VOGUE (July 1997) pg.86
“Speed Queen”
There can’t be many things better in this life, if you are
21 years old and have a hell of a voice, than to be the new girl
on Quincy Jones’s block. You’re singing on the same album as
Barry White. You know you’re on the money.
Tamia, a Canadian beauty who has been singing since she was
ten, met Jones at a party for Luther Vandross; they became
friends, he asked her to sing, and what do you know: The first
single he’s released from his first album in six years, Q’s Jook
Joint, is Tamia’s. Nothing random about that, not when the
record features Ray Charles, Queen Latifah, Stevie Wonder, and
Chaka Khan. And Tamia delivers “You Put A Move On My Heart”
with a wonderful sophistication and enviable ease.
A gift of a voice, a peach of a body, a solo album in the
making, a sole in Speed 2 (no surprise: It’s during her number
that the cruise ship loses control)--this self-possessed creature
is so seductive that it’s hard even to mind all this great good
fortune. “I’m very, very flattered,” she says, without a whiff
of cutesy nor a trace of artfulness. She is a real-life natural
woman. Oh, and the video? The last few frames: pure sex.
--Daisy Garnett
(
geocities.com/sunsetstrip/lounge/Lounge) (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip/lounge) (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip)