The cost was the waiting, which stretched longer than most artists would have endured. After Chapter 8 folded, Baker spent years knocking on doors that would not open. The industry did not know what to do with a voice that had no obvious precedent -- too jazz for pop radio, too soul for the quiet storm format that was supposed to be her natural home. She kept singing in small clubs around Detroit, kept believing that the sound would find its audience eventually. When Elektra finally released Rapture in 1986, it sold eight million copies. Sweet Love stayed on the charts for months and won two Grammys.

Sweet Love is built around a piano opening so simple it sounds like it was always there waiting for her to find it. Baker's voice enters almost hesitantly before finding its full power in the chorus, and the key change two-thirds of the way through feels like arriving somewhere you have been trying to reach your whole life. The song became the template for grown-woman R&B, a genre that had never had a voice this warm or this patient. She released Giving You the Best That I Got in 1988 and Compositions in 1990, each album refining the same patient, deliberate approach.

Eight Grammys across her career. She retired, unretired, and retired again, each time on her own terms. She never made a bad album because she never rushed one.