MINNIE RIPERTON - Perfect Angel

Before recording Perfect Angel in 1973, the late Minnie Riperton’s career was already on the wane after spending the late '60s with the Rotary Connection and then going solo with the Charles Stepney-produced Come To My Garden in 1970. Coaxed back to the studio three years later and driven by the guiding hand of Stevie Wonder on a bunch of key tracks, it was a slow build on the sales front, mostly because of its broad scope, covering rock (opener “Reasons”), weird jazz-soul (“Take A Little Trip”) and, of course, the twee-est soul track in history (“Lovin’ You”). It was the latter, originally a melody to soothe her daughter (former SNL cast member Maya Rudolph), that audaciously dropped drums in favour of Fender Rhodes, chirping birds, and those earth-shattering whistle-range notes, and guaranteed the album its place in the pantheon of hard-to-place R&B records. Nearly 40 years later, it still holds up as strongly as material from like-minded artists like Syreeta and the great Jon Lucien. Oh, and dig that delicious cover, too!