Marcel Friday

INTERVIEW: Adrian Marcel Recalls Raphael Saadiq Getting Turnt At Clive Davis’ Grammy Party

Originally posted on HipHopDX 5/16/2017

All it takes is a chance encounter with the right person to change the course of your life. Oakland-bred rhythm-and-rhyme crooner Adrian Marcel knows that all too well when he broke down how he first met Raphael Saadiq with the #DXLive crew. “It was so low key because I really wasn’t [there to do] any business with him like that,” Adrian recalls. ‘We showed up on some other stuff. My manager was talking about another artist with him and we just was chopping it up [like] regular. He asked me where I was from; we got into the whole Oakland conversation, the Raiders [and] all kinds of just random stuff. Then it was just ‘Well what do you do?’ I put [some music] on and everything we were there for just kinda got thrown to the left and he was like, ‘Let’s talk about this. What are you doing with this? What’s the plan?’”

That meeting set his career into high gear as Raphael provided an outlet for Adrian to grow. “It turned into a mentorship. I can always call [and ask], ‘What do you think about this record, what do you think about putting this on this project?’ It’s always a real legit answer [like], ‘Yeah I like that, that’s dope for you’ or, ‘I think you just like that song.’ It’s been a lot of direction he has given me.”