I don't know what you do, but like Nas in "Book of Rhymes" (at 2:30 in), I pump some Rick James with that Teena Marie. The R&B legend passed away on Sunday at age 54, leaving one of the great vocal legacies in music, in a career that spanned nearly 40 years. From her world-famous and somehow incredibly awesome 1981 rap (at 3:47 in -- complete with pre-Nicki Minaj inflections!) to her catchy 2004 single (with Cash Money Records, complete with contextualizing intro by Birdman/Baby), Teena's career was inextricably intertwined with hip-hop. She was a hip lady who embraced the music that embraced her. Important and fascinating, her rap celebrates a white person's unabashed and unambiguous affection for black culture -- and black audiences returned the love for nearly 30 years.

Hip-hoppers love Teena perhaps more than they do any other R&B singer, not just because she embraced hip-hop early on (interesting in and of itself), but because of the good feeling she generated that paralleled what they felt expressed in the most rocking party songs. Many of her hit tunes in the 1980s felt freewheeling, with an off-the-cuff, cavalier quality central to hip-hop.

Partially this devotion was due to the songwriting genius of Rick James, who did some of his best work with her. Yet James himself, despite Dave Chappelle's best efforts, never seemed to attain that level of affection for himself or for the music he recorded. James also wrote songs for other R&B artists that became hip-hop party anthems and led to rappers' sampling bonanzas, such as the ultimate funk jam "All Night Long" by the Mary Jane Girls, and his role in hip-hop has probably been underappreciated.

So while James' skills have something to do with the affection shown for Teena, the main culprit is her own voice and style. The only simile that seems appropriate for the soul in her voice is that it was like, as Big Boi from Outkast would say, a plate of yams with extra syrup -- so substantive and yet so sweet, so good for you, and yet a treat.

As radio personality Michael Baisden has pointed out, she didn't have the most soulful voice for a white woman -- she had the most soulful voice, period. Some musicians who took an early interest in hip-hop, such as the Clash, never really found a following within it. Other early outside appreciators of hip-hop, such as Debbie Harry and Blondie, were appreciated by major hip-hop artists later, but I'd argue that the overwhelming and unambiguous adoration of Teena in hip-hop is matched only by the love that hip-hop heads have for James Brown. I can't imagine that anyone in his or her right mind would agree with prominent music critic Robert Christgau's cryptic assessment that her music conflates "florid and soulful without ever sounding like the wannabe that she is." Wannabe what? Only someone without hip-hop DNA could think such a thing.