to Caribbean Sound Basin in Trinidad, where they ultimately wrote and recorded most of the album. ''Sons of Soul'' was produced entirely by the group, who worked with various session musicians and utilized both vintage and contemporary recording equipment. They intended to pay homage to their musical influences—classic soul artists of the 1960s and 1970s—and incorporated live instrumentation, funk, and hip hop elements such as samples and scratches. Lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins handled most of the songwriting, which featured quirky, flirtatious lyrics. A commercial success, ''Sons of Soul'' charted for 43 weeks on the ''Billboard'' 200 and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was acclaimed by music critics and named the best album of 1993 by ''The New York Times'' and ''Time'' magazine. With its success, Tony! Toni! Toné! became one of the most popular R&B acts during the genre's commercial resurgence in the early 1990s. However, after an ill-fated tour, the group went on hiatus and pursued individual projects before reuniting in 1995. == Background == Inspired by live instrumentation, turntablism, and classic soul music, Tony! Toni! Toné! mostly produced their second album ''The Revival'' themselves and released it in 1990 to commercial success. It broadened the group's exposure to fans beyond their R&B audience. However, they became ambivalent about their newfound mainstream success and their music being labeled "retro" by critics.〔 In an interview for ''People'' magazine, lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins expressed his dissatisfaction with the industry, saying that "every record company wants to get a group and put 'em in a Benz with a car phone and a beeper, show them dressing in three different outfits, put them in a video shot on a beach with lots of swinging bikinis. You won't ever see us on a beach. We're just down-to-earth, funky, like-to-play guys."〔 Before considering a follow-up album, the group recorded several songs for film soundtracks, including "Me and You" for ''Boyz n the Hood'' (1991), "House Party (I Don't Know What You Come to Do)" for ''House Party 2'' (1991), and "Waiting on You" for ''Poetic Justice'' (1993). Having fulfilled their creative intentions with ''The Revival'', Tony! Toni! Toné! wanted to pay homage to their musical influences with ''Sons of Soul''. In a 1993 interview for ''The New York Times'', Wiggins elaborated on their direction for the album, stating "We're paying homage to a lot of older artists who paved the way for us artists like the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind and Fire. They're the people who inspired us when we were growing up, people like Aretha Franklin, James Brown. We feel we're the sons of everything and all those people who came before us."〔 He also explained the album's title as a declaration of them being descendants of those artists, "not in a grandiose sense, but from the standpoint that we really are the musical offspring of all that's come before us ... paying homage to our past, but creating in a contemporary environment." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sons of Soul」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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