‘Too Close’
Raphael “Tweet” Shawan, founding member of the band Next, on choosing to quit the late-90’s R&B group – and his role of hyper-sexuality.
Hey fam, Myra here.
Welcome, officially, to the first episode of Homegoings with Myra Flynn. If you’re new here, don’t worry — we are too. Kind of.
Up until April of this year, Homegoings was distributed by Vermont Public. And then yours truly decided to take the show independent. Which is both incredibly exciting… and deeply unwell behavior.
But honestly? I think I’m calmer about all this than people expect because I’ve actually lived this way before. Before podcasting, I was — and still am — a musician. And to me, music and podcasting have never really been separate things. They both ask the same question: can you make someone feel less alone for a minute?
The best songs, they do this. The best stories do too. They raise us. Soundtrack our lives.
And if I had to pick one of those coming-of-age songs for me? It would be “Too Close,” by the late-90s R&B group Next.
You remember this, the one about grinding and a … certain physical reaction?
Sexuality played a central role in the band’s rise to fame. And Raphael Shawan — formerly known as Raphael Brown and better known as Tweet — was front and center, gyrating, taking his shirt off.
But behind the scenes, Tweet was carrying something entirely different: years of sexual abuse, confusion and silence.
In an exclusive interview on Homegoings with Myra Flynn, Tweet breaks that silence. He shares what happened to him as a child, the role that played in his decision to leave the group Next — and how he’s letting it all go.
You can hear the conversation by clicking above (or below), and by subscribing to our feed. And please know, this first episode contains explicit conversations about child sexual abuse, and rape. If you’re a survivor of sexual assault or know someone who is, there is help available. You can call the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673, or visit their website.
And a general spoiler alert: every episode of Homegoings with Myra Flynn will be marked “explicit.” In the spirit of being indie, we’re not interested in sanding stories down into something more comfortable to hear. While we always want to care for readers and listeners, we also believe that if we only allow survivors to speak in perfectly clean, sanitized, non-disruptive ways… then a lot of stories never get told at all. And a lot of survivors never get believed.
So. Let’s go there–together.
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