A year-long bout with bladder cancer has taken the life of Tony! Toni! Toné!'s D'Wayne Wiggins, who had three Top 10 hits with that group, and helped launch the careers of Destiny's Child and Beyoncé.
The legendary 90s R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné! came out of Oakland, and charted 14 Billboard hit singles in the late 1980s to mid-1990s, three of them making the Top 10. After that group disbanded, Wiggins wrote and produced for Destiny’s Child, launching the career of Beyoncé. But on Wednesday, Wiggins’s family posted to Facebook that he was “experiencing medical complications” and “working through it one day at a time.”
And on Friday, NBC Bay Area reported that D'Wayne Wiggins had died from bladder cancer. He was 64.
“With broken hearts, we share with you that our beloved D’Wayne passed away this morning surrounded by family and loved ones,” Tony! Toni! Toné! posted to their various social media accounts Friday morning. “Over the past year, he has been privately and courageously battling bladder cancer. Through this fight, he remained committed and present for his family, his music, his fans and his community.”
In 1995, D'Wayne Wiggins signed Destiny's Child to his Grassroots Entertainment label to develop & record in Oakland. He later helped negotiate their deal with Columbia Records, who put out their first album. pic.twitter.com/JNmvA977Kf
— DJ Short (@_DJShort) March 7, 2025
Wiggins was born in Oakland, attended Castlemont High, and founded Tony! Toni! Toné! in 1986 with his brother Charles Wiggins (better known as Raphael Saadiq) and their cousin Timothy Christian Riley. They would go on to sell six million albums, and made the Billboard Top 10 three times with their singles “Feels Good,” “If I Had No Loot,” and “Anniversary.”
Tony! Toni! Toné! disbanded in 1996, but Wiggins was nowhere near finished making his mark on contemporary music. In the late 1990s, he mentored Keyshia Cole, who lived for a spell in his Oakland recording studio. He produce tracks for Alicia Keys, and was nominated for a Grammy for his sitar performance on her track “If I Was Your Woman.” And yes, wrote and produced for Destiny’s Child, who would go on to sell 60 million records.
Locally, Wiggins’s San Francisco performances have certainly made news in recent years. He performed at 4/20 in Golden Gate Park in 2023. And yes, the infamous London Breed partying maskless at a club incident in 2021 was at a reunion show of Wiggins and Raphael Saadiq at SF’s Black Cat. That incident made national news, and gave birth to Breed’s notorious sound bite “We don't need the fun police to come in and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn't be doing.”
Today, Oakland mourns the loss of one of our own. D’Wayne Wiggins, a visionary musician, producer, and mentor, has left us, but his impact on our city and the world will live on forever.
— Mayor Kevin Jenkins (@KevinJenkinsoak) March 7, 2025
Read my full statement: pic.twitter.com/CsQa62SeU9
Oakland Mayor Kevin Jenkins put out Friday a statement saying “D’Wayne helped shape the sound of a generation, putting Oakland on the map in the world of R&B and beyond.”
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Image: OAKLAND, CA - MAY 12: (L-R) D'Wayne Wiggins and Fantastic Negrito perform at the GRAMMY Pro Songwriters Summit at The Uptown on May 12, 2016 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/WireImage)
