I'm not quite sure when Nadirah joined Arrested Development, but it
was after Three Years, Five Month, and Two Days In The Life Of..., and
before Unplugged, as she is all over that concert. She seems to have
basically taken over the position that was filled by Dionne Farris, who
was never an official member, and a position that is now ably filled by
Tasha LaRae. Nadirah had a fantastic voice, and after Arrested
Development broke up in 1995, she showed up on a few Speech tracks as
well as on her solo debut, a Japan exclusive called Soul Power. 
From the cover, it's hard to know what to expect on the album, but I
find it intriguing. It kind of reminds me of that famous photo of the "Afghan Girl", only in that case the photo almost speaks for itself and
in this case we get to actually pop the CD in and take a deeper look at
Nadirah. (The cover image was the best one I could find online unfortunately.)
The album is produced in large part by Speech- he handles eight of the
songs (two of which are musical interludes) and co-produces another,
and also serves as the Executive Producer. (Speaking of Executive Producers, it seems to me that Suge Knight is the guy that made this
such a big deal- I never paid any attention to them until old Marion decided to put it
in big bold letters on the back of every Death Row album. Moving
on.....) Speech also features strongly on three songs, with background
vocals and such on a few others. He also wrote some kind of note in the
liner notes, but it's 95% in Japanese so I have no idea what it says.
Overall, Soul Power is a really strong record. Speech handles
the production very well and his three guest spots are all well done.
"Dumb Decisions" sounds like an AD song and features Speech prominently,
"My Own Song" has a really good opening rap from Speech, and "I Know
How 2 Love U" should be of special interest to AD fans as it flips the
same sample as "Mama's Always on Stage." The title song "Soul Power"
sounds an awful lot like "Fame" from Da Feelin' EP to me as well. And
one last note for AD fans, future member of the group Ike "Za" Williams
shows up to play bass on quite a few of the songs.
Nadirah would go on to earn great renown from the "Parrotheads" as a
singer with Jimmy Buffett (based on the liner notes it appears she was
already working with him at this point), and would even go on to release
another album of Jimmy Buffet covers (she has two other albums out there as well).
Here are the songs from Soul Power that featured Speech:
And here's "Soul Power" so that you can compare it to "Fame."
Speech produced this song and has background vocals, and Za is on bass
for this one.
I also want to put up "Spiritual Destiny" as this is a stellar
Speech production and a song that I really liked on the record. I'd
like to hear Speech do a cover of this one!
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