How can you be a great vocalist and not have a great voice? That makes no sense.

scriptgirl said:

I think it means, that some people have an awesome natural talent voice... like Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston... they just SOUND good singing twinkle little star. Then you have someone with an average voice but knows how to deliver feeling, emotion, pitch... that can get someone out of the chair and on his feet... that is a great vocalist.

Some people are both... like Aretha Franklin... however, I love Chaka Khan and Patti Labelle, and they both have nice voices... but they are better vocalists than natural born singers.

Stevie Wonder is a great vocalist... but his natural voice SOUND is not on the same caliber as Donny Hathaway, Luther Vandross, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Sam Cooke. Those men would sound awesome just singing the ABC's straight.. no vocal acrobats... just plain ABC's

Long before Vanilla Ice or Eminem, which are shit hoppers and really shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath, there was Teena Marie. However, if you notice when it comes to Vanilla Ice or Eminem, two white artists that were supposedly "so black", they went after white mainstream audiences from the very beginning and got them. In their personal lives also, they dated mostly white women and were mostly white in every other sense of the word or than their music. When it came to Teena, which was years earlier and much more daring, she didn't give a damn if the white audience liked her or not. She went after the black audience and she loved mostly black men also.

Teena was the real deal, she wasn't fake like the others just trying to make major money off of black folks' music. It just depends on how you measure success. Most of the white audience loves a white person making black music as long as that white artist remains one of them. Teena was a white woman but she was too black, not only musically, but personally also, for most white audiences. She flaunted it, made no apologies for it, and if they didn't like her for it, they could kiss her ass.She was definately a bad lady and a huge influence on myself.

AMEN! From the very beginning,Teena Marie was a legitimate R&B artist.In fact,the only song from her that "crossed over" to the pop stations was "Lovergirl" and that was accidental.She didn't care one bit about reaching the pop audience.She didn't water down her sound.She was perfectly okay with reaching R&B audiences only.

bboy87 said:

wow, I grew up next door to twin girls. they looked so much like Chaka Khan.

I swear, for a minute I thought this was a pic of my childhood friend Paulette.

SoulAlive said:

I always found it ironic how Teena, a white woman was way "blacker" than Kool and the Gang, and Lionel Ritchie.