Any Black queen who’s had to come to terms with their sexuality in a culture that still recoils—sometimes violently—at male homosexuality knows how daunting, painful, and downright confusing that process can be. Growing up, I was constantly bombarded with images of “normal” sexuality: rom-coms like “When Harry Met Sally” and endless streams of R&B where the Black macho man was always feenin’ for some pussy or promising a woman that, if she’d just give him a chance, he’d do all the things her sorry-ass man wouldn’t.

For Black gay boys, that kind of hyper-heteronormativity seeps into everything and presses down hard during our formative years. Many of us responded by inventing a girlfriend who conveniently lived in Canada and bragging at the Monday lunch table about how she gave us some stank over the weekend. I more or less pulled off the macho posturing, spinning elaborate sex stories starring phantasmagorical girlfriends, but I was always left with a low-grade confusion—mainly because I had no idea where to put the massive stockpile of feminine energy I’d been carrying around since forever.

That confusion was partially blown to hell the minute I turned on the TV, heard that bass line, and watched Jody Watley fling her heavily-weaved head around while staring directly into the camera. With hoop earrings the size of silver wagon wheels, Jody embodied a form of Black femininity so powerful and mesmerizing that it didn’t just make me want to be like her—I wanted to be her.

When I talk about the “quintessential second-tier eighties artist,” I’m one of the few people who absolutely includes Jody Watley in that elite company alongside Paula Abdul, Huey Lewis and the News, and Run-DMC. Just a year before Jody dropped her eponymous debut, Janet Jackson had karate-chopped the door wide open for the sassy Black entertainer to challenge pop music’s stale, white-bread status quo. And no one walked through that door with more purpose—or more attitude—than disgruntled Shalamar deserter Jody Watley.

Jody arrived projecting a femininity so forceful it bordered dangerously—and deliciously—on drag. But there was nothing campy about her approach, especially when you factor in the quality of the music. Like “Control”, nearly every track on “Jody Watley” is a declaration of pussy power and independence. Both women were fueled by a desire to strike out on their own and kick dust directly into the eyes of the men—Joe Jackson and Howard Hewitt, respectively—who had been looming over their careers like bad weather.

The opening salvo, “Looking For a New Love”, was an instant classic, gifting the culture the immortal phrase “hasta la vista, baby”—a line so durable even Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t resist recycling it before unloading his gun into the chest of some poor bastard with bad timing. But Jody didn’t ease up. She followed with the slinkier, even better “Still A Thrill”, deploying a delicious vocal androgyny clearly indebted to Grace Jones’ husky-throated dominance. The dance momentum continues with “Some Kind of Lover”—a great song, though I’ll forever prefer the remix from the video and later compilations—and the pounding, club-ready “For the Girls”.

Side Two kicks off with the sweaty brilliance of “Love Injection”, a full-on sex romp where Jody’s almost diffident vocals nearly get upstaged by Tony Thompson’s bazooka-sized snare drum. “Don’t You Want Me”, the second Bernard Edwards production in a row, is the album’s best single by a mile. While the remix ruled radio, I’ve always preferred the album version—stripped down, exposed, and emotionally vulnerable.

“Do It To the Beat” took some time to grow on me, largely because it’s wedged between “Don’t You Want Me” and the absolutely superlative “Most of All”, produced by Patrick Leonard, the same man who helped Madonna level up artistically on “True Blue”. For me, the album effectively ends with “Most of All”. Dating back to my cassette days, I always ejected the tape as the song faded out, allowing me to pretend the actual closer was just a foolish phantasm that never truly existed.

Which brings us to the two missteps on an otherwise near-perfect debut. First: the unnecessary and nutty “Learn To Say No”, a rehash of a trashy Richard “Dimples” Fields song that awkwardly paired Jody with George Michael at the absolute peak of his global hotness. Whose idea was it to redo a song by Richard “Dimples” Fields—essentially a cheesy R&B novelty act? (That said, may he rest in peace.) The track plays like a cynical marketing ploy, and both artists deserved better. Thankfully, it was Scotch-taped onto the very end of the cassette, making it easy to eject from my life before it even got started.

The second issue is minor and has to do with sequencing. “Do It To the Beat” should’ve either opened Side Two or followed directly after “Love Injection” to keep the dance-floor momentum alive before easing into the more introspective “Don’t You Want Me” and “Most of All”. I’m being nitpicky, I know—but picking at the scabs of music is the entire point of this damned blog, innit?

Still, neither flaw meaningfully detracts from what remains one of the strongest debuts in 80s-era Black pop—just a hair below “Control” and “The Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby”, perhaps.

More importantly, this album helped me confront and embrace the regal Black chick who lived inside of me. I didn’t go so far as to buy the giant hoop earrings, but Jody’s presence—as pop music’s first true female drag queen—served as a crucial stepping stone in my own sexual and gender development. Nearly 40 years later, listening to this album is still a thrill.

AND...
...Some ask whether Jody deserved a Grammy.
The real question is whether the Grammys deserved her.

“Dirty Mind” comes charging at the listener like a bull right out of the gate, never slowing down and never veering off course. Packed with immaculate songwriting, there’s no time here for embellishments, overwrought overdubs, superfluous instrumentation, or studio trickery. No horns. No extra percussion. None of the piled-on production excess that would later bog down much of Prince’s post-’80s work. This album is lean, nasty, and unapologetically direct.

The title cut sounds damn near like a demo—in the best possible way—with its relentless bass drum, Dr. Fink’s plucky keyboard stabs, and Prince’s salacious falsetto riding the groove like he’s daring you to keep up. Stripped down, brash, and funky as hell, it immediately sets the tempo and the tone for everything that follows.

“When You Were Mine” is considered by many to be Prince’s best song, and it’s not hard to hear why. It’s a sad little number built on a 1950s rock-and-roll framework, sprinkled with quirky, sexually confusing lyrics and an absurdly catchy melody. What makes it even better is how humorously filthy it is. He’s singing about the emotional hazards of falling for a perennial floozy, but he does it with a wink. When I first heard the album, I was way too young to grasp lines like “just like a train / you let all my friends come over and meet” or “now I spend my time / following him whenever he’s with you.” It’s an absolute joy of a song, and its edges have never dulled with time.

“Do It All Night” isn’t nearly as raunchy as the title suggests, but it expands on the rock/New Wave/R&B hybrid that other Black artists—Cameo, Rick James—would later attempt with mixed results. Prince pulls it off effortlessly, choosing simplicity over embellishment while slipping in flashes of vulnerability (“I may be kinda short…,” “I’ve been waiting such a very long time…”). Despite lyrics that suggest a man waiting impatiently for his turn at some good pussy, the song lands closer to a love song than a sex romp.

“Gotta Broken Heart Again” is the album’s lone quasi-ballad, featuring Prince’s falsetto in peak form and the dry irony in his songwriting that would become a defining trait of his greatest work.

I wasn’t crazy about “Uptown” for years, but I’ve since come around. It’s a hedonistic romp that drops you into a judgment-free zone where everyone—“white, black, Puerto Rican / everybody just a-freakin’”—is free to shake their ass and get their rocks off. It’s also where Prince confronts his androgyny head-on. A woman invites him over and asks if he’s gay. He says no, then immediately asks her the same question. The exchange is so casual it feels lived-in, like autobiography set to funk.

“Head” and “Sister” were designed to shock, and they absolutely did. “Head” finds a bride-to-be detouring from her wedding to give Prince an impromptu blowjob, sung with the same casual tone as someone grabbing coffee on the way to work. “Sister,” sparse and abrasive, features a guitar sound that feels ripped from a teenage garage band circa 1962—except this time, the taboo is dialed all the way up. The song’s celebratory abandon makes it clear that Uptown is a place without shame or embarrassment.

My favorite track on the album is “Partyup,” the song that rightfully secured Morris Day’s future role as frontman of The Time. It’s an apocalyptic stomper—the first documented instance of Prince using funk to grapple with Armageddon and nuclear annihilation. It also introduces the call-and-response chants that would dominate his next two albums and all of The Time’s output. But more than anything else, it’s just pure fun.

Roundly misunderstood upon release—especially by Black audiences—“Dirty Mind” remains one of Prince’s most enigmatic works. It’s serious yet funny, tongue-in-cheek yet confrontational, superficial yet deep, simple in structure but complex in intent. It feels like he spent months writing these songs and one reckless afternoon recording them in his garage.

Prince would grow, technology would evolve, and his productions would become more layered and ornate with stunning results. Still, “Dirty Mind” stands as his best and most fully realized concept album: eight perfectly placed songs, every instrument exactly where it belongs, no excess, no filler, and absolutely no fat to trim.

I used to read Entertainment Weekly religiously because, in their music reviews, they always found a way to drag an artist with a biting sense of comic cheekiness. In their lukewarm review of Toni Braxton’s debut, they quipped that she didn’t do much to distinguish herself from the wave of “wine-cooler R&B divas.” Wine cooler!! That phrase stuck with me—not just because it made me giggle with delight, but because it was, in a way, unfair. Toni’s debut may have shared the chilled, mellow vibe of some of her peers, but underneath the gloss was a singer with far more grit and gravitas than the comment suggested. (But I couldn’t stay mad at Entertainment Weekly. They be funny!)

1993 was a transitional year for R&B. The tide had turned toward a harder-edged, male-dominated sound—Bobby Brown, Jodeci, and the tail end of New Jack Swing. The golden era of classic soul was fading; folks who once swore by Teddy Pendergrass and Betty Wright were aging out of the clubs and not exactly spending their hard-earned dollars on tapes and CDs anymore. Black music in the ’90s was being rebranded for a younger, more radio-savvy crowd—one that demanded beats that bounced and lyrics that talked slick. Sweet declarations of love had given way to bass-heavy pledges of booty-bopping and cunnilingus.

Meanwhile, the Quiet Storm legends were growing quieter: Sade only released music when Jupiter aligned with Venus, Luther was going for a more modern sheen, and Freddie Jackson was M.I.A. So when Toni Braxton arrived with her self-titled debut, it felt like a throwback. And a damn good one.

Listening to the album now, you can hear the fingerprints of its era—especially in Babyface’s polished but sometimes anemic productions, which relied heavily on the artist to bring the fire. He was a master at crafting ballads with mass appeal, and he knew how to cast the right voices—Toni, Karyn White, Whitney. Several of the songs on Toni’s debut were originally meant for Anita Baker, and when Baker responded "nah, I'm good", it’s easy to see why Toni was the next call. Her voice had a husky, hickory-smoked depth that wrapped itself around a lyric and made the music smolder.

The best songs on Toni Braxton are undeniable R&B staples. “Another Sad Love Song,” with its mournful “ohs” right at the top, struck a perfect balance of pain and polish. “Breathe Again” remains a slow-burn ballad, using odd little repetitions to tap directly at the most tender parts of your heart. And “Love Shoulda Brought You Home,” lifted from the Boomerang soundtrack, came with both attitude and ache—it’s arguably the moment that put the industry on alert. These songs didn’t just sound great—they felt like something. Toni, with her soulful alto and unflinching delivery, brought the melancholy in ways that elevated even the darkest material. She became the new Dame of Despondency.

Other standouts like the fun “I Belong to You” and the smoldering “How Many Ways” don’t hit with the same weight, but they entertain, thanks mostly to Toni's vocals. These midtempo grooves brought sensuality and poise, hinting at the grown-ass woman behind those doe eyes and that pixie cut. Toni’s phrasing, her restraint, her control—she made even the less lyrically rich songs feel deeper than they had any right to be. That’s the mark of an artist. Her idols—Whitney, Anita—were masters at that too.

That said, the album isn’t without its clunkers. “Love Affair” is a little too toothless for its own good, and “Best Friend” feels like a watered-down B-side—cute, but forgettable. They don’t match the sultry, shadowy tone of the stronger material and throw off the emotional arc just enough to make you wish the scissors had come out during sequencing.

Still, in the midst of R&B’s early-’90s identity shift, “Toni Braxton” stood tall. She didn’t chase trends—she leaned into what made her special. She brought back the drama, the ache, and the elegance. And in doing so, she elbowed her way into a space that had been getting crowded with dudes and drum machines, clearing a little room for the Black women who still had something to say—and sing.

So no, Entertainment Weekly, Toni wasn’t just another wine-cooler diva. If anything, she was the whole damn bottle of Hennessy—intoxicating, dark, smooth, and with enough bite to leave the industry buzzed and craving another round.

I get the sense that some folks still think “Promise” was a letdown after Sade’s debut “Diamond Life”, and that feeling probably has everything to do with the sheer pop dominance of those three monster singles: “Smooth Operator”, “Your Love Is King”, and “Hold On to Your Love”. Add to that deep album cuts like “I Will Be Your Friend” and “When Am I Going to Make a Living”, and you had a record that stayed on turntables from Burma to Babylon without ever wearing out its welcome.

Still, judging “Promise” by the impossible standard set by its predecessor misses the point entirely. What this sophomore album lacks in obvious pop moments, it more than makes up for in substance, confidence, and sophistication. This is the record that gave us one of the quirkiest, most uncanny love songs to ever sneak onto the Billboard charts—“The Sweetest Taboo”—alongside Quiet Storm cornerstones like “Never As Good As The First Time” and “Jezebel”, years before Quiet Storm was even fully codified as a thing.

What truly makes “Promise” special is that it refuses to be a retread of the sleek R&B sound of “Diamond Life”. Instead, it drifts deeper into a loungy jazz realm, flirting with abstraction and mood. The instrumental “Punch Drunk” feels like a dimly lit after-hours detour, while “Is It a Crime” is a dazzling, Carnegie Hall–worthy performance that shows Sade Adu’s voice dipping, soaring, and stretching with wild aplomb. It remains one of the band’s signature songs and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser .

The album also serves as a quiet roadmap for where Sade were headed. “Jezebel”, “You’re Not the Man”, and “War of the Hearts” act as bridges to the band’s later aesthetic: mellow, minimalist, emotionally reserved, and faintly downcast. Lyrically, “Promise” is Adu at her most ambitious. She’s not just cataloging love found and love lost on this album. Songs like “Jezebel”, “Tar Baby”, and the magnificent “Maureen” open a window into her broader interests, politics, and personal history. Ironically, after “Promise”, her writing would narrow again, focusing almost exclusively on romantic terrain.

Like all great albums, “Promise” rewards patience and demands you listen all the way through. “Maureen” is one of those hypnagogic tracks that transports you straight to that tender mental space where memory, grief, and nostalgia blur together. It taps into that hollow left behind by someone you’ve lost, where bitter and sweet swirl into the same ache. It’s a song that makes me cry and smile at the same time—especially in those closing moments when Adu mourns the fact that her long-lost (or possibly dead) friend will never meet the people who came later, while the background singers hover somewhere in the ether.

Like most Sade albums, I wasn’t blown away by “Promise” on first listen. I even thought it was spotty. Complicating matters, I owned the LP that didn’t include “You’re Not the Man” or “Punch Drunk”, so when I later transferred it to CD, those tracks felt like intruders, barging in and fucking up the flow. For years, I simply programmed them out of my playlists, annoyed at Sade for creating extra work for me.

But, as usual, Sade were right and I was wrong. Over time, I came to appreciate how those tracks injected an extra layer of jazziness that helped “Promise” feel more mature and exploratory than their debut. That generosity does not extend to the overwrought “Fear”, though—a melodramatic misfire with senseless lyrics and a meandering arrangement that would’ve been far more at home in a corny Mexican soap opera than on a jazz-fusion album.

In the end, “Promise” cemented Sade’s status as musical nobility—statesmen and stateswoman. While they would go on to release excellent work in frustratingly sporadic intervals over the decades, they never quite matched the quiet peak achieved here. (But they got damned close on at least two occasions.) “Promise” remains a soul, jazz, Quiet Storm gem that, much like Sade Adu herself, only gets better with time.

Soul and hip hop were absolutely thriving in the late ’80s, with era-defining releases by Anita Baker, Luther Vandross, Sade, Prince, EPMD, Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim, Slick Rick, and plenty of others who rightfully get name-checked whenever people talk about that moment in music. Almost always left out of that conversation, however, is one of the most promising, audacious, and flat-out exciting debut albums of the period: Terence Trent D’Arby’s first record.

This album is a testosterone-soaked flex from start to finish, built on a combustible mix of Teddy Pendergrass-style chest-thumping vocals, James Brown growls, Prince’s gender-bending quirk, and Motown-inspired arrangements that feel both classic and contemporary. Terence came out of the gate talking big shit—and, crucially, he had the voice and the songwriting to back it all up. It’s taken me over two decades to fully appreciate just how strong this record is, but once it clicks, it doesn’t let go.

The album moves effortlessly between styles without ever sounding scattered. There’s the gospel-tinged uplift of “If You All Get To Heaven,” the gorgeous throwback soul of “Never Turn My Back On You,” and the quietly introspective “Let’s Go Forward,” which reveals an emotional intelligence that often gets overshadowed by Terence’s bravado. The record closes with his incendiary take on Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Loving You,” and yes—sorry, Michael—TTD ate that one up. No disrespect, of course; you were a kid, and kids don’t know what they be doin’.

Even the tracks that might give some listeners pause—“Dance Little Sister,” which flirts with corniness, and the oddly titled “As Yet Untitled,” which can feel abrasive on first (or fiftieth) listen—don’t qualify as filler. Terence’s personality carries everything. He knows exactly when to unleash that scratchy growl and when to slide into a syrupy falsetto, and his innate sense of drama keeps the album gripping even when it’s being willfully indulgent. The songwriting is tight throughout, and if the album sounds “dated,” it’s only because it feels like it could’ve dropped in 1977—and that’s a compliment.

This record also arrived during a brief window when mainstream R&B still had some real soul left in it. In a span of just a few years, artists like Sade, Jody Watley, Freddie Jackson, Vanessa Williams, and Terence Trent D’Arby were all competing for the Best New Artist Grammy. Terence lost to Jody Watley, which was silly on two levels: Jody had already been releasing records for years as part of Shalamar, and Terence’s debut was simply more ambitious, more volatile, and more transcendent than even her excellent solo debut.

What this album really showcases is how multifaceted Terence was. He could funk hard, croon tenderly, and sermonize dramatically without sounding forced. On songs like “Wishing Well,” “Let’s Go Forward,” and “Who’s Loving You,” he’s scratchy and smooth, arrogant and vulnerable, macho and feminine—sometimes all within the same verse. For a brief moment, he gave Prince and Michael real competition. He wasn’t as funky as Prince or as effortlessly charismatic as Michael, but he was a better singer than both of them, and that mattered.

Unfortunately, that moment didn’t last. His ego ballooned, and the muddled, meandering, painfully boring sophomore album drained all the electricity out of his rising star almost overnight. But that shouldn’t obscure what this debut accomplished. For a short, blazing stretch of time, Terence Trent D’Arby sounded like the future of soul music—loud, fearless, dramatic, and impossibly gifted. And this album remains the undeniable proof.

My mom suffered from depression and I think my brothers have also had some experiences with this terrible condition. Even though I look just like my mom, I inherited my personality characteristics mostly from my father: laidback, unbothered, unintrusive, pleasure-seeking. I have never had problems with depression and that is mostly due to the fact that I can entertain myself very easily, meaning that I don't have moments of loneliness that can trigger episodes of depression.

But if I want to call myself a well-rounded person, then I still need to feel sadness every now and again. And I tend to seek out these feelings in my music; the gloomier, the better. There is magic in music that can generate melancholy in me, and that power is found in spades in Meshell Ndegeocello's major beta-blocker, 1999's "Bitter".

There is no category for Meshell. She doesn’t fit neatly alongside anyone else discussed here, and “Bitter” doesn’t earn its place through vocal gymnastics, flashy musicianship, or pristine production. In fact, none of those things particularly stand out. That’s precisely the point.

“Bitter” is stellar for reasons that exist far beyond music. It is an open diary—a slow bleed—written by a woman whose soul has been trampled, bruised, scraped raw, and left exposed to the air. That funky, popping bass that defined Meshell’s earlier albums is nowhere to be found here. In its place is a heart in free fall, hemorrhaging in real time.

The album opens with “Fool of Me”, and there is no easing into the pain. Heartbreak is immediate and unfiltered. Me’shell has been dumped, strung along, and denied clarity, and her voice never rises above a whisper—as if volume itself would be a lie. The restraint is devastating. This isn’t performative sadness; this is the sound of someone conserving energy just to survive the day.

“Faithful” digs deeper and feels almost confessional. If there’s a reason things didn’t work, maybe it lives here. Ndegeocello admits she is only faithful to God—that she is weak, human, and capable of straying. Piano and guitar dominate the arrangement, and while her voice rises slightly above a murmur, it still feels fragile, tentative. It’s a tender, revealing moment that allows us closer access to her internal wreckage.

“Satisfy” briefly suggests movement—maybe even contentment—but the illusion doesn’t hold. Her backing vocals shimmer beautifully, yet the string arrangements hint that whatever satisfaction she’s singing about belongs firmly in the past. If joy exists here, it’s remembered, not felt.

Any sense of momentum evaporates with the title track. “Bitter” is an acoustic guitar-driven ballad that lays bare the resentment and sourness that followed the breakup—on both sides. That bitterness bleeds seamlessly into the Jimi Hendrix remake of “May This Be Love”, which is soaked in melancholy and resignation, followed by “Sincerity”, another meditation on unrequited love carried by lonely guitar lines and hushed vocals. These songs are serene, yes—but it’s the serenity of emotional exhaustion, not peace.

If there’s anything resembling an uptempo moment, it’s “Loyalty”. Even here, Meshell frames the story through what appears to be a straight couple and family dynamics, but the emotional truth feels autobiographical. The guitar work is sharp and effective, yet the underlying sadness never lifts. Even motion feels heavy on this record.

The emotional core of “Bitter” lives in its final stretch. “Beautiful” is whispery and dreamlike—the only moment where Meshell sounds remotely at peace. The piano chords are achingly simple, and for a brief moment, the album exhales. That calm is short-lived.

“Eve” arrives like a quiet warning, ushering in the even more unsettling “Wasted Time”, where Meshell trades lines with another eerie voice, dissecting all the years poured into loving someone who never loved her back. The track cuts abruptly, collapsing into one of the most moving pieces she’s ever recorded.

“Grace” is not redemption. It doesn’t resolve anything. It feels more like resignation—an epitaph rather than a prayer. Meshell understands that her happiness is bound to someone she must release, and the arrangements reflect that painful clarity. The harmonies are immaculate, the guitar achingly sparse. There is no catharsis here, only acceptance. You don’t hear healing—you hear someone learning how to live with the wound.

“Grace” is a magnificent song, and it’s the moment that made me fall completely for Meshell. I’ve followed her entire career—sometimes begrudgingly, given the deliberately tangential nature of some later albums—but I never expected her to recreate the suicidal enchantment of “Bitter”, though she got pretty close with 2011's excellent "Weather". ("Omnichord Real Book" from 2023 is also great, but for different reasons entirely.). The fact is that moments like "Bitter" only happen once. And thank god, because a repeat of this level of pain could take you over the edge.

There’s a lot to say about a concept album like this, but the word that keeps coming back is brilliance. “Bitter” accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: it makes you feel everything, without apology or relief. Even the so-called uptempo tracks are drenched in melancholy, ensuring nothing disrupts the album’s singular goal—to pull the listener down into her despair and make them sit with it.

There are no singles here. This record refuses fragmentation and is best absorbed whole, start to finish. Though Meshell has released strong work throughout her career, “Bitter” remains her defining moment—a once-in-a-lifetime document of emotional collapse.

Depression has never sounded so honest.
And it has never felt this devastatingly good.

For a guy who’s never been to a Black family reunion or a backyard barbecue with aluminum trays, am I even allowed to love Frankie Beverly as much as I do? My Blackness has been put on trial most of my life, and when I inventory certain behaviors—like not wearing house shoes out on the street, occasionally listening to opera music, or having never once stepped foot in a Family Dollar—I start cross-examining myself: "Maybe I'm not that Black."

But whenever that insecurity bubbles up, I pull out my phone, scroll my library, and there it is: my Maze featuring Frankie Beverly playlist. Case dismissed. Doubts evaporate.

I love Maze. Deeply. Sincerely. And I remember exactly when it all started.

I was down on Gila Monster Boulevard in Arizona, home from college, riding around in my dad’s little sports car, weaving through Scottsdale on my way to meet some fool I was convinced I was in love with. “Can’t Stop the Love” was one of maybe two cassettes in the car. I’d seen it sitting there plenty of times and ignored it, mostly because I could not stand their biggest hit, “Back in Stride.” But I hated the radio even more, so I punched the tape in.

And somewhere between stoplights and bad decisions, the magic crept in.

Song after song seeped into me, took root, and started germinating in my soul. Magical isn’t hyperbole here—it’s the only word that fits both the compositions and the feeling I had driving around with the warm Arizona wind blowing through my Gumby haircut. By the time I parked the car, I knew two things: 1. I was hooked on Maze and, 2. my dad was never going to see that tape again, making him the latest victim of my notoriously sticky fingaz.

What I realized that night is that Maze’s magic comes from what they don’t do. They never try to bludgeon you into submission. No pounding beats. No chest-thumping, testosterone-soaked vocals. Instead, they gently weave Southern sensibilities into the silky soul template they helped define in the early ’80s. Frankie talks about love, not sex. He teaches without preaching, guiding you like that favorite uncle who slips you a five-dollar bill behind your mama’s back after she done already told you, “nigga, NO!”

The guitar and keyboard solos are there to enhance and caress, never to harass or overwhelm. But the true essence of Maze lives in Frankie’s voice. Early on, his delivery had a raspy edge—like that other uncle who ruins every family gathering because he hits the moonshine too hard. By the time albums like “Inspiration” rolled around, he’d smoothed that grit into something supple and expansive, stretching his range and leaning into long, sky-reaching notes that feel like blessings. Those qualities are in full bloom on “Can’t Stop the Love”.

Now, let’s address the elephant. “Back in Stride” is not my favorite Maze song—never has been. But over time I’ve made peace with it. I don’t even skip it anymore because it works perfectly as a warm-up act, setting the table for what follows. Yes, it sounds a little too close to LTD’s “(Every Time I Turn Around) Back in Love Again,” and Frankie’s voice was never built to spar with Jeffrey Osborne’s aggressive funk growl. Still, there’s something oddly endearing—almost childlike—about it, which explains why it shot straight to the top of the R&B charts.

The title track is where the album truly opens its arms. “Can’t Stop the Love” is reflective, patient, and confident. Frankie hits those notes and holds them, letting them bloom. At over seven minutes, it never drags or overstays its welcome. It opens with a lilting guitar riff, and Frankie scats, testifies, and stretches out—never crossing into preachy territory. The keyboards stay supportive, the drums resist the urge to crash and clatter like so much early-’80s bullshit, and the whole thing feels intentional and timeless. This is the album’s heart.

Side One closes with “Reaching Down Inside,” which keeps the spell going in a quieter, more melancholic way. It’s about healing, about looking inward instead of chasing distractions. Frankie’s vocals are rhapsodic here—soaring, comforting, and quietly inspiring. And the production? Immaculate.

Side Two opens with “Too Many Games,” a song that took its sweet-ass time growing on me—but once it did, it moved in permanently. Now it sends chills up my spine every time it comes on. The elementary scatting, the tenderness—it should have been the first single and a number one, period. “I Want to Feel I’m Wanted” rides the one nicely, but “Magic” feels like the album’s thesis statement. This is tenderness distilled. Frankie sounds exposed and vulnerable, and the solemn saxophone wraps everything in a calm so complete it feels damn near spiritual. Nothing is extra. Nothing is wasted.

The album closes with “A Place in My Heart,” and between this and the other ballads, Maze cements their mastery of the slow-tempo groove. (Trend alert: end an album on a high note and you’ve got me for life.)

The beauty of “Can’t Stop the Love” lies in its simplicity—musical, lyrical, emotional. There’s no fat to trim. Every song gets to the point without lingering too long or forcing a skip. Frankie sings with a kindness that feels rare now—especially now that he’s gone. (I tear up even writing that line.)

“Can’t Stop the Love,” like the entire Maze catalog, continues to inspire me and reinforce my deep, abiding love for Soul music—real Soul music.

And no, I never returned that cassette. In fact, I’m looking at it right now, sitting in a closet filled with dozens and dozens of other stolen items that may have played a role in K-Mart's financial demise. I know both my dad and Frankie forgive me for being a petty thief, because I did it to enhance my life, not hurt others. Hell, stealing “Can’t Stop the Love” from my own father might be the very thing that made me the upstanding BLACK citizen I am today.

When people talk about seminal R&B albums, titles like “Lady Soul”, “Songs in the Key of Life”, or “What’s Going On” rightly come up first. For those of us nappy-headed kids born in the ’70s, “Purple Rain” and “Thriller” were the soundtracks of our formative years. But history keeps making the same mistake: underestimating—if not outright ignoring—the seismic impact of “Control”.

When it dropped, “Control” didn’t just shift Janet Jackson’s career; it recalibrated Black pop music. Aggressive, sassy as fuck, and unapologetically Black, Janet came roaring back with her third album and made it very clear that the little girl doing cute Mae West impersonations on variety shows had left the building. This was a declaration of independence written on the scroll sheets of highly danceable music.

Unlike many Black artists navigating MTV in the mid-’80s, Janet—along with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis—refused to dilute the Blackness in the music to make it more “palatable.” Instead, white audiences were forced to meet straight-up R&B on its own terms. In the process, “Control” cracked the door wide open for Paula Abdul, Taylor Dayne, Jody Watley, and a whole generation of attitude-forward pop divas who borrowed liberally from Black radio while still getting heavy rotation on MTV.

“Control” is a concept album, whether people say it out loud or not. Its central narrative is Janet’s evolution from sheltered, wealthy daddy’s girl to eye-rollin', neck-poppin', self-directed diva. Around that transformation, Jam and Lewis built tracks that were funky enough for Black audiences and catchy enough for pop radio—a balancing act that very few producers have ever pulled off this cleanly.

Ironically, some of these songs were originally pitched to former Atlantic Starr singer Sharon Bryant, who somehow decided they weren’t the right vehicle for her solo debut. A truly historic misjudgment. Those songs landed in Janet’s lap instead, and something clicked. After spending time with Jam and Lewis just hanging out—talking about life, relationships, independence—Janet noticed that the lyrics mirrored the very conversations they’d been having. That was new for her. Her earlier albums were mostly add-water-and-serve affairs, devoid of anything personal.

Inspired, Janet grabbed her spiral notebook and started writing. On college-ruled paper came the blunt, intimate lyrics for “Control”, “What Have You Done for Me Lately”, “Let’s Wait a While”, and others. “Nasty” hit especially close to home, pulled straight from a recent run-in with some overly aggressive knuckleheads while she was out with her girls. After approaching the song with traditionally sung vocals, she was told to bark the lyrics out with the same anger she’d felt in real life—and that’s the take we got. That bite is exactly why the song still hits. The video, with its now-iconic choreography courtesy of former Laker Girl Paula Abdul, is one of early MTV’s defining moments.

Monte Moir made his presence felt too with “The Pleasure Principle”, a monster jam where the lyrics are mostly secondary to the groove. The video is equally legendary, showing off the results of Janet’s Deal-A-Meal era after she breaks into a warehouse and Wops all over the place. A former roommate of mine loved pointing out Janet drinking distilled water before busting into her routine—a small but oddly influential moment, since, according to her, America had never seen Black folks hydrating themselves with that liquid before. Suddenly, bottled water took over the streets of Black America.

The album winds down with two ballads: the hit “Let’s Wait a While”, which politely suggests postponing the boot-knocking until a later date, and the quietly sensual “Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun)”, where Janet essentially tells her man, in both English and French, to put his boner away because she has to catch the last bus back to Encino.

“Control” isn’t flawless—“You Can Be Mine” could’ve stayed on the cutting-room floor—but perfection wasn’t the goal. The mission was to announce her arrival, loudly and unmistakably, and let both Michael and Madonna know that a dirtier, Blacker, more assertive energy had entered the chat. Janet shed the baby fat, the shyness, and the expectations that came with her last name to become a cultural force on her own terms.

Because it was about control.

And for the first time, she had lots of it.

I like to present myself as closed-minded and musically snobbish—high standards, low tolerance for bullshit—but then here comes another Puff Daddy–adjacent record barging its way onto my list, daring me to explain myself. Fine. Let’s talk about it. Slowly. Carefully. With caveats.

There are so many reasons I should not love this album as much as I do. Mary doesn't have the best voice—let’s get that out of the way. Puff Daddy is less a producer here than a financier and the only one with the keys to the studio. And damn near 80% of the record consists of Mary singing over reheated instrumentals from older songs like she’s borrowing outfits from her auntie’s closet. From a pure creativity standpoint, this album sits low on the ladder—near the basement, honestly.

And yet.

There is exactly one reason this album is a classic: Mary J. Blige herself. Just because her voice isn't butter doesn't mean that she's not a spectacular interpreter of song. Which she is.

A strong secondary reason is sequencing—an art form most people don’t even recognize until it’s done wrong. The weakest tracks are wisely tucked into the middle, while the album opens with its most straightforward R&B joints and then locks into a devastating emotional run that starts with “Be With You” and ends with “Be Happy.” Ironically, happiness is the last thing this album is about. This is black-eyed, cried-out, mascara-running Mary at a low point in her life—she once said she wrote these songs in tears, and believe her, you can hear every drop hit the page.

What we get is a bare-bones, emotionally reckless open diary. The first two tracks are BET-friendly remakes of the Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long” and Barry White’s “It’s Ecstasy (When You Lay Down Next To Me).” But these aren’t lazy covers. The melodies and lyrics are reworked just enough to make them feel lived-in, like old furniture reupholstered with new scars. That formula works even better on “I’m the Only Woman,” which lifts Curtis Mayfield’s “Give Me Your Love.” Mary’s raspy, untrained voice claws its way through Curtis’s immaculate arrangement, pleading, bargaining, damn near begging her man to do right and choose right. Shockingly, both versions stand tall—Curtis because he was Curtis, and Mary because she could take a borrowed song and bleed all over it until it belonged to her.

The rest of Side One drifts into less compelling slow jams, buoyed by solid background vocals from Faith, JoJo, and Big Bub. “I’m Going Down” is an almost note-for-note read of the Rose Royce original—not offensive, just unnecessary. But it does its job: clearing the runway for Side Two, which is where Mary absolutely wrecks you.

“Be With You” is Mary’s song, period. No crutch samples, no nostalgia scaffolding. This is her standing naked in the middle of the room, confused, rejected, desperate. She doesn’t sound strong—she sounds weak, which is exactly why it works. It’s followed by the devastating “Mary’s Joint,” which slows down Audio Two’s “Top Billin’” until it’s barely breathing. Mary sinks behind the beat, her voice heavy with resignation. No screaming. No off-key theatrics. Just exhaustion. This is arguably the finest moment of her entire career.

The heat doesn’t let up. “Don’t Go,” riding Guy’s “Goodbye Love” backbeat, continues the pleading, with crucial help from a then-unknown Faith Evans. Again—restraint. Sadness. The crescendo where Faith sings “You got my heart boy…” is a masterstroke. “I Love You” leans on that endlessly recycled Isaac Hayes piano riff, but Mary turns it into a farewell letter soaked in grief. She’s battered, resigned, wishing him well while quietly admitting she’ll never stop loving him. The song fades out with Mary moaning and aching, every sound left intact. No dignity edits. No emotional cleanup.

“No One Else” should’ve been cut. Full stop. It breaks the emotional arc that Mary so carefully built. “I Love You” already delivered the moment of realization and acceptance, and the only logical ending is “Be Happy,” courtesy of Curtis Mayfield. Here, Mary finally reaches a conclusion: maybe the chaos wasn’t just him—maybe it was her too. Maybe she can’t be happy with anyone until she gets herself right. Her voice stays restrained, fragile, ending on that soft, unresolved “oh why?” like she still isn’t convinced.

“My Life” functions as a time-capsule autobiography. It is unapologetically narcissistic—Mary, her pain, her sadness, and nothing else. Even “You Bring Me Joy,” which was supposed to be uplifting, feels smacked around and bruised along the edges. Every track carries sorrow like a watermark. You’d have to be truly soulless not to feel it.

In hindsight, “My Life” feels like the last true Soul album before the genre was fully swallowed by bump-and-grind R&B. A lot of credit goes to the pioneers whose music Mary borrowed and bent to her will, but the real magic is her ability to turn recycled material into something painfully intimate. What a way to close the book.

Flawed. Derivative. Emotionally naked.
And absolutely undeniable.

Rufus and Chaka’s second number-one R&B album is also their second classic, and while it stands shoulder to shoulder with “Rufusized” in terms of quality, it’s a completely different beast. In fact, it’s different from everything else they ever did, and for three very specific reasons.

First: this is the one Rufus album where Chaka is not required to perform vocal alchemy—turning straw into gold on songs that only exist to survive the demo stage. Every cut here is strong on its own. These songs don’t need Chaka Khan to come in swinging like a Marvel villain to elevate them. They’re already built. Solid. Thoughtful. Fully formed.

Second: Chaka actually steps back—just a little—and lets Rufus feel like a band again. This is the rare moment where the album reads as a true collective effort instead of “Chaka Khan featuring some very talented gentlemen trying to keep up.” Everyone gets oxygen. Everyone matters.

And finally—and this is the big one—Chaka shows restraint. Real restraint. For perhaps the only time in the Rufus catalog, she isn’t battling the music, daring it to keep up. Instead, she inhabits it. She accents it. She shades it. She sings like a jazz vocalist who understands that sometimes the most devastating move is knowing when not to scream.

Like many strong-willed but quietly insecure Aries women, Chaka had something to prove. Critics had side-eyed the relatively slapdash vocals on the self-titled album that followed the universally adored “Rufusized.” Yes, that record gave us the rotund classic “Sweet Thing,” but elsewhere her vocals sounded rushed, even worn. Touring was relentless, studio time was scarce, and Chaka—famously allergic to repeated takes and post-production duties—was not about to hang around for too long. Two passes, maybe three, and she was gone.

So when they finally stepped off the road and sat down to create, what emerged was something otherworldly—light-years removed from their funkier work. Chaka remains the focal point, but instead of attacking the music, she folds herself into it. For the first time, she treats the arrangements with reverence, using her voice to shape the mood rather than dominate it.

This is an album about ambiance and melody, which is why they smartly front-load “At Midnight (My Love Will Lift You Up)”—a full-throttle reminder of what Chaka can do when she feels like it. (Though I will say: the high end across this entire album feels oddly muffled, and her vocals here sit too far back in the mix.) Still, it’s a romp—Chaka airborne, doing exactly what you expect.

Then comes the pivot.

"Close the Door" drops into a hush so intimate it feels like she’s whispering directly into your ear. Gone are the machine-gun vibrato and the scorched-earth screams. Even when she ad-libs, she reins it in. You can practically hear her saying, I could blow this up… but I won’t. And the gamble pays off.

“Earth Song” continues this meditative glide, pairing laid-back vocals with cosmic, vaguely hippie lyrics and a restrained Rufus cushioned by a full orchestra. Chaka herself has cited this as a favorite, and it sets the stage beautifully for what might be the most inspired performance of her career.

“Everlasting Love” finds Chaka digging deep—scraping the bottom of her cavernous range and pulling out something rich, seasoned, and adult. There’s no wild-child nonsense here. This is maturity on wax. She stretches the song slowly, letting it simmer until the final verse blooms with quiet authority. This is the kind of singing that permanently shuts critics up. Few soul singers—male or female—could touch this level of control and emotional intelligence.

And then side two somehow gets even better.

“Hollywood,” with its “Charlie Brown”-esque piano figure, keeps the quiet storm rolling. Chaka starts in a near-whisper and builds to trademark screams that feel earned, not indulgent. “Magic in Your Eyes,” penned by Chaka herself, strips things down even further—intimate, reflective, percussion-led. This is as close as we ever get to hearing her think out loud and the result is an exercise in reflective tenderness, words we would not have used to describe Khan a year prior.

“Better Days” warms things up just a notch. Chaka begins low and honeyed, then gradually lets the seams split. The bass churns. The background vocals wobble ever so slightly off-key—in the best way—as she weaves in and out, spilling over the groove like hot cocoa, until the song dissolves.

And then comes the closer.

“Egyptian Song” is pure drama. Drawing on Middle Eastern textures—hand cymbals, strings, mysticism—Chaka paints a distant landscape before detonating it with “here is a melody for you.” By the second verse, the tension is already peaking. When she hits “to sing, to dance…,” it seems impossible she could go higher. She does anyway, finishing the album on a breathless, orgasmic exhale. The coda of the song has the drama sweeping up and then fading back into the sand with several whips of the desert breeze. A remarkable performance all the way around.

After “Ask Rufus,” Chaka’s disinterest in remaining with the band becomes increasingly obvious, as she had signed her solo deal less than a year after the album's release. Her voice continued to mature—smoother, broader, less abrasive—but on “Street Player” and “Camouflage,” she was clearly checking out, already mentally packing for her solo career while wrestling with a well-documented, talent-draining drug problem.

Looking back, “Ask Rufus” feels intentional—like a swan song disguised as a group album. And even though they continued releasing music together up through 1983, a soft goodbye and the end of an era was exactly what "Ask Rufus" was .

The truth is, we never know what’s coming. Nobody would’ve guessed that Prince wouldn’t make it to 60, or that the “stones” in The Rolling Stones were apparently referring to their ages. And when 1981’s “Controversy” extended Prince’s so-so chart performance, there was no way for us—the casual, pre–social media faithful—to know what was quietly incubating in Minnesota.

In hindsight, many people treat 1983’s double album “1999” as a mere stepping stone to “Purple Rain,” but at the time, “Controversy” felt like it existed in an entirely different, lesser universe. Nothing about that record suggested what Prince was about to unleash by the end of 1982.

That said, Prince did know some things. He always did. For one, he knew that whatever came next couldn’t be quite so cryptic and off-putting. I mean—who exactly was a song like “Jack U Off” meant to reach? College radio DJs? Horny art-school weirdos? Certainly not America.

This next chapter had to cross over. It had to play on white radio and work for the brothaz in Detroit and not send the soccer moms of Des Moines scrambling for the phone to complain to the station manager. Prince could feel Michael Jackson revving the engine, ready to drive an 18-wheeler straight through the mainstream color barrier, and he understood that if he wanted to ride that wave, his music—and image—had to be MTV-ready.

Which meant changes. He had to smear some activator into that brittle, rebellious hair. Phase out those thigh-high boots. And put some pants on for Pete's sake!

The leap from “Controversy” to “1999” is one of pop music’s great caterpillar-to-butterfly transformations. The thigh-highs became more socially acceptable ankle boots. The jeans appeared. The curls got juicy. But none of that would’ve mattered one damn bit if the music hadn’t sounded so revelatory. Prince wasn’t the first to use Oberheim synths or the Linn LM-1 drum machine, but the way he wielded them—paired with his sharpened songwriting—was something else entirely.

On the double album, the three big hits consume all of Side One, starting with the towering title track. If you had to boil the entire 1980s down to a single word, it’d probably be reverb. Phil Collins’ happy studio accident on “In the Air Tonight” had already changed the rules, making drums sound unnaturally massive. Prince applied that same excess to keyboards, slathering on effects and making them the focal point of the compositions. From there on out, gated drums and cavernous synths ruled ’80s pop like Vladdy Putin rules shirtless photo ops.

Those first three tracks—“1999,” “Little Red Corvette” (juvenile sexual metaphors and all), and “Delirious”—were Prince’s passport. They cracked MTV wide open and welcomed in those soccer moms with open arms.

Side Two is the “Black side,” trimmed down to just two songs but heavy with intent. The filthy funk of “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” and the elastic groove of “D.M.S.R.” served notice that Prince hadn’t abandoned the brothaz. If anything, he reminded us—subtly but firmly—that his alter-ego Jamie Starr was also behind Vanity 6 and The Time, acts that were running laps around “Controversy”-era Prince on the R&B charts.

For me, though, Side Three is the album’s emotional core—the most Prince of all four sides. “Automatic” is cold, clanky, and stripped of sparkle, replacing brightness with eerie R2-D2 bleeps and creeping dread. “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)” is even more unsettling—icy, brittle, apocalyptic. It sounds less like a song than a tragic goodbye note, and it remains one of my favorite Prince tracks of all time. The side closes with “Free,” a solemn and gorgeous meditation on liberty that felt especially plausible—and terrifying—during the Cold War.

Side Four opens with another funk workout, “Lady Cab Driver,” this time powered by live drums. “All the Critics Love U in New York” is Prince talking about Prince—an East Village–coded New Wave dance number recalling those early days when places like New York were abuzz about this upcoming talent, even drawing the praise of folks like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney. “International Lover” is admittedly a bit of a shrug, though “International Lover (Take 1, Live in Studio)” on the “1999” deluxe edition improves on it significantly.

For me, “1999” was a total revelation. The imagery. The B-sides. The physical vinyl with Prince’s eye staring up at you from the label. But more than anything, it was the music—so fully realized, so alien, it felt almost otherworldly. I lived inside Prince’s universe and it was records like "1999" that gave me the very air I breathed.

And even though he knew what was coming next, I had no idea it would somehow get even better.

A singular, once-in-a-planet talent.
The earth will never see his like again.
But we will...

Seal had not yet wandered into that beige, Starbucks-playlist phase of his career—the one defined by safe, by-the-book remakes of soul standards everybody done already heard to death. In the early 90s, he was still making adult contemporary music for the cappuccino crowd, sure, but good adult contemporary: sophisticated, emotionally evasive only when it needed to be, and elevated by those hickory-smoked, sandpaper vocals that could sell despair like it was a luxury item.

This, his second self-titled album, followed a deeply satisfying debut that had conquered dance floors worldwide, yet it made almost zero impact on the R&B charts. Not because it wasn’t worthy—but because it didn’t play by the rules. In my book, this album is a near-masterpiece that was completely overshadowed by one song: “Kiss From A Rose.” A phenomenal track, no doubt, but also the kind of hit that ends up flattening the rest of an album’s identity in the public imagination.

When the needle hits the groove, Seal opens with “Bring it on!”—and for once, an artist actually means it. His first album rode the club-ready momentum of “Killer” and “Crazy,” but a series of personal upheavals landed him in the hospital and then back in the studio with Trevor Horn, where the mood shifted dramatically. This is not music for your feet. This is music for your chest cavity.

Where the debut leaned heavily on drum machines and dance-floor propulsion, this album turns inward. The arrangements are sweeping, lush, and unapologetically dramatic. Strings swell. Pianos drift. Flutes, percussion, and atmosphere wrap themselves around the listener in a dreamy, milky fog. These songs aren’t built to move bodies—they’re built to make you sit still and feel uncomfortable in your own thoughts.

“Prayer for the Dying,” the lead single, went absolutely nowhere on the charts, probably because America wasn’t ready for a melancholy meditation on death delivered without a single wink or hooky concession. But musically and vocally, it’s stunning. Seal’s raspy but surprisingly flexible tenor carries a story about a dying friend—apparently suffering from heroin-induced AIDS—without ever sounding preachy or self-important. It’s grief without grandstanding.

Then there’s “Dreaming in Metaphors,” even stranger and more ambitious, riding a 7/8 time signature that feels as unstable as its subject matter. The vocals soar, the arrangements feel almost otherworldly, and the whole thing hovers in that uncomfortable space between beauty and unease. “Don’t Cry” and “Fast Changes” follow similar emotional terrain with slightly diminishing returns, but the mood never breaks.

Side two kicks off with the behemoth: “Kiss From A Rose.” Forget the Batman association. Strip away the movie tie-in. What you’re left with is one of the most gorgeously constructed pop songs of the decade—immaculately sung, emotionally layered, and still capable of producing goosebumps decades later. The overdubs are inspired, the metaphor is absurd yet devastating, and Seal somehow turns watching a friend die into something achingly tender. A career-defining song if there ever was one.

But the album doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own hit. “People Asking Why” creeps in quietly, Stevie Wonder’s “Summer Soft” hovering somewhere in its DNA, starting low and rising heavenward as Seal interrogates his own success. Fame, money, acclaim—what do they mean when stacked against the fragility of life itself?

The closest thing to a groove is “Newborn Friend,” a mid-tempo lament disguised as pop. Seal wonders aloud whether happiness can be conjured through ritual, chant, or sheer willpower, all while delivering one of his strongest vocal performances on the album. Joni Mitchell even drops by for “If I Could”—her presence minimal but meaningful, adding gravitas to a track soaked in mutual restraint and emotional fatigue.

The album closes on a note that tries to gather the pieces, reassuring us that after all the minor keys and existential dread, Seal isn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet. It doesn’t quite land. Honestly, I would’ve preferred he leaned harder into the darkness and left us stranded there. Ending it on unresolved despair would’ve been braver. That would’ve really sealed the deal.

Still, this album remains deeply personal to me. It is forever the soundtrack of freezing winter rides on a rickety LIRR train, trudging from Long Island back to Manhattan, watching snow-covered ground blur past while the music perfectly mirrors that specific, bone-deep loneliness. It made Seal a pop star—briefly—and it stands as his most emotionally cohesive work.

Seventeen years later, he finally topped the R&B charts with an album of those old soul remakes. By then, though, his rose had long since gone gray.

FINISH WRITING
Who's a better painter, Vincent VanGogh or Jean-Michel Basquiat? Who's a better writer, Shakespeare or Hemingway? It all depends on who you ask, I guess. Those who are in the know have extensive knowledge of other geniuses and can make an objective assessment based on that knowledge. I have not heard even a minute portion of all of the albums that came out in 1973 but I have no qualms in proclaiming that "Innervision" is far and away the best musical expression of that year even not having heard all of the other stuff that was released that year. If "Innvervision" indeed has a rival, I certainly would have heard about it by now. The truth is that this record elucidates how far ahead of the pack Stevie was when his genius was in full bloom.

Every single one of the nine songs that make up this record is a classic; there is not song here that does not hit on all cylinders. Even though "Talking Book" is my favorite Wonder album, "Innvervision" is a more complete record objectively speaking. The songwriting, the singing and especially the production come together to create a singular listening experience that can only be described as remarkable. Even though each individual song is a revelation on its own, it would be silly to single out one song over the other. What makes a piece of art a masterpiece is the impeccable decision-making of the artist, the discipline to know when to keep at it and when to put down the brush as to avoid overembellishment. "Innervision" represents an artistic expression that could have only been ordained by a higher power because it simultaneously displays a level of creativity that overwhelms the flood gates exercising a restraint in embellishment that no mere human possessed at any other point in history.

“Innervisions” is an album that absolutely, 100% lives up to all the hype a hoopla. It is simply a breath-takingly innovative collection of songs start to finish and the work that established Stevie Wonder as a true legend and musical genius at such a young age. Even as a 5-year old child, I just could not get enough of this record. How fucking amazing is “Too High” with its myriad keyboards and creepy background singing? “Visions” is a solemn yet effective harpdriven track while “Golden Lady” is the perfect, dreamy ending to Side 1. Things stay on the same stellar level with songs like the funk classic “Higher Ground”, the multilayered, ominous “Jesus Children of America” and “He’s Misstra Know-it-all,” which are both incredible examples of an artist at the very peak of his gifts. Stevie had no musical peers in the 70s.

I generally sidestep anything even adjacent to that old-time religion, but, despite the stain glass in the cover art and wholly holy song titles, this album is an immaculately conceived, beautifully executed production from start to finish. Maurice White knew exactly what he was doing here, and he did it with purpose. The first album he produced for The Emotions, “Flowers,” gave us a delightful preview of what was coming, but this follow-up is where everything snaps fully into focus.

I’m usually drawn to darker, more solemn—hell, even depressing—albums, but this is one of those rare sets that delivers pure happiness and joy from the moment the needle touches vinyl. No buildup required. No mood-setting patience necessary. It hits immediately.

The album opens with their biggest hit, the strident, uplifting “Best of My Love.” The sisters sing with a sense of destiny here—and by the time the song reaches its climax, they’re practically screaming with jubilation, like they knew this was the one that would crack things wide open. It’s joy as a full-body experience.

“A Feeling Is” follows, opening with some beautifully reflective vocals—Wanda, I believe, who also composed the song. Maurice White’s production is razor-sharp, and once again the track ends with those perfectly orchestrated, church-adjacent screams that feel spontaneous but are anything but accidental. That momentum carries straight into “A Long Way to Go,” which is just as strong as the tracks before it, capped off with some spine-tingling, sanctified hollerin’ that somehow never tips into corny.

Things slow down a touch with the gorgeous ¾-time ballad “Key to My Heart,” which showcases the sisters’ harmony vocals beautifully, with Maurice White joining in. The “woo-woo-woo’s” at the end are pure pleasure—simple, playful, and disarming. Side one closes with the upbeat and inspirational “Love’s What’s Happenin’,” probably the weakest track here, but even at its least essential, this album never clunks or drags.

Side two comes out swinging with “How’d I Know That Love Would Slip Away,” a song first recorded and co-written by Deniece Williams. Let’s be honest—they stole this one fair and square, because their version is superior. The vocals are exquisite, the production is peak Maurice White, and that guitar riff sets up the track perfectly before sliding into those iconic “shoo-be-doos.” They’ve been imitated endlessly—Alicia Keys, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey—but never duplicated. The Emotions usually sing with an inherent gentleness, but here there’s a little sass in the delivery that’s irresistible.

“Don’t Ask My Neighbors” was another big hit, and once again Maurice White proves himself a master of mood-setting through percussion—sticks, bongos, castañuelas—and subtle background vocal flourishes. Nothing is overdone. Often you don’t even know whether to sing along with the lead or the background vocals because both are so perfectly mapped out.

You might think the album is winding down when “Blessed” opens with a low Moog line and a tangle of gospel moans and murmurs, but you’d be dead wrong. The groove is slow, yes, but it simmers and builds to an emotional crescendo that feels like it could only have happened if Maurice let the feeling override technical perfection. It sounds like it was recorded in a church, imperfections and all, and that’s exactly why it hits so hard. This is one of the most inspired performances of their career. Pure magic.

And then—just when you think they’ve already given you everything—the title track closes the set. And what a closer. I’ve always loved albums that save the money shot for last (see “Compositions,” “Sign O’ the Times,” “Ocean Rain”), and “Rejoice” absolutely delivers. It opens with a sizzling cymbal, slides into a disco-flavored, percussion-heavy intro, then locks into something that’s part dance floor, part revival tent. Disco meets church, executed flawlessly.

The tempo, the mood, the precision—it’s impossible not to move, impossible not to get goosebumps. The vocals are locked in, inspired, joyful, and when Wanda holds that long note near the end, it ties the whole album together in one final, euphoric exhale. It’s one of those songs I hate to hear end—but that’s the point. It leaves you spent, exhausted, and completely satisfied.

I shouldn’t love this album as much as I do. My mother played it to death, and for years it was the soundtrack to chores, yard work, and general childhood misery. But credit where it’s due: a lot of the music I cherish most now came straight out of her collection, and “Rejoice” is one of those records that only improves with time. The vocals sound like they were captured in just a few takes, imperfections left intact, feeling prioritized over polish.

That’s real soul music.

You go, girls.

I don’t want to be a hater, but no other Michael Jackson album deserves to be anywhere near this countdown. “Off The Wall” is so fresh, so fully realized, so brilliantly produced and sung by everyone involved that everything Michael did afterward simply pales in comparison. Sorry, “Thriller,” but this is the album that’s actually so good it’s frightening.

Like the great breakthrough albums by Coldplay, Stevie Wonder, Seal, Maze, and others, there’s something deeply endearing about an artist who arrives with vulnerability and naïveté intact. “Off The Wall” wasn’t Michael’s first solo album—it was technically his fifth—but for all intents and purposes, it’s the first time we get the full measure of his wizardry. Michael was never really an album artist after this; even “Thriller” plays more like a perfectly sequenced greatest-hits collection, with songs that don’t necessarily hang together thematically. “Off The Wall,” on the other hand, feels almost like a concept album—its concept being the coming-of-age of a once-in-a-generation interpreter of song.

(Hints of this emotionally exposed, post-adolescent brilliance first surfaced on The Jacksons’ “Destiny,” an album that deserves must-have status in its own right. Michael sounds so vulnerable there it’s almost uncomfortable—and that’s exactly why it works.)

If “Off The Wall” has a single unifying theme, it’s vulnerability.

Even in the opening moments of “Don’t Stop (‘Til You Get Enough),” Michael isn’t strutting—he’s asking. Politely. Tentatively. Maybe sorta wondering if you might want to dance. We don’t hear the answer, but we feel it in that ecstatic “whooo!” that kicks the song into gear. The track is a percussion-heavy dance-floor monster that somehow never ages, and the production trick at the end—dropping everything but the percussion—was genius. I’d heard a version of that before on The Emotions’ “Special Part,” but here it’s elevated into something iconic.

“Rock With You” follows, deservedly hitting No. 1 and showcasing some of the most beautiful lead-and-background singing of Michael’s career. This is where we really hear how masterful he was at harmonizing with himself, creating an intimacy his earlier work never quite reached.

“Working Day and Night” is a straight-up classic—relentless percussion, handclaps, piano, horns, and Michael using his voice like another instrument. The grunts, gasps, and yelps aren’t gimmicks; they’re rhythmic weapons. I challenge anyone to put this on and remain seated.

Side one closes with “Get On The Floor,” an aggressive, glorious disco burner powered by Louis Johnson’s popping bass and John Robinson’s relentless drum work. From the moment the strings hit, you’re done—you’re on the dance floor. Michael rides the groove effortlessly, hee-hawing with delight as the track fades out. And yet, beneath all that joy, there’s still a trace of insecurity in his voice—something fragile and human that I find impossible to resist.

Side two opens with the title track, and honestly, it doesn’t get much better than this. The musicianship is immaculate, but it’s Michael’s vocals that stop time. This song is a reminder—one that history often obscures—that he was an astonishing interpreter of song. His phrasing, tone, control, and purity here are unmatched in popular music. “Off The Wall” is one of the very few songs I can listen to back-to-back without diminishing returns, thanks equally to Michael’s performance and Rod Temperton’s flawless writing. This is Temperton’s finest hour.

“Girlfriend” and “She’s Out of My Life” continue to highlight Michael’s vocal brilliance, leaning heavily into the adolescent fragility of his voice. Remember—he was only about 18 or 19 when he recorded these. “Girlfriend,” written by a then-thirty-something Paul McCartney, sounds in Michael’s hands like it was penned by a preteen Emmanuel Lewis. And that’s intentional. Michael uses his vocal instincts to de-sexualize a song about sexual impropriety, and somehow makes it work. “She’s Out of My Life” is devastating in its restraint and serves as the emotional thesis statement for the album’s obsession with vulnerability.

But none of that quite prepares you for the simple, jaw-dropping brilliance of “I Can’t Help It.”

To take a Stevie Wonder composition and somehow make it even more transcendent requires a level of sensitivity, restraint, and vocal intelligence that very few singers possess. Quincy Jones does his usual magic with the arrangement, but it’s Michael who turns this into something sacred. His control is unreal. He knows exactly when to pull back, when to let the music breathe, and when to gently release emotion—especially in that final fade, where he finally lets go. In anyone else’s hands, this song would still be beautiful. In Michael’s, it’s untouchable.

The only song I can even mention in the same breath is Roberta Flack’s “Jesse,” another masterclass in vocal empathy. But even that falls short. “I Can’t Help It” exists on its own plane. No song touches it.

“It’s The Falling in Love” is a perfectly good duet, but sequencing it right after “I Can’t Help It” dooms it to Class B status. “Burn This Disco Out” is pure filler. A smarter sequencer would’ve placed “It’s The Falling in Love” after “Girlfriend” and ended the album with “I Can’t Help It,” which would have been a flawless closing statement.

In the end, “Off The Wall” was also Quincy Jones’ true coming-out party as the most important producer in pop music—and the quiet precursor to the kind of superstardom that ultimately destroyed Michael Jackson. The fame, the spectacle, the scandal all came later.

But this is how I choose to remember him: young, vulnerable, joyful, searching—and singing his ass off.

(And yes, as I was writing this, I had “I Can’t Help It” playing for reference. And yes, once again, tears streamed down my face as it faded out. It really is that beautiful.)

“Talking Book” kicks off with Stevie Wonder’s first monster hit of the ’70s, the deceptively simple and quietly perfect “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” The verses are passed around between three different leads, giving the song a warmth and intimacy that feels almost conversational. (Did Prince steal this idea for “1999”? Absolutely. And good for him.) There’s something disarming about this track—its complexity hides in plain sight, making it sound light-years ahead of its time while pretending to be effortless.

“Maybe Your Baby” is my least favorite song on the album, and that’s only because Chaka Khan came along later, stole it, and completely incinerated it vocally. Sorry, Stevie, but Chaka shredded this one so thoroughly that even you had to acknowledge it—hence “Tell Me Something Good,” the song you gifted to Chaka after hearing her rendition of "Maybe Your Baby". Still, Stevie retains the definitive version of “You and I (Can Conquer the World),” a love song so indelible it’s been covered by everyone from O’Bryan to Vesta to Michael Evans on “Good Times.” “Tuesday Heartbreak” is a funky, satisfying romp that allegedly deals with heartbreak, though it sounds like Stevie having way too good a time for that to fully register.

One of Stevie’s great sequencing habits is closing side one in a dreamy, inward-looking haze, and “You’ve Got It Bad Girl” is where “Talking Book” quietly ascends into masterpiece territory. From those opening keyboards, you know you’re somewhere special. The song is layered with musical vapor—soft synths, whispered vocals, spoken asides—that practically demand headphones. The attention to melodic detail is immaculate, and this is the moment where Stevie stops flirting with greatness and fully commits to it.

Side two opens with the seismic event known as “Superstition,” a track that still sounds like it was beamed down from another planet. It’s impossible to overstate how futuristic this must have sounded in 1972—and frankly, it’s still lapping most contemporary music. If James Brown turning the guitar into a percussive weapon was one production watershed, then Stevie’s use of the clavinet as a full-fledged rhythm instrument is another. This wasn’t just a hit; it was a redefinition of groove.

“Big Brother” follows as the clumsier cousin to “Girl Blue” from “Music of My Mind.” Where “Girl Blue” is mystical and unsettling, “Big Brother” is more direct—a harmonica-led scolding of politicians who exploit poor Black communities for votes. It’s effective, but I still prefer the earlier song’s eerie ambiguity. “Blame It on the Sun” brings things down to a wistful mid-tempo glow, Stevie sounding resigned, tender, and—once again—naïve in a way that feels utterly sincere.

The album closes with one of the most emotionally devastating one-two punches in his catalog: “Looking for Another Pure Love” and “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever).” “Looking” is intimate and accepting, Stevie sounding bruised but not bitter, while Jeff Beck’s blues-drenched guitar nearly steals the song out from under him. “I Believe” is sprawling and imperfect, its slightly sloppy drums and frayed edges adding to its emotional gravity. Stevie sounds tired here, not defeated but worn down, leaving the door cracked open for love to return someday. It’s a beautiful, human ending—warts and all—to a landmark album.

And this is where we have to talk about the Grammys, unfortunately.

I hatehatehatehate that we’re expected to use the Grammys as any kind of meaningful barometer for artistic quality. It’s like taking your goldfish, Gippy, to a car dealership and letting him decide which vehicle you should buy. Goldfish can’t drive. They also lack the empirical experience to assess whether the sticker price aligns with the Kelley Blue Book. The people who run the Grammys, meanwhile, seem just as clueless about music quality as Gippy is about sedans—except Gippy has the moral advantage of not being corruptible by industry politics, because money means absolutely nothing to him.

So when I look at the all-white nominees for the 1973 Album of the Year and see that “Talking Book” isn’t even mentioned, I’m confident Gippy would have done a better job. Yes, Ray Charles’ “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music” was nominated in 1963. Yes, Isaac Hayes’ “Shaft” soundtrack was nominated in 1971. And yes, both lost—to “Judy [Garland] at Carnegie Hall” and Carole King’s “Tapestry,” respectively. Between those moments? Crickets. No Black artists. But sure, tell me again how this organization exists to “honor artistic achievement…without regard to sales or chart position.” And while you’re at it, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Kansas I’d love to sell you.

Critics still debate whether Stevie’s classic period begins with 1971’s “Where I’m Coming From” or 1972’s “Music of My Mind.” Both marked a sharp break from Motown’s lagging instincts, especially in the wake of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and the Temptations’ psychedelic pivot. But no one argues about “Talking Book.” Released the same year as “Music of My Mind,” it was the undeniable statement—the moment Stevie fully seized control of his career through bold songwriting, dense overdubs, clavinet-driven funk, and a strange, insular sonic world that felt miles ahead of even Marvin.

“Talking Book” may not have Stevie’s strongest overall song lineup—that honor belongs to “Innervisions”—but pound for pound, it’s his most intimate. He sounds confident in places, sheepish in others, sometimes barely above a whisper, sometimes letting his voice crack or drift out of tune. Those imperfections aren’t flaws; they’re the point. They create a closeness between Stevie and the listener that more polished records of the era simply don’t have.

That intimacy—more than the hits, more than the innovations—is why “Talking Book” scrapes its way onto this list while other technically superior albums fall just short. And yes, the Grammys eventually gave Stevie his due during this period. Fine. I’ll begrudgingly give them that. But they still owe him one more. At minimum.

Because “Talking Book” isn’t just great. It’s essential. And no amount of institutional blindness—past or present—can change that.

OK… whew… where do I even start with this one? I’ll try—try—not to let this run on forever, but I can never say too much about this woman or this album. Even Chaka herself has said that this is her favorite work of the Rufus era, and honestly, what argument could you possibly make against that? This record is just too much fun, and Chaka is too crazy, too ballsy, too confident, and too freakishly talented to be ignored. More than any other Rufus project, this album captures the exact moment when a supremely gifted singer stops asking for permission and just takes the room.

Rufus and Chaka Khan had already scored big with “Tell Me Something Good” the year before, and their first two albums were decent enough to establish that yes, this woman could sing and yes, the band could play. But “Rags to Rufus” did not prepare us for what came roaring out of the speakers on “Rufusized.” Somewhere in between those releases, Chaka Khan underwent a transformation—shed a skin, burned a bridge, killed off the timid version of herself—and what emerged was a singer operating with full awareness of her power.

The album kicks off with “Once You Get Started,” and from the jump it’s clear this is no longer a group effort so much as a platform. Horns stab, the groove locks in, and then Chaka storms the center of the track, screaming like she’s claiming territory. We’ve heard screamers before, sure—but Chaka’s screams are different. They’re unhinged. She lets her voice scratch, crunch, gargle, and tear at the seams in a genre where women were still expected to sound smooth, controlled, and pretty at all times. Chaka Khan said fuck that and built her legacy on jagged edges. I was mesmerized by this approach to singing—still am.

“Somebody’s Watching You” is ostensibly a funk sermon, but the message is almost beside the point. When she growls, “Don’t get me wrong, there’s more to life than gold / There are fortunes here that can’t be bought or sold,” and puts that deranged emphasis on “life” and “lie,” you realize she doesn’t actually care whether you absorb the lesson or not. She’s not here to save you. She’s here to blow off steam and light shit on fire.

“Pack’d My Bags” is a breakup ballad, but even here Chaka can’t resist warping the language. When she lands on “pay your dues,” the word “dues” becomes a full-blown vocal obstacle course. Any other singer would’ve been told to smooth it out. These histrionics, though, became Chaka’s calling card—and the wild thing is, they worked. She’s not interested in sounding pretty, even on a tender love song. Legend has it she liked to get in, seize the moment in a take or two, and get the hell out of the studio. You can hear that urgency all over this record.

“Your Smile” shows the other side of her voice—warm, restrained, almost lulling. She holds back just enough to sell the intimacy, then lets loose ever so slightly when she stretches “needed” into a tumbling, joyful sprawl. The title track that closes Side One gives Rufus a chance to stretch musically. I usually skip it.

Side Two opens with “I’m a Woman (I’m a Backbone),” a song that would be utterly forgettable if not for Chaka’s confidence and sass. On the first two Rufus albums, she often sounded talented but tentative. That version of Chaka is gone. Here, she’s tender one second and venomous the next—inviting you to lay your head on her chest before spitting “give a little harder for my life to pay.” She ends lines with these strange bubbling, gargling sounds that are hard to describe but instantly recognizable as her. She shifts emphasis, bends rhythm, ignores intonation when it doesn’t serve her mood. Total control. Total refusal.

“Right Is Right” isn’t much of a song on paper, but Chaka tosses it into a vocal blender and makes it live. Her spitfire delivery and the way she stretches “woe” at the end of each line turn mediocrity into momentum. “Half Moon,” a Janis Joplin remake, is where I politely apologize to Janis and say Chaka takes this one. Her phrasing is more grounded, more sexual, more deliberate, while Rufus lays down one of its funkiest backdrops. By the end, she sounds like she’s about to combust.

“Please Pardon Me” is classic unraveling-Chaka. She starts subdued, then slowly comes undone as her stacked background vocals—often slightly off-key, often sung by Chaka herself—pile up and start screaming at the edges. Those imperfections are part of the magic. These aren’t great songs being elevated by polish; they’re average songs being possessed by a singular interpreter.

Then there’s Bobby Womack’s “Stop On By (You’re Welcome),” which doesn’t need embellishment because it’s already a great composition. Tony Maiden joins Chaka on lead, and their voices lock beautifully—Tony even taking the high at points—but by the final stretch, Chaka steals the spotlight with scratchy, ecstatic screams that drip with youthful, feminine exuberance. Bobby’s version is excellent. Chaka’s is definitive.

There were more strong Rufus and Chaka Khan albums to come, and her confidence and skill only grew. But no other release captures—or could capture—the explosion of confidence heard here. “Rufusized” documents the exact moment a wildly talented young woman realized she didn’t have to be “Little Aretha,” because that wasn’t a compliment—it was a leash. Chaka was too wild, too woolly, too unrestrained and occasionally unhinged to live in anyone’s shadow.

The second of Rufus and Chaka Khan’s six Top 5 R&B albums, “Rufusized” is a coming-out party for both singer and band, a seminal moment in ’70s Black music, and one of the main reasons I love Chaka Khan so damn much. Blemishes, rough edges, and all—it’s perfect because it refuses to be.

When I was a kid, I used to get genuinely terrified whenever someone in a movie got caught in quicksand. I’d cover my eyes, then slowly splay my fingers apart just enough to watch the poor bastard sink, panic, and eventually disappear into that inescapable beige goo. I’ve always had a fear of drowning, but the idea of being trapped—forced to inhale wet sand—felt like the absolute worst way to kick the bucket. Pure nightmare fuel.

Fast-forward ten or twelve years and my absolute favorite female singer, Anita Baker, releases her fourth album, “Compositions.” And just like that, I was back in the quicksand.

At the time, a lot of us—including me—were completely thrown by this record. Everything about it felt wrong: the gloomy artwork, the jazz-leaning arrangements, the pervasive sense of doom compared to the bright, adult-romantic optimism of “Giving You the Best That I Got.” We’d been spoiled by the polished class of Corporate Soul Anita perfected across her first three solo albums. We weren’t ready for these nine shadowy, meandering songs that felt introverted, heavy, and emotionally damp.

To make matters worse (or better, depending on your temperament), the album was produced loudly, with Anita’s voice often pushed back into the mix, as if she were being drowned out by her own creation. I taped the CD onto a cassette and routinely fast-forwarded past at least three songs. I didn’t even bother including “Lonely” on the tape at all—my 19-year-old ears simply weren’t equipped to process anything that smelled remotely like jazz. Eventually, I set the cassette aside for what felt like years.

Then something happened.

I don’t remember when or why, but one day I put the CD on again—and this time I got caught in the quicksand of “Compositions.” Something in me shifted. Those songs suddenly reached past surface pleasure and landed somewhere deeper, darker, and far more personal. I identified with the sorrow and restraint in the music, and the more I struggled to escape that murk, the further I sank. The same bleakness that once repelled me now had me completely in its grip.

I can still admit the album is spotty. But its best moments rank among the very best songs of Anita Baker’s career. Four tracks in particular are untouchable: “No One to Blame,” “Talk to Me,” “Fairy Tales,” and—yes—“Lonely,” the very song I’d once erased from existence. The melancholy running through these tracks had me transfixed, shackled at the ankles, held prisoner. And here’s the wild part: this album is the reason I got into jazz. Real jazz. “Lonely” and “Fairy Tales” opened a door to music that could be simultaneously devastating and uplifting, sad and strangely euphoric. They also gave me a lifelong affection for moody, melancholy music well outside of R&B.

Anita’s vocal on “No One to Blame” has brought me to tears more times than I can count. I remember driving on a road trip with another Anita fan and popping this album in. We didn’t even make it through the second song before she asked me to turn it off because it made her feel depressed. I smiled. That reaction meant Anita had succeeded. She made us feel exactly what she intended—some of us just process gloom as joy.

I’m not sure how I would’ve received Anita Baker had I discovered her after falling in love with belters like Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, or Vesta. Anita’s contralto is silky but restrained, not immediately gratifying, and probably wouldn’t land as hard without those immaculate arrangements behind her. Without her obsessive need to control every aspect of her music and career, she might’ve been pushed aside like Oleta Adams, Phyllis Hyman, or Angela Bofill. That insistence on authorship is exactly why “Compositions” hits me so deeply.

Musically, “Compositions” isn’t objectively superior to her other albums. It doesn’t reinvent Black music or radically expand her sound. But career-wise, it’s a massive risk. After changing the face of Soul music with “Rapture” and following it with the blockbuster “Giving You the Best That I Got,” the smart move would’ve been to stay in Quiet Storm lane forever. Instead, she leaned into jazz textures that had only peeked through before, like on “Good Enough.” Critics called it her attempt to exorcise her jazz demons. Fans were confused. I was too.

Over time, though, I became attached not to her range, but to her choices. Her ad-libs feel simultaneously planned and impulsive, like she rewrote them mid-take. She rarely repeats herself once the song opens up. “Talk to Me” is a masterclass in conversational singing—pleading, negotiating, sighing, hollering—before letting loose during the vamp. “Whatever It Takes” is vintage Anita minimalism: low bass, crisp rim shots, a slow burn that ends with her moaning over her own fading chorus.

Then there’s “Lonely,” the song that alienated fans and thrilled critics. Strip away the overdubs and it’s straight-up jazz, recorded live, and it took serious nerve to release something like that at the height of her commercial power. It took me years to get it. Once I did, I became obsessed. The sneaky piano, the commanding bridge, the extended instrumental outro—it cemented what I’d suspected since “Good Enough”: jazzy Soul is Anita Baker’s strongest suit.

“No One to Blame” remains one of the most emotionally devastating songs she’s ever recorded. Dark piano, classic structure, but sung with an intimacy that feels almost intrusive. When she ends the song at the top of her register, screaming and pleading, it wrecks me every time. “Fairy Tales,” with its relentless groove and extended jam, is another bold move—nearly four minutes of letting the band ride while Anita murmurs approval from the sidelines. Just incredible.

In the end, “Compositions” is the sound of a Black woman risking everything to make the album she wanted to make. No matter what the liner notes say, there’s no universe where Anita Baker wasn’t fully in control here. More than any other record in her catalog, this one reveals a vulnerable, insecure, moody Anita who stopped chasing hits and leaned into feeling. (Ironically, it still won her a Grammy.)

“Compositions” is musical quicksand. It’s bleak, heavy, and inescapable—and once it pulls you under, it doesn’t suffocate you. It makes you feel alive. For me, that darkness has always felt like joy. And that’s why it ranks as one of the greatest albums of my life.

So bittersweet…

Can I say that “Sign ‘☮’ The Times” is my favorite album of all time? Yes—and no. Yes, because as it was originally released, no other album leaves me feeling so full, so satisfied, so completely content when it ends. And no, because “Sign ‘☮’ The Times” is not the album we were supposed to receive. What we got was the crippled war-veteran version of a three-album behemoth called “Crystal Ball”—a stitched-together amalgam of recordings from the aborted “Camille” and “Dream Factory” projects.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet and i-products, I’ve been able to reconstruct “Crystal Ball” as closely as possible—using the originally intended songs (as far as anyone knows) and their general order, though not the exact sequencing. All I can say is: wow. “Crystal Ball” has a looser, funkier, more chaotic feel than “Sign.” It’s actually more diverse. The additional tracks inject a rougher funk texture that turns the project into the ultimate apocalyptic party album—messy, fearless, and overwhelming in the best possible way.

I had completely ignored “Rock Hard In A Funky Place” when it appeared on “The Black Album,” but here, nestled among the Camille material, it makes perfect sense. “Crystal Ball,” more than the compromised “Sign ‘☮’ The Times” we were handed, captures every facet of Prince’s personality: the quirks, the neuroses, the tenderness, the religiosity, the hedonism, the insecurity. It’s darker, funkier, and more unhinged—a victim of what may be the greatest musical crime of the century.

You have to imagine those record executives kicking themselves now, because like the Beastie Boys’ “Paul Boutique,” this album in its original form would almost certainly be regarded as the definitive record of the 1980s and beyond. Tracks like “Birth of the Flesh” (later diluted into the merely decent “Escape”), “Good Love,” “Joy In Repetition,” “Shockadelica,” “The Ball” (mutilated into the insipid “Eye No”), and the epic “Crystal Ball” itself make the project an unsurpassable display of musical brilliance. Even B-sides like “Ha Ha Ha He He Hee” signaled an artist on a manic, possibly chemically enhanced mission to prove something.

It's kind of koo-koo bananas to think that arguably the one of the weakest track on the set is the the Top 5 hit “You Got The Look.” And even as immaculate as “Sign ‘☮’ The Times” is, “Crystal Ball” would have blown the entire idea of musical genius wide open. My only real complaints about “Crystal Ball” remain “The Cross” (I still can't get into its Christian Rock feel) and the original sequencing of the final side, which would have closed with “It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night” coming after “Adore.”

Still, given the seismic impact of the double album we actually received, one might argue there’s no point mourning what never was. But I’ll cry over that spilled milk forever. Prince effectively had to give up seven of his twenty-two children for adoption—and most of them ended up in the worst foster homes imaginable: buried on third-rate soundtracks like “Bright Lights, Big City,” exiled to forgotten B-sides, awkwardly reshaped and sent back out into the world, or worst of all, left to rot unloved on the “Graffiti Bridge” debacle.

And yet—even with those corporate-mandated amputations—“Sign ‘☮’ The Times” still represents Prince’s musical summit. It is his most brilliant statement, one he’d been building toward since 1978. The speed at which he arrived there is rivaled only by The Beatles. That alone earns him a seat at the table with Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, and other artists who refused to let pop conventions cage their imaginations.

“Sign ‘☮’ The Times” is not a singles album. It’s a journey. The songs don’t function nearly as well outside the protective arms of the whole; the sum far exceeds its parts. That’s what made slicing it up such a sacrilege. The album rises and falls, veers left then snaps right, blinds you with joy and plunges you into darkness without warning. Extracting singles from it was like cutting the smile off the Mona Lisa and hanging it alone in a frame.

Removing the 10-minute opus “Crystal Ball” forced the entire project to pivot, thrusting the title track into a spotlight it was never meant to occupy. It became something it wasn’t designed to be. I can only imagine how exasperating that must have been for Prince.

By the time this album came out, I was already a full-blown Prince fanatic—and still, I didn’t get it at first. I didn’t understand the title track, “Hot Thing,” “Forever In My Life,” or “It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night” for years. Ironically, these are among the less quirky tracks. They just seemed underwhelming next to the rest. Eventually, I stopped listening to individual songs and started feeling the album.

The opening sequence alone is masterful. The title track delivers grim social commentary, then suddenly children shout “play!” and Prince yelps “Oooh doggies!”—and we’re catapulted into the ecstatic rush of “Play In The Sunshine.” That sugar high collapses into the grinding funk of “Housequake,” arguably Prince’s greatest funk construction ever. Sung as Camille, it’s a brontosaurus-sized call-and-response jam that lives up to its own hype.

Then the temperature drops. Hard. “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” is cold, murky, and unsettling, mixed almost entirely in the low end due to a studio accident Prince wisely left untouched. Like Sly Stone’s “A Family Affair,” it demands headphones and patience. It’s quietly brilliant.

Side two oscillates between lust, playfulness, and abstraction. “Starfish And Coffee” is childlike and surreal; “Slow Love” is classic and restrained; “Forever In My Life” spirals inward with its fractured vocal structure, the result of yet another studio boo-boo that was left intact. It took me years to unlock it, but when I did, I simply could not get enough.

The second disc opens with “You Got The Look,” which I’ve always tolerated more than loved, but it serves as a necessary on-ramp to the masterpiece that follows. “If I Was Your Girlfriend” is one of Prince’s most misunderstood songs. It’s not about gender confusion—it’s about intimacy, envy, and emotional access. The Camille vocal, the eerie minimalism, the whispered ending—it’s one of the most satisfying musical roller coasters of his career.

“Strange Relationship” continues the confession, exposing Prince’s self-sabotaging tendencies. He wants happiness—and then destroys it once he has it. That truth seems easier for him to tell while disguised as Camille. Both the released and “Dream Factory” versions are extraordinary, though I think I prefer the original version with its pinch of Indian flavor, more pounding drums and the original Wendy support vocals.

By the time we reach “Adore,” the album reveals its final heart. This is Prince’s greatest slow jam—not because it screams, but because it seduces. Inspired by Patti Labelle's "If Only You Knew", "Adore" is caressed by a controlled falsetto, Al Green-style restraint, humor, vulnerability—it’s a genuine love song. When it ends, I never want the album to stop.

And that’s the curse of “Sign ‘☮’ The Times.” It’s so good that everything afterward feels like a letdown. “Lovesexy” nearly broke my spirit. People say Prince “shot his wad” here—and if that’s true, he left his followers permanently pregnant with awe, devotion, and respect.

Had the world been allowed to hear “Crystal Ball” as it was meant to exist, I truly believe much of Prince’s later turmoil—artistic, commercial, symbolic—might never have happened. The lesson is simple: you let a genius do his thing. You may not understand it at first, but the world is always better for it.

As brilliant as “Sign ‘☮’ The Times” is, it will forever remain a magnificent, heartbreaking what-could-have-been—courtesy of record-executive idiots who never trusted what they saw in Prince's crystal ball.