This songstress has been away from the music scene since 1994, but she is back with a hip new look and a new album with a “Love Jones” type of feel.
Anita Baker, 46, spent 10 years raising a family and getting over the death of her birth mother, Brenda Baker, and uncle and aunt who raised her, Lois and Walter Landry.
This native of Detroit, considered one of the greatest female vocalists in the world, graced the world with her unique voice in the ’80s, helped folks find “Sweet Love,” told about her crying in “No More Tears” and mentioned with authority “I Just Wanna Be Your Girl.”
She spent her absence raising her two boys, 11-year-old Walter and 10-year-old Eddie and, according an interview in Essence Magazine, saved her marriage with music executive Walter Bridgeforth.
The jazzy rhythm and blues singer’s new single “You’re My Everything” has hit this week’s Billboard 200 chart at No. 9 and last week she held down the No. 4 spot.
Her new CD is titled “My Everything,” and Baker sounds like she meant just that.
Billboard ranked the album No. 1 on last week’s charts and this week her album holds the No. 3 spot.
“My Everything” is filled with lush, jazzy ballads. In “Serious,” Baker sings in a smooth genuine voice that tells her lover she never wanted to leave him alone and she experienced dismay about leaving him alone in the moonlight.
Because the track was recorded live it puts listeners in the mind of her previous 1994 album titled “Rhythm of Love.” In the song, she pleads with her lover to take her seriously. The beat sounds a lot like track six called “Plenty of Room” from her 1994 album.
With her new release, Baker has also teamed up with songwriter, recording artist and producer Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds. Track six, titled “Like You Used to Do,” replays a past relationship when things were hot and fresh, but now it has gone “astray,” and the fire has burned out. In the song Babyface tells Baker, “You were my Weezy” and Baker responds saying, “You were my Marvin/ my Billy Dee”.
“Men in My Life” is a remarkable track and occupies the 10th and final spot on the disc. Baker pays tribute to the men that have been placed in her life.
She announces on the track, “I’m such a lucky woman, folks don’t understand how I handle so much loving from more than one man,” Baker sings.
Baker’s music is plentiful, compassionate and her work on this album was well worth the wait.
Her distinguished voice and superior music has had lovers dancing across the world. It has lovers loving “365-Days-of-the-Year”.
Baker is back to help more relationships and mold old love into lavishly new, exciting love.
She looks happy and is under the direction of Blue Note Records.
Expect nothing but the best from Baker because her music is dynamic and perennial. After hearing her music, prepare yourself to phone others and spread the fact that Anita Baker seems to be in love under new management. Her new music is an obvious reflection of that.
GRADE: A
Contact Anthony S. Ray Jr. at aj4_21@hotmail.com