True. Ariana is no Teena, and I can’t imagine anyone would ever say that she is. That would actually be an interesting article — why black people are more likely to gravitate toward certain white artists than others. Like I suggested in the article, I think the distaste for Ariana is less the music than how she presents herself.

I do wonder what Teena’s legacy would have been had she been embraced more by white audiences — had she become as big as Ariana. Is the love for her in the black community partly tied to the fact that it felt like she belonged to us? It’s interesting that her only major crossover hit, “Lovergirl,” wasn’t as big of a hit on the R&B charts.