Perfecting His Pitch
Raheem DeVaughn Finds Stardom Well Within His Range

By Sarah Godfrey
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, February 8, 2008

Raheem DeVaughn is excited -- and with good reason. The singer's second album, "Love Behind the Melody," released Jan. 15, has climbed atop the charts. Its lead single, "Woman," has earned him a Grammy nomination. And by all accounts, the underdog status he has enjoyed -- or not enjoyed -- for most of his career is falling away.

He is pumped up about all of that, naturally, but on a recent evening he is sitting in the restaurant Marvin at 14th and U, speaking passionately about another project he's working on -- his part-time business venture selling video phones.

"It's the technology of the future," DeVaughn says. Through the company he distributes for, he explains, customers can purchase cable service, pocket computers and even cellphones -- possibly making him the only major-label recording artist on Earth who can set you up with a mobile phone and a ringtone of his very own Grammy-nominated R&B hit to go with it.

"It gets no better than that," DeVaughn says, smiling.

The crooner, who grew up in Prince George's County, calls himself the "R&B hippie neo-soul rock star," a poke at the difficulties media types have classifying him. While enjoying the recent recognition he has received, he still keeps his fingers in a lot of different ventures apart from music. He doesn't sit back and wait for the industry to take care of him because, in his experience, it hasn't.

DeVaughn's huge grass-roots following in D.C. during the late '90s led to his deal with Jive Records. But he was kept on ice for five years, awaiting release of his first album, "The Love Experience." After the disc finally dropped, it didn't make the splash that was expected, and DeVaughn stood by watching as singers with far less sparkling falsettos produced music that climbed the charts.

"I enjoy being grass-roots. I enjoy being an independent artist. But anybody who is an artist who tells you they'd rather have 50,000 fans versus 50 million is a liar," DeVaughn says.

Although Jive has thrown considerable weight behind "Love Behind the Melody," DeVaughn doesn't leave promotion duties solely to the label. He works the streets to get the word out, selling mix tapes of unreleased material to build buzz, popping up at local venues to give impromptu shows and contributing guest vocals to almost anyone who asks -- be it an unknown local artist or rapper Beanie Siegel.

One example of his determination to promote himself: Appearing on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" late last month, DeVaughn wore a T-shirt that read "Grammy Nominated" on the front and "Love Behind the Melody -- In Stores Now" on the back.

In person, the 32-year-old singer is soft-spoken, slight of build and typically dressed down -- not like someone trying to avoid the public eye, but like someone who doesn't even realize he's in the public eye. Tonight he's in jeans and a windbreaker, with a cellphone soldered to his ear -- he's constantly texting and finalizing plans for events related to his album.

"I'm my best marketing tool," he says. "I'm building the brand Raheem DeVaughn. I have to do it."

Such hustle is, in part, a self-protective move. "It's a worker's market," says Jerry Vines, DeVaughn's longtime manager. "Some artists feel like they're superstars, but people have to create opportunities and make sure they stay in the marketplace."

"Artists have to be more proactive, especially if you're doing something left of center -- and right now, straight-ahead R&B is left of center," says Gail Mitchell, who covers R&B and hip-hop for Billboard magazine. "You can't sit back and hope the label will do whatever."

There has been a resurgence of interest in DeVaughn's type of sound, which is as old-fashioned as his work ethic. Although traditional R&B has been overshadowed for years by its more contemporary, raunchy counterpart (thanks, R. Kelly), Mitchell believes that is changing. "It's tracking back around and Raheem is a good flag-bearer for that," she says. "He's saying something."

Mitchell says she was floored the first time she heard "Woman," DeVaughn's feel-good ode to good mothers, grandmothers, wives and girlfriends that was produced by another D.C.-raised artist -- producer Chucky Thompson. "He's talking about substantive stuff and people are ready to embrace him," she says.

"Love Behind the Melody" is filled with ballads that sound plucked from the Motown catalogue: "Mo Better" is a seven-minute-plus '60s-inspired slow wind; "She's Not You" uses Bobby Womack vocals to sing about love amid groupie temptation; and, just in case listeners don't quite pick up on the juxtaposition the artist is going for, there is "Friday (Shut the Club Down)," which uses the Temptations' "My Girl" as its starting point. Contemporary flourishes come courtesy of producers such as Scott Storch, Bryan Cox, Mark Batson, cameos from Floetry and Big Boi of OutKast and a few of-the-moment tracks such as "Customer" and "Energy."

The centerpiece of the album, of course, is DeVaughn's voice, which he says has been compared to that of Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway and, um, Ray J? "I've heard it all, and I respect it all, from Donny Hathaway to Ray J," DeVaughn says. "Some comparisons I embrace more than others, but I learn to take it all as a compliment. I just like the fact that they're listening."

DeVaughn has been writing songs and singing since he was a kid, living with his mother, a now-retired federal worker, in Montgomery and Prince George's during the school year and visiting his father, jazz cellist Abdul Wadud, during the summer, mainly in Georgia.

His mother, Imani Smith, says her son first showed an inclination toward music in preschool. "He was the class maestro," she recalls. "When the class had musical events, he would conduct them -- with short pants and long socks on."

By his early teens DeVaughn began to imagine his career path. One of his favorite artists was Babyface, and Smith recalls that her son once begged her to visit the Waxie Maxie's record store in the District to buy a promotional picture of the singer/songwriter/producer. "I got it and he put it on his wall, and I think that led him to what he's doing now," she says.

With his father, DeVaughn recalls going to gigs and getting his first taste of the life of a working musician. "I had no idea at the time what I was witnessing," DeVaughn recalls. "I had no idea I'd be doing this -- I would have appreciated it more."

After graduating from High Point High School in Beltsville, DeVaughn enrolled at Coppin State University in Baltimore but left after two years. Smith says she understood he had made the right choice when one night she heard him sing Michael Jackson's "Lady in My Life" at a show at the Ibex. "I said: Wait a minute -- this is my son?"

DeVaughn took a job at Tower Records -- which would be his last 9-to-5. While putting price stickers on CDs, he began working the D.C. music circuit -- performing with various groups and hitting venues such as State of the Union and Bar Nun with CDs of his songs in hand.

"The best thing you can have when you step offstage, whether you're a singer, comedian -- even a stripper! -- is to have a tangible product," he says. "That became my thing. Someone would run up on me and I'd have a new mix tape. That's just the hustler in me."

Vines met DeVaughn while he was managing the Baltimore-based quartet Dru Hill and asked him to write a song for the group. Vines helped get him the Jive contract, but says: "Even though they signed him to a deal, they still didn't understand him. It took them from 1998 to 2005 to put out the record. I felt like they weren't doing the job, so we had to do it ourselves."

"The Love Experience" sold about 250,000 copies and spawned some big singles, including "Believe" and "You." Still, the work didn't quite make DeVaughn a star. While promoting the album, he took to wearing a crown and cape at shows -- another of his marketing ploys designed to make him stand out. He started calling himself the "Underground King."

Around that time, DeVaughn also started wearing another disguise of sorts: He began showing up at different shows in D.C. with artists such as W. Ellington Felton and rapper Asheru of the Unspoken Heard, hiding his face behind a hooded sweatshirt and singing and rhyming under the name Chronkite. Despite speculation that DeVaughn assumed the alias so that he could perform material without bumping heads with his label, Felton says the alter ego was created for reasons more complicated than that.

"Chronkite represents that part of every artist who started what they're doing singing in front of a mirror as a child with a brush in their hand," Felton says. "At that time, it was based on the love, the initial attraction that draws you to music. In this business, unfortunately, your passion, your love, your individuality as an artist, can be stripped away the further you get into it."

Although, during the making of "Love Behind the Melody," DeVaughn hung out on producer Scott Storch's yacht, hit New York clubs with the women of Floetry and became one of the few people to see Alicia Keys's pedicure up close ("Beautiful," he says of her feet), he's still viewed as a sort of people's champ in the Washington area.

"No one says, 'He's got the number one record; he don't mess with us,' " Vines says.

"I built my movement here," says DeVaughn. "I've shown that you don't have to leave D.C. to do it."

"Love Behind the Melody" sold 45,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart -- a perfect setup for DeVaughn's nationwide tour with Jill Scott, which kicked off Feb. 4 and includes four dates in March at Constitution Hall.

Whether or not he wins a golden gramophone on Sunday, the nomination for best male R&B vocal performance will likely provide a career boost. But there's still more work ahead. DeVaughn wants to record two more albums this year (including a Christmas record); there are more mix tapes to create, more shows to book, more video phones to sell -- and fame to court. Even though none other than Jamie Foxx recently declared DeVaughn a star whose stock is on the rise, he's still not the sort of artist who is gawked at in restaurants or mobbed on the street.

DeVaughn is open to that level of celebrity, though -- and sees it on the horizon -- and he just has one request for the fans who may soon be mobbing him wherever he goes.

"If you see me in the bathroom, all I ask is that you wash your hands first -- and let me wash mine," he says.