Album Review: Beautiful by Teena Marie

Several overdue reissues and the archival First Class Love were released within a couple years of Teena Marie's passing. A bigger surprise came in January 2013, when UMe issued this, the artist's 14th and final studio album. Its recording had been completed prior to Lady T's death; proud daughter Alia Rose, a singer and MC who appeared on La Doña, Sapphire, and Congo Square, saw it through the mixing and mastering process.

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Pop audiences may know the late Teena Marie only from straightforward ‘80s hits like “Lover Girl” and “Ooo La La La,” but the real litmus test for how much you’ll take to her hardcore R&B beginnings is that great Mt. Olympus moment on Rick James’s “Fire and Desire,” when out of nowhere she unleashes the titanic wail that would become her trademark and stops the song dead in its tracks. In love with its own brute force, Marie’s singing is more polarizing than her incontestable position as the Ivory Queen of Soul would suggest.

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