Elektra 60827
Producer: Michael J. Powell
Track listing: Priceless / Lead Me Into Love / Giving You The Best That I Got / Good Love / Rules / Good Enough / Just Because / You Belong to Me
December 24, 1988
4 weeks
With her 1986 album, Rapture, Anita Baker became a star. The album topped the R&B album chart, spawned the hit single “Sweet Love,” and earned the R&B diva a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, while the single took the Grammy for Best R&B Song. Yet that success put pressure on the Detroit-born singer when she began planning her next album. “I was scared to death,” says Baker. “It was the follow-up album to my first hit record. Rapture stayed on the album chart for 157 weeks and I had picked up every accolade in the book. It was very, very scary, because I had to go in and do the follow-up.”
With the success of Rapture, Baker soon found herself fielding offers from a number of big-name producers who wanted to work with her. “When you get a hit like that, you get all these big-shot producers who want to work on your project,” she says. “But I decided I didn’t want it to be a collaboration of big-shot producers. I decided I just wanted to stay the course.” So Baker regrouped with producer Michael J. Powell, a former bandmate of the singer in Chapter 8, a Detroit-based band she recorded with in 1980. Other former Chapter 8 members, such as keyboardist Vernon Fails and background singer Valerie Pinkston, were also featured on the album.
“Giving You the Best That I Got wasn’t a hard album to make in the studio,” says Baker. “The hard work came before I went into the studio. I never go into the studio until I have all of my material, and I know exactly where I am going, and who is doing what. It was difficult for me to put the material together,” adds Baker, who is credited as executive producer on the album.
Baker first heard a bare-bones demo of “Giving You the Best That I Got” while she was staying in a bungalow at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood. “The only thing that was on that tape was the chorus. I played it over and over again. There was no bridge. The melody and the verses I wrote myself, but that hook was inescapable.”
Since the hook was already in place, Baker had no problem writing additional lyrics to the song in the bedroom of her home outside of Detroit. “The lyrics just rolled off my tongue,” she says. “It was the most effortless thing. It was a lot like ‘Sweet Love.’ You know when a song like that is a hit.”
Baker’s intuition was right on target, as “Giving You the Best That I Got” topped the Hot R&B Singles chart on November 12, 1988, before crossing over to the Hot 100, where it climbed to number three. Meanwhile, the album hit Number One on the Top R&B Albums chart on November 19, 1988. Six weeks later, it knocked U2’s Rattle and Hum from the peak of the Top the Albums chart at the height of competitive holiday season. With Giving You the Best That I Got, Baker gave it her best, and it paid off.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of December 24, 1988
1. Giving You the Best That I Got, Anita Baker
2. Rattle and Hum, U2
3. Cocktail, Soundtrack
4. Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses
5. New Jersey, Bon Jovi