Genuine, generous and gifted with a down-to-the-bone level of soul: before there was a Duffy, an Adele or an Amy Winehouse, there was the incomparable Christine Marie Brockert, a.k.a. Teena Marie. A porcelain-complexioned, green-eyed wisp of a woman that drew shock, then lifelong street cred, for her undeniably urban aesthetic, Ms. Marie’s sumptuous soprano and her penchant for fiercely funky jams and powerfully passionate ballads cemented her status as an R&B icon. Although she was overlooked and underappreciated by the fickle world of mainstream pop (outside 1984’s “Lovergirl”), Teena’s fiercely loyal fanbase rewarded her virtuosity with three solidly-selling CDs in the mid and late 2000s (2004’s La Dona, 2006’s Sapphire and 2009’s Congo Square) that retained her reign as soul music royalty. Lady T’s untimely passing in late 2010 may have prevented her from riding out that well-deserved second wind into a new millenium, but her fourteenth and final studio CD, Beautiful, highlights her incomparable ease with melding modern trends and classically-arranged narratives to produce sophisticated, yet street-savvy grooves.

As expected, Ms. Marie’s signature trill and prolific pen game is prominently displayed: with the exception of a Curtis Mayfield remake, the remaining eleven tracks were written or co-written by the California native……http://www.soultracks.com/review-teena-marie-beautiful