Rashaan Patterson LIVE

Rashaan Patterson Live at the Fillmore New York

R&B Crooner Woos Crowd with Vocal Arrangements

By JOSETTE COMPTON

You might have heard Rashaan Patterson on R&B radio stations in the late-1990s, most notably through his Stevie Wonder-esqe “Spend the Night.”

If your pop culture memory encompasses the 1980s, you may have seen the 11-year old Patterson on the popular television show Kids Incorporated. Patterson, who after a three-year stint on the show, then went on to pen Brandy’s 1995 R&B chart-topper “Baby” and the title song for Tevin Campbell’s 1996 triple-platinum “Back to the World” album.

Today you’re most likely to catch the 35 year-old on stage, which is where Human Nature met the R&B crooner. Following a recent one-night-only concert at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza, Patterson performed before an audience of 30-somethings, who, in unison, spent a portion of the evening shouting the lyrics to several songs from his 1997 self-titled debut.

“It’s like the best thing in the world [to have] songs people want to hear,” Patterson says.

Requests that flew from the crowd included “Where You Are”, and of course, “Spend the Night.”

But the bald, lean, Los Angeles resident chose to kick off his two hour set with “Oh, Lord (Take Me Back),” a funky ode to his native Harlem.

As an artist, Patterson’s jazzy-funk vocals once earned him comparisons to Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau. But despite a loyal fan base and critical acclaim, he split with MCA Records in 2003 at the latter end of the so-called “neo soul” movement in R&B.

“It’s hard to put me in a box,” he said. “What I do is music, art…so because I’m Black it has to be soul?”