I made myself a man – well, a prototype of one.
Coming of age during the commercial boom of hip-hop, the culture and its music were in my periphery, and I didn’t find my reflection anywhere in it.

In fact, I didn’t find myself in any pop culture nook of the ’90s. My father left nothing but his records behind after my parents divorced when I was 6. To stay connected to him, I absorbed the music. Later, the nuances in tunes by Bobby Womack, Johnnie Taylor, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye defined the character of a “grown man.”

Billy Paul, who’s rarely mentioned in the same breath as those greats, is another voice that helped shape my definition of manhood.
I pulled only from the music. I listened to the way Billy sang, the way he turned, twisted and stretched a phrase in a wise voice that evoked a smoky pool hall or an opulent nightspot. He was classy but street. He looked like he could’ve been one of Daddy’s drinking buddies, with his scruffy beard, glasses and ever-present fedora.

There’s much more to Billy’s musical legacy than his sole smash, 1972’s Grammy-winning “Me and Mrs. Jones.” That slice of Philly Soul deliciousness reveals just one side of Billy’s multi-faceted musical personality. Only he could make a song about sneaking around with somebody’s old lady sound like the most debonair act in the world. But undercurrents of pain inform the performance. He even croons, “We both know that it’s wrong.” Billy takes full responsibility for his actions.

Elsewhere on 360 Degrees of Billy Paul, the gold-selling album that featured the smash, the Philadelphia artist moves well beyond matters of the flesh. Long before anybody bandied about “post-racial,” Billy asked, “Am I Black Enough for You?” He explores the overpopulation of black men in prison on “I’m Just a Prisoner.” Returning to the complicated dynamics of romance, Billy turns Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” into a sweaty testimony about what it means to let go even when you just can’t shake the love.

During his decade-long stint at Philadelphia International, Billy was positioned as something of a soul sage, possessing a voice suffused with the jazz he heard growing up on Philly’s north side. In 1972, when he became a pop sensation, Billy was 38 – a grown man for sure. He had been recording since the ‘50s, paying his dues in seedy dives and opening for the likes of John Coltrane and Dinah Washington.

Everything Billy sang dripped with wisdom. His catalog bristles with tunes extolling self-responsibility, exploring vulnerability (hey, knowing your weaknesses is the only way to know your strengths) and celebrating heritage.

Billy made bold anthems like 1975’s “Black Wonders of the World.” On his superlative debut for Philly International, 1971’s Going East, his velvet-and-cognac voice glides and roils in elegant arrangements fusing jazz, soul and glints of gospel. The album features an almost operatic take on Jimmy Webb’s emotional ballad, “This Is Your Life.” Others have remade the song, but no one has pierced the lyric the way Billy does.

From his records, I took qualities I couldn’t find in the music blaring on urban radio in the ‘90s. These were all character traits – honesty, self-love, cultural pride, a sense of responsibility to community – that perhaps I expected to learn from my father. Instead, I found them in the records he left. And in that treasure, I always find new layers.