Fantastic Negrito: Oakland musician lives up to new name

Xavier Dphrepaulezz won an NPR contest as Fantastic Negrito. Xavier Dphrepaulezz won an NPR contest as Fantastic Negrito. Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Fantastic Negrito: Oakland musician lives up to new name 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Xavier Dphrepaulezz thought he had given up music forever. He sold all his equipment. He left Los Angeles and returned to his hometown of Oakland, untangling himself from any industry contacts. He even bought a farm.

That’s where he’s standing today, with his 5-year-old son running through the chicken coops and overgrown vegetables.

“I just didn’t have anything else to say,” Dphrepaulezz, 46, says. “That’s always the time to quit — when you have nothing to say as an artist and creative person.”

His retirement plan didn’t exactly work out.

It turns out Dphrepaulezz still had plenty to offer. He just had to survive a near-fatal car accident, become a father and adapt a completely new persona, inspired by delta bluesmen such as Skip James and R.L. Burnside, to get there. But we’ll get to all that.

What brings us here is Fantastic Negrito, the latest in a long line of Dphrepaulezz’s many alter egos, who in February became the winner of NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert competition out of 7,000 entrants. Almost overnight, the singer-songwriter became an international sensation.

His entry clip, a one-take video showing Dphrepaulezz performing the raw and ravaged song “Lost in a Crowd” with a three-piece band and a slab of sheet metal in what looks like the freight elevator of someone else’s rehearsal space, appeared on countless music blogs.

“This soulful character won our hearts,” said Bob Boilen, host of NPR’s “All Songs Considered.” “Though I watched thousands of videos, the moment I heard his voice and saw such conviction to his song I thought, 'Wow, I think this guy could win.’”

A month later, Dphrepaulezz (pronounced dee-FREP-ah-lez) got an invitation to perform at NPR’s showcase at the South by Southwest Music confab in Austin, Texas. He also got asked to play the Outside Lands festival in Golden Gate Park later this year, sharing a bill with superstars Elton John, Sam Smith, and Mumford and Sons. More opportunities arrive every day.

For a musician who had become completely disenchanted with the music business, who in the ’90s signed a million-dollar deal with Interscope Records and struggled so hard to make it under his first name, Xavier, the sudden rush of attention still has his head reeling.

“My first impression was extreme joy and gratitude to be in the game,” Dphrepaulezz says. “I really didn’t think they would pick me, so much so that I was blowing it off, and my friends kept telling me to enter. I thought what I was doing was too raw and too different for them. I certainly didn’t think I fit the NPR brand.”

The triumph, he says, taught him an invaluable lesson: “Just keep being yourself,” he says. “Keep being yourself and people recognize it.”

But where to begin?

One of 15 siblings, Dphrepaulezz was born in rural Massachusetts and raised in a conservative Muslim family with a Somalian father who ran a restaurant and catering service. As the eighth child, he had to fight for everything, even a glass of milk.

“I don’t think 'neglected’ is the right word for it,” Dphrepaulezz says. “My dad was born in 1905, and the men from that period were real men. He prepared me for the world.”

The family moved to Oakland in 1979, when Dphrepaulezz was 11 years old. Rather than try to make new friends, he wound up in reform school and foster care. “I had to fight off predators,” he recalls. He eventually found escape in music — soul, hip-hop and especially Prince, whose dexterous influence resonated deeply. So deeply that Dphrepaulezz used to sneak into UC Berkeley’s music room and learned to play every instrument he could get his hands on, turning himself into a one-man band.

By the time he was 20, Dphrepaulezz was ready to start his own music career. He moved to Los Angeles and delivered a demo to Prince’s former manager Joe Ruffalo. He was personally signed by Interscope’s Jimmy Iovine and in 1996 released a studio album, “X Factor,” under the name Xavier. It flopped.

“There’s certain artists that are meant to have certain paths and go the way of the corporate world,” Dphrepaulezz says. “And then there are artists who are artists. If you listen to my earlier stuff — it was so polished. They were trying to create the next Michael Jackson. But it didn’t connect with people. I definitely was not meant for it.”

He inadvertently found his way out of the business in 1999, when a devastating car accident in Los Angeles left him in a coma for three weeks and nearly destroyed his hands and arms, leaving him with rods and pins. He says he couldn’t play music for five years, nor did he have the will.

“I hate to say it, but I almost feel like it was the best thing that happened to me,” Dphrepaulezz says. “I tell you, I needed that. I needed that. Man, I was unbearable. If I continued on that path, I wouldn’t have seen life. I’m really handicapped. But it was the end of something and the beginning of gratitude.”

It was only after he moved back home, got married and a son was born (twin girls are expected later this year) that Dphrepaulezz was slowly drawn back into music.

“It was a slow walk back toward it,” he says.

It happened one morning when he was sitting alone on the floor with his infant son, not quite sure what to do to keep him entertained.

“He was having this cranky time and I wanted to entertain him and make him not cranky,” Dphrepaulezz says. “All my usual tricks weren’t working. I had this orange settee in his room and underneath it was the crappiest guitar in the world. It had been five years since I played any music. I thought, 'Hey, maybe I could play this guitar for him,’ so I played a little bit of a Beatles song. And the look on his face was the most honest and committed expression of joy I had seen in my life.”

He wasn’t sure what to make of it. “It made me afraid, but it was intriguing,” Dphrepaulezz says.

Eventually, a piano found its way into his house. He picked up some more gear and started writing songs again. Then he started itching to expand his audience, so he started playing outside doughnut shops and BART stations. That’s when Fantastic Negrito was born.

“I like incarnations,” he says. “I always have. I have this thing called Me and This Japanese Guy. I had this thing called Blood Sugar. I don’t know if it’s out of insecurity, but I like to become them, and none of them sound the same.”

For inspiration this time around, he went straight back to the stuff his grandmother’s brother used to talk about, true black roots music. The stuff he so adamantly ignored when he was a kid.

Now with a little bit of life behind him, he could relate to the honesty, hurt and violence. The Bay Area’s rush-hour commuters proved to be the ideal demographic.

“What I’ve been through, I want it to mean something to people,” Dphrepaulezz says. “I would go at the busiest time in San Francisco and play songs and see who would listen at the time everyone just wanted to go home. That gave me confidence with what I was writing. People would stop after a long day and there was just this connection happening. People could see the honesty. People could finally see that I was free.”

Dphrepaulezz began recording again about a year ago, pulling enough material together for a self-titled EP, out now on Blackball Universe. His song “An Honest Man” serves as the opening theme for Ron Perlman’s Amazon series, “Hand of God.” He also continues to run a music-publishing career. He says thing were already happening, but the NPR thing just put his career on steroids.

“This year is going to be ridiculous,” Dphrepaulezz says.

Even in a ridiculous life, that sounds like a ridiculous understatement.

Aidin Vaziri is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop music critic. E-mail: avaziri@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MusicSF

Fantastic Negrito: 10:30 p.m. Friday, April 17. $10-$15. The New Parish, 1743 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. www.fantasticnegrito.com.