djzyonseven
You Bring Me Joy
There are albums you grow to love, and then there are albums that have you from the first play.
Anita Baker’s Rapture had me from hello. 🎶❤️
I already knew Anita Baker from her first solo album, The Songstress, and of course I knew Angel.
But when Rapture arrived in 1986, this was something different.
Her voice was smoky, rich, jazzy and unmistakably hers.
She wasn’t trying to sound like anybody else.
And the music was so damn smooth. 😌
I remember putting the album on and letting it play from Sweet Love all the way through Watch Your Step.
No skipping.
No reaching for the turntable.
Nothing needed to be rescued by the next song because every song belonged there.
That’s an ALBUM, children. 😂
What I didn’t know back then was how much Anita Baker had riding on Rapture.
Her former label, Beverly Glen Music, had been fighting to prevent her from recording elsewhere.
On March 19, 1986, an appeals court affirmed the decision against Beverly Glen’s attempt to stop Warner and Anita.
Rapture was released March 20. Talk about walking out of a courtroom and into your destiny. 👏🏾
Anita wasn’t just standing behind a microphone either.
She was the executive producer and even put some of her own money into the project because she wanted the production and mixes right.
Michael J. Powell, her former Chapter 8 bandmate, produced seven of the eight tracks.
And Anita could write too.
She cowrote Sweet Love with Gary Bias and Louis A. Johnson and wrote Been So Long and Watch Your Step herself.
Caught Up in the Rapture was written by Garry Glenn and Dianne Quander.
Rod Temperton, yes, THAT Rod Temperton, wrote Mystery. 🎹
That jazz influence I heard back then wasn’t in my imagination either.
Anita said the acoustic piano was central to the way she approached her music because that went back to singing in church.
That helps explain why Rapture sounded sophisticated without sounding stiff.
It was R&B, soul, jazz and Quiet Storm sitting at the same table without anybody fighting over the check. 😂
As a DJ, this album stayed close.
Caught Up in the Rapture and other songs from the album found their way into my Quiet Storm sets, my slow jam cassette tapes and those house parties where eventually you had to slow things down.
Once Anita came on, folks knew what time it was. 🕯️
But Rapture became something even more personal for me.
It became the first entire album PJ and I got horizontal to.
But only to Side One.
We had one of those turntables that could automatically repeat a side.
Side One was Sweet Love, You Bring Me Joy, Caught Up in the Rapture and Been So Long.
Most times Side One finished before we did. 😉
Nobody was stopping to flip a record, so Anita simply started over.
And Over.
And…
That may explain why those first four songs became permanently attached to a particular chapter of my life.
Music does that.
A record stops being something you own and becomes somewhere you’ve been.
And the world eventually caught up with what I heard on that first play.
Rapture earned Anita two Grammys, including Best R&B Vocal Performance while Sweet Love won Best R&B Song. 🏆
Almost forty years later, I can put Rapture on and understand exactly why I fell for it.
Eight songs.
No filler.
No foolishness.
Just Anita.
And apparently, Side One was built to last. 😏🎶
DJZ7
PS…
Eventually, we made it to Side Two.
Thank God for cassettes.😘
#TheSoundtrackOfWhoIBecame, #AnitaBaker, #Rapture, #SweetLove, #CaughtUpInTheRapture, #QuietStorm, #RnBMusic, #80sRnB, #SoulMusic, #MusicMemories, #djzyonseven, #thesoundtrackofmylife
