Happy 50th Anniversary to Minnie Riperton’s third studio album Adventures In Paradise, originally released May 22, 1975.
Did you know Minnie Riperton performed her own stunts? If you didn’t, neither did she. An Epic Records executive had a risky idea for a commercial promoting her next album. As she told talk show host Mike Douglas, she agreed, but with one stipulation: “I said I’d do it if it was the same lion.” Those could have been the Chicago-born ultrasoprano’s famous last words.
On the Kenneth McGowan-shot cover of Adventures In Paradise, Riperton wears her trademark crown of baby’s breath while lounging regally in a plush armchair. Beside her, a docile lion crouches. When Riperton walked onto the film set, however, she immediately noticed a different lion. No sooner than she sits, it lunges at her, prompting husband Richard Rudolph to dash to her rescue. “I really didn’t ever feel that he was going to hurt me,” she said of the big cat, noting he could have easily attacked if he wanted. “I think he just wanted to play.”
Even in the jaws of an apex predator, she can recognize the best intentions. And is that naïve or just pure? Once one is jaded by a hostile world, it's hard to distinguish.
On Adventures In Paradise, Riperton preserves her child-like wonder while blowing the embers of sensuality for an understated melding of soul and jazz-funk. This refined offering proved she need not shout to make her impact. Crossing the idealist transcendence of Come to My Garden (1970) with the endearing innocence of Perfect Angel (1974), Riperton forged a project that quietly cemented her legend for decades on.
As her breakthrough hit “Lovin’ You” approached its #1 peak in early 1975, she rushed to prepare a follow-up. Though she would have welcomed Stevie Wonder repeating their Perfect Angel chemistry, his hands were full gestating his magnum opus Songs In The Key Of Life (1976). Instead, the capable Stewart Levine signed on to produce Adventures alongside Riperton and Rudolph.
Known for propelling The Jazz Crusaders and singer Hugh Masekela into the spotlight, Levine could command top-tier musicianship for Riperton. This included guitarist Larry Carlton and pianist Joe Sample of the Crusaders, as well as sax man Tom Scott of Joni Mitchell’s backing band L.A. Express, and more. They brought out the best in Riperton and Rudolph who penned all 10 songs themselves with select help from their expert sidemen, as well as future I Want You (1976) lyricist Leon Ware on several cuts.
One such composition with Ware became the centerpiece of the LP and its first single: the potently erotic “Inside My Love.” Though Riperton’s elegant verses plead for divine connection and spiritual elevation, the choruses read as exclusively carnal (“You can see inside me / When you come inside me / Do you wanna ride inside my love?”). During its famous bridge, Riperton holds a climactic B-flat for nearly 30 seconds as it melts into Joe Sample’s intricate sequence of electric piano chords. Thereafter, each successive vamp entrances with hypnotic intensity. Though the invitation is blush-worthy to the prurient, her sincere delivery renders the listener powerless to turn away. It is her siren song.
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Riperton unleashed this aphrodisiac at a time after Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” made undiluted lust acceptable on pop radio in 1973, but before Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” could desensitize America to orgasmic moans later in 1975. Where R&B charts lifted Riperton’s single as high as #23, pop seemed too ashamed to touch it. Frankly, Riperton thought everyone had the wrong idea.
“I wrote this song ‘Inside My Love,’ and it was banned in a couple of cities,” she explained to New Musical Express in 1977. “The song was about two people who meet and the woman was saying ‘You can see inside me, will you come inside me,’ and of course they thought I was talking about screwing. But if they'd listened to the song in the beginning they could have understood the woman was meaning, ‘You can understand me, come inside my love and feel the spirit in me.’”
With sex looming so large, Riperton needed only hint at it elsewhere for similar effect. It registers well on the slithering A-side opener “Baby, This Love I Have,” another Ware collaboration. Its curiously open space and conga-dotted swing mark it unmistakably as boudoir music. The effect is more subtle on the Sample-assisted “Adventures In Paradise.” Its touch of carnality comes from the interplay of galloping bass and bucking horns. They call, and Riperton responds with a growl that comes this close to raunchy, missing it by only a wink.
More than any trace of raunch, fantasy, introspection, and gaiety are most prominent on Adventures. The heroic folklore of “Love And Its Glory,” co-written with bassist Ed Brown, spins a dramatic tale of teenage romance on the run. Riperton’s exuberance as a narrator nearly overshadows the glistening storybook atmosphere lent by legendary harpist Dorothy Ashby. Equally ecstatic is “Simple Things,” a summery, skip-and-strum time capsule. The heavy syrup is counterbalanced with quiet, reflective moments. Largely wordless, “Minnie’s Lament” indulges the agility and range of her opera-trained voice while “Alone in Brewster Bay” is a soft, melancholic meditation inspired by missing a lover.
Invariably, Riperton turns back to her true north: positivity. On “Feelin’ That Your Feelin’s Right,” she seeks to spread the love (“It’s too good to lock inside myself… / It’s best when you can share it with someone else”). Evoking Mitchell’s idyllic “Woodstock,” “When It Comes Down to It” sounds the call to “get back to the garden,” albeit in a boogie-backed, definitively more spirited tone. As it vamps its way through, Riperton leans into a yodelsome ad-lib rather than her signature high notes. In this way, Riperton is choosier with embedding these vocal gems into Adventures. At times she is positively ostentatious with it; at others, it’s only a ghostly background texture or incidental harmony.
Closing out the set is “Don’t Let Anyone Bring You Down.” With its outright refusal to “sing the blues,” it is, more than anything else, the thematic core of Adventures. Originally intended for Perfect Angel, a jauntier Wonder-produced version was cut but shelved. As it appears here, more maturely arranged with a dignified blues-rock air, Mitchell’s influence is again apparent. As she rapturously croons “I hope I made you feel good,” it’s clear that Blue (1971) likely had many revolutions on Riperton’s hi-fi at home.
Not one year after delivering Adventures, Riperton noticed a lump in her chest. In January 1976, at the young age of 28, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and announced it publicly on The Tonight Show while mortality was still a taboo subject. Riperton became a national spokesperson for cancer research. Defying her six-month prognosis, she continued writing, recording, and touring for three more years. On the cover of her next release Stay in Love: A Romantic Fantasy Set to Music (1977), she stretches across a velvet sofa in a show of undaunted resilience.
Though Adventures reached impressive Billboard peaks in the R&B Top 5 and Pop Top 20, it wasn’t a huge seller. Perhaps fans of Perfect Angel expected another “Lovin’ You” and balked at an LP without prominent rock, country, or folk elements. If that was so, the soulful eroticism in “Inside My Love” may have been too jarring a departure. And perhaps stalled singles “Simple Things” and “Adventures in Paradise” too were shunned by association.
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Still, neither chilly radio response nor demure sales could not stop its destiny. Adventures would be heavily mined in hip-hop and become a multi-generational fan favorite. A Tribe Called Quest flipped “Inside My Love” into “Lyrics To Go.” That was their second draw from this well after “Baby, This Love I Have” became their #1 rap hit “Check The Rhime.” Their move invited others to follow suit. Busta Rhymes, Slum Village, J. Cole, Aaliyah, 2Pac, and many more have drawn from Adventures as a resource.
Just as it was in 1975, the world remains a hostile place, fogged with malice, unchecked power, sobering responsibilities, and systemic oppressions too varying to number. Against that backdrop, Riperton invites us to reconnect with the parts of us that can still be soft and desire to harm no one. Her joy is revolutionary and as protective for us as it is for herself.
To that end, Adventures In Paradise is both affirmation and oasis, pushing against the onslaught of a cold and unforgiving world. Such a world threatens to make us tear at each other like snarling predators. But if we take Riperton’s cue, maybe we just need a space where it’s safe for us to play.
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