Teena Marie

Singer-songwriter, accomplished musician and producer Teena Marie was born Mary Christine Brockert in California in 1956. She is a successful and acclaimed R&B performer, also known as Lady T.

Marie began her career at Motown in a group as well as backing singer for Smokey Robinson, moving on to work with Rick James for her debut album Wild and Peaceful. The album was the start of a run of commercially and critically successful releases. Following the Lady Talbum, which went gold, It Must Be Magic went platinum, promoted by the single "Square Biz" which is notable in that it provides an early example of rapping. This was followed by Starchild which was her best selling album and gave her a top five hit in the Pop charts with "Lovergirl".

After a detour in to rock n' roll, with the concept album Emerald City, which failed to sell well, she returned to form with Naked to the World. The album provided her with her only No.1 single in "Ooo La La La" which was later covered successfully by the Fugees.

Marie set up her own label, Sarat for the release of Passion Play in 1994, and then took a break of 10 years. She made her come back with La Dona in 2004. The gold-selling album got to No.6 on the Billboard 200 and the single "Still in Love" was nominated for the Grammy for Best hip-hop/R&B Female Vocal Performance.

Her work has been sampled by a long list of performers including Ludacris, Snoop Dogg and Ne-Yo. In addition to providing a new generation of R&B artists with beats and samples, musicians owe Marie another debt. In 1982 she took her record label Motown to court over unpaid royalties. She won the case, and the subsequent judgement, which limits the length of an artist's contract, was referred to as the Brockert Initiative or the Teena Marie Law.