Willie Max
Encyclopedia
Willie Max was a rhythm and blues
trio composed of sisters Rose, Sky and Lyric Smith. The girl group was based in Detroit, Michigan
and began its career under the name Smith Reflections.
The group began to establish themselves by working as an opening act for groups like Tony! Toni! Tone!
Their work paid off as Raphael Saadiq
took the girls under his wing and reshaped their image. Saadiq renamed the group Willie Max, after their father and mother's first names.
In 1998, signed to Saddiq's Pookie Records label, the girls released their debut album, Bona Fide. The album was made predominantly by the girls and Lathun Grady, and scored one reasonable hit with "Can't Get Enough" in 1998, which reached #49 on the Hot 100 and #20 on the R&B charts.
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
trio composed of sisters Rose, Sky and Lyric Smith. The girl group was based in Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
and began its career under the name Smith Reflections.
The group began to establish themselves by working as an opening act for groups like Tony! Toni! Tone!
Tony! Toni! Toné!
Tony! Toni! Toné! is an American Soul/R&B group from Oakland, California, popular during the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s. During the band's heyday, it was composed of D'wayne Wiggins on lead vocals and guitar, his brother Raphael Saadiq on lead vocals and bass, and their cousin Timothy...
Their work paid off as Raphael Saadiq
Raphael Saadiq
Raphael Saadiq is an American singer, songwriter and record producer. Saadiq has been a standard bearer for "old school" R&B since his early days as a member of the multiplatinum group Tony! Toni! Toné! He also produced songs of such artists as TLC, Joss Stone, D'Angelo, Mary J...
took the girls under his wing and reshaped their image. Saadiq renamed the group Willie Max, after their father and mother's first names.
In 1998, signed to Saddiq's Pookie Records label, the girls released their debut album, Bona Fide. The album was made predominantly by the girls and Lathun Grady, and scored one reasonable hit with "Can't Get Enough" in 1998, which reached #49 on the Hot 100 and #20 on the R&B charts.