He Sees a Softer Side of Soul

It’s funny how much a little bit of love from the right people can change a person’s whole demeanor.

Once notoriously shy and almost always reserved in person, Maxwell--whose sexy soul-singing style has been compared to that of such masters as Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye--said in early interviews last year that the reason he became a performer was to find a bridge of communication to the world at large. There were times as a teenager, he said, when he wondered whether he came from the same planet as everyone else.

Now established as a platinum artist and one of the most dynamic live R&B; singers in years, the lanky 24-year-old doesn’t have that problem.

These days, wearing Italian suits and with his meticulously sculpted Afro glowing in the stage lights, Maxwell seems completely at ease during his torrid performances. He makes eye contact and elicits loud squeals with boldly suggestive pelvis moves. He struts, shimmies and winks, he floats on clouds of smoke and soaring high notes, and he brings down the house with a scorching rendition of “(Ascension) Don’t Ever Wonder.” The Mack is back.

“People never really used to notice me, so it’s such a flip,” Maxwell says, when asked about how comfortable he is with his newfound popularity. He’s sitting by the pool outside his expansive suite at a West Hollywood hotel, wearing gray sweats and with his trademark blowout braided and hidden beneath a stocking cap, a far cry from the fashionable public figure.

“When I’m onstage, I front with the mask of music. I’m totally hiding behind the groove, completely. People are really surprised when they hear my speaking voice. Because of my falsetto, they assume I’m going to sound like Alvin from the Chipmunks,” he says with a deep-throated laugh.

“It’s amazing when you look out into the crowd and you see faces that look like yours,” he continues. “Not that I have an issue with any other race, but it’s nice to know that [African American] listeners aren’t as musically close-minded as many people think they are.”

Because of the stringent play lists of mainstream black radio, that isn’t an outrageous statement. Before D’Angelo, Maxwell and then Erykah Badu made commercial strides by accentuating their individuality and deep ‘70s influences, there wasn’t much of a market for that kind of record in popular R&B.; The songs getting the airplay were ones like Ginuwine’s “Pony” and Foxy Brown and Dru Hill’s “Bad Mama Jama”--hip-hop-charged and sexually suggestive.

Is there room in this climate for someone who sings of romantic love and (gasp) marriage?

“I don’t think romance is dead,” Maxwell says. “I feel that whole mentality, that hard stuff is just tired. I think that true strength is showing the vulnerability within, and that men aren’t afraid to show that anymore. If anything, a lot of the guys I talk to are saying, ‘She likes it when I show that side. . . . I don’t have to be hard as nails.’ ”

Most critics, from hip-hop to pop-rock, love Maxwell. Comparing him to Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, Vibe magazine contributed to the early praise in late 1996 by declaring that he seemed ready to “take his place in history among the great soul singers.” Rolling Stone later suggested that Maxwell “evokes the prodigious bedroom electricity of ‘For You’-era Prince.” England’s Q magazine wrote this fall, “Like Marvin Gaye in the ‘60s and ‘70s and Luther Vandross in the ‘80s, Maxwell is redefining soul as he goes, swooping from the angelic high notes to the sensuous low ones.”

That praise helps explain the unique nature of Maxwell’s deep connection with his wide, multi-racial audience. His one full album, “Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite,” which came out in the spring of 1996, is the first R&B; album in a long time that’s been accepted as a complete work, rather than a collection of unrelated songs designed for maximum radio play. Indeed, his music has received much less air time than comparably selling records.

Despite initial resistance from radio because of Maxwell’s then-unfashionably soft sound, his album has sold more than 1 million copies. Making barely a splash when it first appeared, “Urban Hang Suite” slowly worked its way up the sales charts and into the national consciousness the old-fashioned way--strong word of mouth.

With his popularity growing, Maxwell released an EP in July of his performance on “MTV Unplugged.”

“I can’t say what it is, but Maxwell just has that thang--that special something you can’t put your finger on or define with words,” says Michael Mauldin, president of Sony’s black music division. Mauldin recalls the time he persuaded Maxwell to perform at a gathering in Florida of the label’s black music executives, before “Hang Suite” had been released.

“He did a brief version of ‘Whenever Wherever Whatever’ and just blew us all away. These professionals who have heard and seen it all were sitting there with their mouths wide open. . . . It was incredible that he could have that kind of confidence, to know that he could have us with just one song.”

Maxwell--it’s not his given name, which even his record company claims not to know, but is now his legal name--has always been the sensitive type. An only child of a West Indian mother and a Puerto Rican father who died when he was 3 years old, he grew up in a particularly rough area of Brooklyn. Despite his mother’s attempts to shield her sensitive child from the streets, he still faced his share of tests.

“I had immigrant parents, and I was culturally an American kid trying to be down with everybody else,” he says. “I had my share of fights, because you have to prove yourself as a man and your hands have to get you out of those situations sometimes, but it wasn’t anything crazy.”

Instead he spent a lot of time in his bedroom, in his own little world, reading and watching television. That changed one evening, when, at 16, he borrowed a Casio keyboard from a friend. It sat in the corner of his room for a week and a half before he finally picked it up and began fooling around. Before he knew it, 10 hours had passed. He hasn’t stopped composing since.

“I remember sitting in that room, looking up, and knowing that I wasn’t going to do anything else but my music,” he says with a smile. “Flash forward eight months to that same room, and I had a four-track, a computer and a really badly tuned guitar--I was possessed.”

While writing songs, he inadvertently discovered that not only could he compose, but he could sing too.

“I think singing was easy. . . . Nah, my voice was kind of wack at first,” he says, smiling. “But I couldn’t find anybody else to do it. Wasn’t like I could have someone come over my house at 3 o’clock in the morning to cut a vocal, especially with my room right next to my grandmother’s. I still have old demo tapes of me singing really softly, because other people were sleeping.”

In the early ‘90s, he started doing shows in clubs, becoming a fixture on the Manhattan club scene. Tapes he had passed out to his friends had become so popular that he had a sizable audience for his first major gig, at the club Nell’s. In 1994, he signed a deal with Columbia Records, and went into the studio to record some of the 300 songs he had composed. The result was the album that may make him an R&B; fixture. But he’s now focused on the second album, which should be out by midyear.

“ ‘Urban Hang Suite’ has a lot of places where I give homage to a lot of my influences and people that I love, but I don’t want people to feel like they’re getting the same Maxwell album the second time around,” he says.

“Soul to me is a universal thing, not just connected to what your skin color is and what radio station plays your music--it’s about not getting caught up in the luxury of the great names your music has been compared to and reaching out into other things. I just want to help people with my music, so they can see the hope within.”

Optimism, faith and striving for musical integrity in the face of commercial adversity are the things that helped Maxwell maintain his own identity during those lean times before “Urban Hang Suite” became a hit.

“Destiny is yours and you control it. That man who sees paradise around is the one who sees paradise within,” he says, quoting some ideas from “3 Magic Words,” a book by his favorite author, U.S. Anderson.

“I strive for opposition, for people not liking me,” Maxwell says with playful defiance. “I think not being accepted helps you attune yourself more into what you need to do. In those days of doing early gigs at Howard University before the first single came out, and hecklers in the crowd were making cracks about my hair and clothes, that was such a sweet time for me.

“It made me say, ‘Oh, I’m really gonna make you hate me in a minute.’ That kind of energy has always gotten me to the next level.”

Maxwell pauses for a moment, then smiles. “Being an underdog. . . . That’s hot!”