Raphael Saadiq started at the beginning.

The very beginning.

The Bay Area R&B star kicked off his one-man show on Monday night (Sept. 8) at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco by remembering how his father had once told him that he was a mistake — “but a good mistake.”

He’d later learn that his parents originally planned to terminate the unplanned pregnancy — and his father even sent his mother off to an abortion clinic with $300 to do just that. Yet, while waiting at the clinic, his mother decided to go use the money to buy groceries at Safeway instead.

Thus, Charles Ray Wiggins (later to be known as Raphael Saadiq) was born in Oakland on May 14, 1966.

And the world is certainly a better place for it.

The 59-year-old singer/multi-instrumentalist/songwriter/producer, who first came

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