With two releases in 1980, Teena Marie was on a roll, hitting her stride as one in all Motown’s rising stars. She had two Prime 10 R&B hits underneath her belt, a Prime 10 R&B album, and road credibility in contrast to any white artist earlier than her; credibility earned not simply from Rick James’ endorsement, however the messaging in her music and poetry which made her alignment with Black tradition and politics clear.
She spent the top of 1980 and the start of 1981 within the studio buying and selling musical favors with James: she contributed vocals to his Avenue Songs album, and he contributed to her venture that may turn out to be identified to the world in Could 1981 as It Should Be Magic.
Take heed to Teena Marie’s It Should Be Magic now.
Musically, It Should Be Magic is a symphonic tsunami of sound with out-of-this-world string and horn preparations, unforgettable bass traces, and complicated percussion. A fusion of gamers from Ozone, James’ Stone Metropolis Band, and Punk Funk Horns added their contact to Magic alongside high session gamers like Paulinho Da Costa, Gerald Albright, and Patrice Rushen.
The album’s first and largest single, “Square Biz” is Teena’s declaration of her musical and cultural imaginative and prescient. In a rap – one thing she determined to do after listening to Blondie’s “Rapture” whereas engaged on Magic – Teena title drops everybody and every part that impressed her: gospel music, Nikki Giovanni, Sarah Vaughan, and her godmother’s collard greens. The track shot to #3 on the R&B chart, catapulted the album to the #2 place on the R&B Album chart, and earned her first gold document. The album pays homage to her roots, all the way down to its again cowl shot on Venice Seashore with a rainbow coalition of kids.
Whereas the album’s two subsequent singles, the title observe and the sultry “Portuguese Love,” would stall at #30 and #54 on the R&B singles chart, respectively, “Portuguese Love,” “Where’s California” and the heart-wrenching “Yes Indeed” would all turn out to be enduring Quiet Storm classics.
Teena utilized poetry within the album’s liner notes to ponder the bodily and psychic violence of racism. It Should Be Magic spoke to the issues of the previous, current, and future. Mourning the homicide of John Lennon, she scoffed on the accessibility of weapons and the killing of progressive political figures in “Revolution,” dedicating the album – her final Motown effort – to Lennon, John and Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In so doing, Teena embodied a boundary-lessness of spirit that defied man-made notions of coloration, tradition, and identification.
Take heed to Teena Marie’s It Should Be Magic now.
