Adventures in Paradise, the follow-up to
Perfect Angel -- an album featuring
Minnie Riperton's biggest hit, much assistance from
Stevie Wonder, and several of his associates, as well as an iconic outer sleeve -- tends to be viewed as a flop, at least by those who disregard
Minnie as a novelty one-hit wonder. If the album is a flop on principle because none of its three singles was as big as
"Lovin' You," or because
Stevie was no longer around, so be it, but it's borderline classic by any other measure. The key collaborators here, outside of
Minnie's songwriting husband
Richard Rudolph, include keyboardist
Joe Sample, guitarist
Larry Carlton, saxophonist
Tom Scott, and harpist
Dorothy Ashby. Hardly poor substitutes. Most importantly, the album's three central songs were co-written with
Leon Ware, who had come up with
the Jackson 5's
"I Wanna Be Where You Are" and was on the brink of writing what would become the entirety of
Marvin Gaye's
I Want You, along with his own excellent
Musical Massage. Each of the
Riperton/
Rudolph/
Ware songs ooze playful sensuality, desire, and lust -- especially
"Inside My Love" (a Top 30 R&B single), a swooning slow jam filled with double entendres. If it weren't for the supremely seductive innocence in
Minnie's voice, the words would likely fall flat in their directness ("You can see inside me/Will you come inside me?/Do you wanna ride inside my love?") The opener,
"Baby, This Love I Have," is even more heated, with
Minnie's frustrated yearning wrapped around a lithe arrangement. (It's gentle six-note guitar-and-bass intro would later resurface in
A Tribe Called Quest's
"Check the Rhime.") The songs written by
Minnie and
Rudolph alone match up well with the best of
Perfect Angel, and they're deceptively eclectic, mixing and matching soul and rock with touches of country and adult pop. The album was tailor made for the kind of '70s radio format that would not balk at spinning
Boz Scaggs,
LTD, and
Fleetwood Mac back-to-back-to-back. But, for whatever reason (poor promotion, closed minds), it did not do nearly as well as it deserved. ~ Andy Kellman
