Patrice Rushen: Straight from the Heart (2LP) [STRUT]

Why you'll love it

This Strut 2LP set is remastered from the original tapes and adds the 12-inch versions of "Forget Me Nots," "Breakout!" and "Number One" plus an extended "I Was Tired of Being Alone." The album reached No. 14 on the Billboard 200 and earned two Grammy nominations.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered from the original tapes
• Bonus 12-inch versions

About the album

Patrice Rushen was a jazz prodigy, a session pianist and an arranger before she was a pop star, and on her seventh album she brought all of it to the dance floor. Elektra was chasing sophisticated dance music in the early 1980s, and Rushen leaned into synthesizers; as she put it, they widened the palette.

"Forget Me Nots" grew out of a bassline Freddie Washington found while jamming at Rushen's family home; she wrote the chorus and words, and it went to No. 23 on the Hot 100. "Remind Me" is a slow, silky groove that producers have sampled endlessly, "Number One" is an instrumental workout, and "Breakout!" keeps the pace up. Paul Jackson Jr. plays guitar, Gerald Albright sax and Paulinho da Costa percussion.

Pitchfork later ranked it among the 200 greatest albums of the 1980s. The "Forget Me Nots" groove went on to underpin the Men in Black theme, and George Michael's "Fastlove" borrows from it too, so plenty of people have danced to Patrice Rushen without ever reading a sleeve.

Also at Kops: more Patrice Rushen on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Strut, a reissue of the 1982 album.