I think like many other people who arrived at Mini Riverton, I arrived to her through not even a song, but a particular portion of a song, which is the infamous note in Loving You.

Even as a kid, I knew that her voice was doing something that the voices of other singers I had heard to that point were not doing.

And so I was drawn to that song, and I was drawn to the kind of sparse tenderness that ran through that song.

Minnie Ripperton died in the summer of 1979.

And the album that came out after she passed, it was a posthumous album that was in the fall of 1980 called Love Lives Forever.

And I think there's something interesting.

I've always been fascinated by how posthumous albums are fashioned. And this one was kind of like an act of of surgery almost. The producers pulled Ripperton's vocals from earlier tracks,

tracks that maybe were for other albums that didn't make it, tracks that were backing tracks,

and then they would kind of manufacture these duets.

So you have songs like with Pila Bryson and Roberta Flack.

There's a song with Michael Jackson.

There's a song with Stevie Wonder and Patrice Russian.

And the way that I became most familiar with the posthumous album as a form was through

rap music, right? Where, you know, Big L had a posthumous album as a form was through rap music, right? Where, you know,

Big L had a posthumous album, and of course, Tupac had a posthumous album. And in some ways,

those projects aren't entirely different where you're taking vocals and then a producer is

breathing life into them. But it must be said that on Love Lives Forever,

Minnie's actual vocal contributions are, in some cases, pretty sparse.

And so there's this concept that she is kind of like a ghost hovering around her own music, even.

Hi, I'm Hanif Abderakie.

I'm a poet and essayist and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio.

From KCRW, this is Lost Don'ts, 1980.

...