Anita Baker

THAT RESTLESS, relentless and often quite ridiculous search for the Next Big Thing has to be the longest-running game in pop. When Anita Baker's album, Rapture, came out last year everybody wanted to play. Critics were queuing up to proclaim that here, indeed, was the new soul diva. Wild praise, at least some of it justified, was heaped by the shovel-load upon her slight 4' 11" frame and the towering voice that goes with it. Wheeled out were comparisons, few of them odious, with every female black singer from Joan Armatrading to Whitney Houston, from Sade to Sarah Vaughan. It all got rather out of hand.