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FANTASTIC NEGRITO – HE’S SO UNUSUAL
by Lawrence Lebo

Xavier Dphrepaulezz, aka Fantastic Negrito will blow your blues
mind!

Most recording artists navigate their career road making their
art to fit the current genre molds for marketing and airplay.
Not Fantastic Negrito! A two-time Contemporary Blues

Grammy winner, the San Francisco Bay area-based Negrito’s
music has been notoriously difficult to pin down, let alone categorize.
He is not your usual contemporary blues artist by any means.

The 52-year-old father of three young

children has survived his share of difficult
times. He makes no secret about being a
teen-age runaway, a small-time thug and a
minor drug dealer. Early in his music career
he managed to secure a major Pop music
deal with Interscope Records, only to wind
up a flop. In 1999 he got into a car crash

and emerged from a three-week coma to
find out that his right hand had been
severely injured. Xavier then stepped away
from music for 5 years. He ran an
underground night club, farmed medical

marijuana, did some street busking, and
re-emerged as Fantastic Negrito. Then his
luck changed. He submitted a big budget
music video to the tiny budget National
Public Radio “Tiny Desk” contest and won.
The exposure from NPR catapulted him on

his way.

Negrito’s third release, Have You Lost Your
Mind Yet dropped in August, 2020, spent
three weeks at #1 on the Billboard Blues
chart and has been nominated for a

Grammy for what may be his third in the
Contemporary Blues category, yet one
might find it difficult to identify much
resembling what most think of as “the
blues” within the album. Yes, there’s identifiable blues guitar sound and riffs sprinkled throughout.
Sure, there’s Hammond B3 organ on the tracks. But if you’re looking for any kind of 8, or 12, or 16

bar blues patterns, then you will have lost your mind!!! Instead, the forward-thinking blues man