Grammys fantastic for Negrito
Blues artist celebrates 3rd win in Oakland as Bay Area acts score.
On the corner of 32nd Street and San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland, a small homeless encampment stretches along the edge of a parking lot of a building that used to be a seedy liquor store in the neighborhood where blues musician Xavier Dphrepaulezz, best known as Fantastic Negrito, grew up.
Today, that building houses a recording studio and Dphrepaulezz’s new label, Storefront Records. And by noon Sunday, the parking lot was staged for a communitydriven event with about 75 of the artist’s friends, family and industry colleagues — plus Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf — watching the 63rd Grammy Awards telecast with bated breath as the album, “Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?” earned Dphrepaulezz another Grammy Award for best contemporary blues album.
“Did I really just win my third Grammy? I’m in shock,” said the former street busker.
The gravity of COVID19 was on the mind of the threetime Grammy winner, who dedicated the award to first responders and frontline workers who put their lives at risk at the most tense moments of the pandemic.
“This year I feel like it really wasn’t about me and I’m celebrating in a different way, because half a million Americans have lost their lives … 2.6 million people across the world. This is about appreciation, thankfulness and gratitude, gratitude, gratitude,” Dphrepaulezz said. “I’m here, but a lot of people can’t say that. So I’m celebrating this with everybody because this has been a really challenging year for people.”
It was a big day for Bay Area artists as they secured six awards two hours into the ceremony, broadcast outdoors from the top of the Los Angeles Convention Center and hosted by Trevor Noah.
In addition to Dphrepaulezz, Vallejoraised singersongwriter Gabriella Wilson, also known as H.E.R., won song of the year for “I Can’t Breathe”; retired San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and producer Jack Vad took home the award for best classical compendium for “The Diary of Anne Frank & Meditations on Rilke”; Oakland native Ledisi won the award for best traditional R&B performance; Richard O’Neill won the best classical instrumental solo award for “Theofanidis: Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orchestra”; and Bay Area directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman won in the best music film category for “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.”
“I’ve never been so proud to be an
artist,” Wilson said during her acceptance speech in L.A. “We wrote this song over FaceTime, and I didn’t imagine that my fear and my pain would turn into impact and it would possibly turn into change.”
Other big winners from music’s biggest night include Billie Eilish for record of the year — her second straight year; Taylor Swift, who became the first woman to win album of the year three times, and Beyoncé, who broke the record for most wins by a woman with her victory Sunday night for best R&B performance for “Black Parade,” surpassing the 27 Grammys won by Alison Krauss. She had tied the record just minutes earlier when she won best rap song with Megan Thee Stallion for “Savage.”
“As an artist I believe it’s my job, and all of our jobs, to reflect time and it’s been such a difficult time,“Beyoncé said during her win for “Black Parade,” released on Juneteenth.
Back at Dphrepaulezz’s party, D’Wayne Wiggins of the Oakland R&B group Tony!
Toni! Tone! acknowledged how Fantastic Negrito, as an artist and a community member, represents Oakland in all he does.
“His style of music is about having your own sound, your own image, your own culture. He’s been able to develop that with true blues music from Oakland, so he’s got the blues soul but he’s made a real hybrid mix of that. … And that’s what the Oakland style is, we change the game and that’s what he has done. It’s beautiful.”
Kev Choice, Oakland multiinstrumentalist and vice president of the San Francisco chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, echoed Wiggins’ sentiments, noting that Dphrepaulezz’s win is unique because of his commitment to elevating his fellow Oakland artists.
“He’s such a communitydriven person,” Choice said. “His band is all local, his engineers are local, his studios are local. So a win for him is really big for our whole ecosystem.”