Rick James and Teena Marie “Fire and Desire”
The late Rick James and the late Teena Marie were put together by Motown founder Berry Gordy to work together after Teena came to Motown as a member of a group. He kicked the other two girls to the curb and kept Teena as a solo artist as he recognized her amazing talent needed to stand alone. On her first album cover, he left her face off so that people would not know she was white (when you think about it, the same thing had been done to black artists years before so that white music lovers wouldn’t know they were black). Barry, however, didn’t want to disappoint or change the focus of the audience to her skin color instead of her talent and it worked. Teena is considered one of the best soul singers to date and Fire and Desire is a song that can never be appropriately recorded again without doing it an injustice. It’s one of those love songs that has simply been done.
