Sons of Soul - Legacy

Legacy

Black music is stronger than it's ever been ... Tony! Toni! Toné! don't just sample their music, they actually play it. There's a return to musicianship.

“ ” — Jimmy Jam, 1994

Sons of Soul bridged the gap between commercial and critical success for Tony! Toni! Toné!, helping them become one of the most popular acts in R&B at the time. Its success exemplified the genre's commercial resurgence during the early 1990s, when hip hop became the predominant African-American music genre in the mainstream. In a 1994 article, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune attributed its resurgence to younger artists' blend of live instrumentation and hip hop production values, and cited Sons of Soul as "the most accomplished merger of hip-hop attitude with a '70s R&B aesthetic." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution hailed it as "a gentle reminder of those glory days" and felt that the group having both vocal and musical talents is most indicative of a return to early R&B's aesthetics. Furthermore, they garnered mainstream attention in a year of several high-profile controversies with R&B and hip hop artists such as Michael Jackson and Snoop Dogg. David W. Brown of The Harvard Crimson wrote that Tony! Toni! Toné! is "known primarily for the quality of its music, not its extracurricular reputation, unlike other groups such as Jodeci who rely on a playa-gangsta-mack image to sell-records."

Along with acts such as Mint Condition and R. Kelly, Tony! Toni! Toné! played live instruments that complemented their hip hop sensibilities. Their concerts featured visual elements such as incense smoke and kaleidoscopic stage lighting, the group's eccentric wardrobe, and additional instrumentalists, including another guitarist, two drummers, two keyboardists, a violinist, a trumpeter, and a saxophonist. The Charlotte Observer remarked on the group in 1994: "heir use of live instruments on record and onstage makes them an anomaly in the synthesized and sampled world of modern R&B." With the group's reliance on traditional soul and R&B values of songwriting and instrumentation, Sons of Soul was a precursor to the neo soul movement of the 1990s. Matt Weitz of The Dallas Morning News wrote in 1993 that the group had distinguished themselves from their New jack swing contemporaries with Sons of Soul and found them aesthetically akin to acts such as Prince and P.M. Dawn. In an interview at the time, Raphael Wiggins elaborated on the album's success and their musicality:

We've been very blessed to be able to be a group that writes our own songs and people have accepted us from both sides, hip hop and the R&B crowd or whatever you might want to say. I feel very fortunate to be able to do that here in 1993–94, because like you know, it was starting to be a dying thing that was happening. But I guess we were like the bridge between hip hop and soul and R&B, and being a little bit commercial also helped us. A lot of humor, a lot of nice slow songs and being able to play kind of brought us a foundation.

D'wayne Wiggins cited Sons of Soul as his favorite album with the group. Vibe and the Philadelphia Daily News also viewed it as the group's best album; the latter wrote that "it may be the project that got the public's ears ready for all the similarly soulful artists yet to come." Allmusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine felt that they "received their greatest chart success, without compromising their music", which "was still the finely crafted, highly eclectic and funky pop-soul that distinguished their first two albums," but with improved songwriting and playing. Rickey Wright of the Washington City Paper called the album "hyperactively brilliant" and said that it showcased "deeply resourceful songwriters who kept up with their audience". He added that "hardly anything in '90s R&B has touched it." Fred Schruers, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), mostly credited Raphael Wiggins and wrote that his "high tenor glides as smoothly and confidently as his songwriting".