Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz (born January 20, 1968), better known by his stage name Fantastic Negrito, is an American singer-songwriter whose music spans

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

, R&B, and roots music. His 2016 album '' The Last Days of Oakland'' won a Grammy award for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the

59th Grammy Awards The 59th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 12, 2017. The CBS network broadcast the show live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The ceremony recognized the best recordings, compositions, and artists of the eligibility yea ...

. In 2019, his album '' Please Don't Be Dead'' won the same category for the

61st Grammy Awards The 61st Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 10, 2019, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys hosted. During her opening monologue, Keys brought out Lady Gaga, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jennifer Lopez, an ...

. His 2020 album, '' Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?'' won Fantastic Negrito his third consecutive Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy at the

63rd Annual Grammy Awards The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held in and around the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on March 14, 2021. It recognized the best recordings, compositions, and artists of the eligibility year, running from September 1, 201 ...

. His most recent album, ''Son of a Broken Man'', was released in 2024.

Early life

Dphrepaulezz was born in western

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, the eighth of fifteen children. His Bahamian father masqueraded as a deeply religious Somali Muslim who, Dphrepaulezz recalls, had "a lot of rules" for his children. Dphrepaulezz and his family relocated to

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

, California, when he was 12 years old. He began selling drugs as a teenager in Oakland, telling ''the Guardian'', "We were all selling drugs, man. We all carried pistols. There was a crack epidemic. ...I was the kind of kid who would sell fake weed .. Sometimes I would use tea." He became inspired to teach himself how to play music after listening to

Prince A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. The ...

's album ''

Dirty Mind ''Dirty Mind'' is the third studio album by the American singer-songwriter and musician Prince. It was released on October 8, 1980, by Warner Bros. Records. The album is notable for Prince's increasing reliance on rock music elements, high reg ...

'' and hearing that Prince was a self-taught musician. He learned to play music by sneaking into music classrooms at the

University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley ...

despite not being a student there.

Career

Dphrepaulezz signed an early record deal with Prince's former manager. In 1993, he signed with

Interscope Records Interscope Records is an American record label based in Santa Monica, California, owned by Universal Music Group through its Interscope Geffen A&M imprint. Founded in late 1990 by Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field as a $20 million joint venture ...

. On January 9, 1996, he released his first album, ''The X Factor'', under the mononym Xavier. The album was released on Lexington House Records and distributed by Interscope. He was in a near-fatal car crash in 1999, which left him in a coma for three weeks. He has said that he felt that this crash "released" him because Interscope terminated their contract with him, after which he set up an illegal nightclub in South Central Los Angeles. In 2007, Dphrepaulezz temporarily retired from music. He revived his career in 2014, adopting the name Fantastic Negrito and developing a style that he calls "black roots music for everyone". He released a self-titled album under that name in 2014. In 2015, he won ''

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

''s Tiny Desk Contest. In 2016, his album '' The Last Days of Oakland'' was released on the

Blackball Universe Blackball Universe is an Oakland, California-based multimedia collective founded by Fantastic Negrito and Malcolm Spellman to serve as support for struggling black artists. It was originally just a record label, but it has since expanded to be a ...

label. Dphrepaulezz won his first Grammy in 2017, when ''The Last Days of Oakland'' received the

Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album The Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album was awarded from 1988 to 2011 and from 2017 onwards. Until 1992 the award was known as Best Contemporary Blues Performance and in 1989 was awarded to a song rather than to an album. The award was ...

. Dphrepaulezz won his second Grammy with his next album, '' Please Don't Be Dead'', which won another Best Contemporary Blues Album award at the 2019 Grammy Awards. His third Grammy in that category was awarded in 2021 for his album '' Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?'' His fifth album as Fantastic Negrito, '' White Jesus Black Problems'', was released in 2022. An acoustic reworking of that album titled ''Grandfather Courage'' was released in 2023. The album ''Son of a Broken Man'', informed by Fantastic Negrito's relationship with his father, was released in October 2024.

Discography

* ''The X Factor'' (Interscope, 1996) (as Xavier) * ''Fantastic Negrito'' (Blackball Universe, 2014) * '' The Last Days of Oakland'' (Blackball Universe, 2016) * '' Please Don't Be Dead'' (

Cooking Vinyl Cooking Vinyl is a British independent record label, based in Acton, London, England. It was founded in 1986 by former manager and booking agent Martin Goldschmidt and his business partner Pete Lawrence. Goldschmidt remains the current owner an ...

, Blackball Universe, 2018) * '' Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?'' (

, 2020) * '' White Jesus Black Problems'' (Storefront Records, 2022) * ''Grandfather Courage'' (Storefront Records, 2023) * ''Son of a Broken Man'' (Storefront Records, 2024)

References

External links

Official website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Negrito, Fantastic 1968 births Living people African-American guitarists American blues guitarists Musicians from Oakland, California American people of Somali descent Interscope Records artists Grammy Award winners Guitarists from California American male guitarists 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century African-American musicians Cooking Vinyl artists 21st-century African-American people