Tony! Toni! Toné! Featuring D’Wayne Wiggins

It’s been more than 35 years since the Oakland, California-bred band was formed. Tony! Toni! Toné! was birthed out of family. The band is currently comprised of guitarist/vocalist Dwayne Wiggins, his cousin drummer Timothy Christian Riley, and cousin, Amar Khalil on vocals. Khalil took over as lead vocalist upon the departure of Wiggins’ brother Raphael Saadiq.

Tony! Toni! Toné! merged the past and present like no other R&B act of the 1980s and ’90s. Making their ascendance into the annals of music history during the late ‘80s and throughout the 1990s, Tony! Toni! Toné! were somewhat of a rare breed during the height of their chart-making success. As hip-hop artists began to dominate the airwaves and musician-formed bands started to dissipate. Yet the Tonys actually thrived, by releasing four seminal albums that helped to define the R&B genre, and with classic songs that continue to still be in rotation on radio stations today.

Disposed to enhancing the new jack swing era with traditional gospel and classic R&B incorporated to natural and scholarly effect, they wrote with immediate impact and lasting relevance in mind, and at the same time took full advantage of vintage and advanced recording techniques, from live string sections to looped breakbeats. As a consequence, the trio created some of the richest ballads and most substantive dancefloor grooves of their era. From 1988 through 1996, they placed a dozen singles in the Top Ten of Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart, with three of them — “Feels Good”, “If I Had No Loot”, and the Grammy-nominated “Anniversary” — taken to the same heights of the Hot 100. Who? (1988), The Revival (1990), Sons of Soul (1993), and House of Music (1996), their four studio albums, each earned gold, platinum, or multi-platinum RIAA certifications.