Tony! Toni! Toné! was an American R&B/soul band from Oakland, California. During the band's heyday from the late 1980s to mid-1990s, it was composed of D'Wayne Wiggins on lead vocals and guitar, his brother Raphael Saadiq (born Charles Ray Wiggins) on lead vocals and bass, and their cousin Timothy Christian Riley on drums, keyboards, and background vocals. Originally, the band went by "Tony, Toni, Toné" as a joke, until they realized it "had a nice ring to it".

After a stint as musicians on Prince's Parade Tour in 1986, the trio formed Tony! Toni! Toné! back in their hometown of Oakland that same year. The band first found success performing around the San Francisco Bay Area. They released their debut album Who? in 1988. Their debut single, “Little Walter,” reached number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart; three more singles from the album reached the Top 10; and the album was certified gold.

Tony! Toni! Toné! started producing their own music and found more mainstream success with their second album The Revival in 1990, fueled by the No.9 Billboard Hot 100 hit "Feels Good”. The Revival also included the R&B No.1s "It Never Rains (In Southern California)" and "Whatever You Want" and was certified platinum. The group achieved their greatest commercial success with the double platinum certified and critically acclaimed Sons of Soul album in 1993, which included the Hot 100 top 10 hits "If I Had No Loot" and "Anniversary" and top 40 hit "(Lay Your Head on My) Pillow". With the group's reliance on traditional soul and R&B values of songwriting and instrumentation, Sons of Soul is considered a precursor to the neo soul movement of the late 1990s. Tony! Toni! Toné! disbanded after the release of their platinum certified fourth album House of Music (1996), which critics cite as their best work.

Their debut album, Who?, produced and co-written by Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy, was released in 1988. The first single "Little Walter" went to number 1 on the R&B chart. The next three singles, "Born Not to Know", "Baby Doll" and "For the Love of You" were all Top 10 R&B singles. Who? spent 44 weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Albums, peaking at number 69. On December 5, 1989, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of 500,000 copies in the United States. As of August 1993, it has sold over 700,000 copies in the US.

Inspired by live instrumentation, turntablism, and classic soul music, Tony! Toni! Toné! recorded and produced their second album, The Revival, mostly themselves and released it on May 8, 1990 to commercial success. The Revival charted for 64 weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Albums, peaking at number 34 on the chart and reaching platinum status. The album spawned several number 1 R&B hits with "It Never Rains (In Southern California)", "Feels Good", "The Blues", and "Whatever You Want" all topping the R&B charts. The album's second single "Feels Good" was released on June 19 and certified gold on November 13 after it had shipped 500,000 copies. The single topped the R&B chart for two weeks and reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1990, going on to sell over one million copies. "Feels Good" was the group's first single to breach the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. In late 1990, the album's fourth single "It Never Rains (In Southern California)" became a number-one R&B hit and also peaked at number 34 on the Hot 100.

The Revival broadened the group's exposure to fans beyond their initial R&B audience. However, they became ambivalent about their newfound mainstream success and their music being labeled "retro" by critics. In an interview for People magazine, lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins expressed his dissatisfaction with the music industry, saying that "every record company wants to get a group and put 'em in a Benz with a car phone and a beeper, show them dressing in three different outfits, put them in a video shot on a beach with lots of swinging bikinis. You won't ever see us on a beach. We're just down-to-earth, funky, like-to-play guys." Before considering a follow-up album, the band recorded several songs for film soundtracks, including "Me and You" for Boyz n the Hood (1991), "House Party (I Don't Know What You Come to Do)" for House Party 2 (1991), and "Waiting on You" for Poetic Justice (1993).

Having fulfilled their creative intentions with The Revival, Tony! Toni! Toné! wanted to pay homage to their musical influences with Sons of Soul. In a 1993 interview for The New York Times, Wiggins elaborated on their direction for the album, stating "We're paying homage to a lot of older artists who paved the way for us artists like the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind and Fire. They're the people who inspired us when we were growing up, people like Aretha Franklin, James Brown. We feel we're the sons of everything and all those people who came before us." He also explained the album's title as a declaration of them being descendants of those artists, "not in a grandiose sense, but from the standpoint that we really are the musical offspring of all that's come before us ... paying homage to our past, but creating in a contemporary environment."

Tony! Toni! Toné! took a hiatus as a group after the commercial and critical success of Sons of Soul. According to vocalist and bassist Raphael Wiggins, each member had pursued individual music projects, and "the group was trying to figure out where everybody's time, space and head was at." He, D'wayne Wiggins, and Timothy Christian Riley worked on songwriting and production for other recording artists during the band's hiatus, including D'Angelo, En Vogue, Karyn White, Tevin Campbell, and A Tribe Called Quest. Raphael Wiggins adopted the surname "Saadiq" for his professional name in 1994—"man of his word" in Arabic—and released his solo single "Ask of You" in 1995. Their work outside the band led to rumors of a break-up during the time between albums. Tony! Toni! Toné! eventually regrouped and began recording House of Music in September 1995.