Even for a long-established UK-based music journalist like myself – who's spoken to almost anyone who's anyone in the soul music world – the prospect of meeting Teena Marie in person elicited a nerve-jangling frisson of excitement that made me feel like a shy schoolboy about to set eyes on his prom date. In fact, to be granted a face-to-face interview with the veteran Californian R&B chanteuse is a very rare thing indeed - that's because it's been nineteen years since the singer dubbed the 'Ivory Queen of Soul' last graced our shores.

"This is my fourth time," says the 53-year-old singer, who's in England not only to promote her new album, 'Congo Square,' but also to make a keenly anticipated one-off appearance at North Greenwich's IndigO2 venue on January 30th. "I was here in '90 with Jazzie B," she muses, recalling her collaboration with Soul II Soul's main man on the track 'Since Day One' from her final album for Epic Records, 'Ivory.' "I was here after that too,' she adds. "I was here in '91, performing at Hammersmith." After that, though, and for a variety of reasons, Teena Marie hasn't ventured across the Atlantic.

But today she's here in London, where she'll be staying for a few days. We're sitting in a small suite on the seventh floor of a modern hotel that sits under the imposing and august shadow of St. Paul's cathedral just across the road. Dressed all in black and wearing designer glasses, Teena is relaxed, amiable and nibbling on some Thornton's chocolates a fan brought for her. For a woman blessed with a big, powerful singing voice, she's surprisingly diminutive – barely five foot tall, perhaps – and she talks, for the most part, in a hushed tone.

Despite the fact that she has made a welter of consistently good records since leaving Motown Records in 1982– including her most recent, the excellent 'Congo Square' - it's the music she made at Berry Gordy's iconic label that most fans and journalists want to talk about.

So how did Mary Christine Brockert, a long-haired, green-eyed, white Catholic kid from Santa Monica, end up at Motown? "I met Hal Davis, who produced the Jackson 5," responds Teena. "I got an audition with him and then he got the audition with Mr Gordy. And Mr Gordy auditioned me and signed me to the label."

That was in 1976. But Motown didn't know what to do with her or how to get the best from her prodigious talent. Says Teena: "I was on the label three and a half years, working with a lot of different producers there. Mr Gordy kept telling them: 'bring me songs that are as good as she is, because she can sing the phone book and make it sound good.'"

Teena started writing her own songs and recording demos of them, but still that vital magic spark was missing: "The production that they were doing on the stuff I was writing just wasn't quite there. It just didn't have my own sound. I knew that eventually I was going to be producing myself."

Everything changed for Teena when she met punk-funk pioneer and Motown bad boy, Rick James. Contrary to what many people believe, he arrived at Motown several years after Teena. Recalls Teena: "I was just sitting in Stevie Wonder's office one day playing his piano. I used to go in his office and write songs. Rick was coming down the hallway and he had heard about me through my manager. He leaned in and started listening to me. We just had an instant friendship and kinship. There was something about us which was very, very magical."

Indeed. James took Teena under his wing and wrote and produced her debut Motown album, 'Wild & Peaceful,' released in 1979, which yielded the funky US hit single 'I'm A Sucker For Your Love.' Interestingly, Motown didn't put Teena's picture on the album cover in the States. "Mr Gordy said that the sound was so black," says Teena, "that he wanted people to just hear the music first and just either love it or not love it - just accept it on its music alone and its merits."
In Europe, though, it was a different story – the back cover of the album showed a picture of Teena. "They only put the picture on the cover in Europe," she reveals. "It didn't matter, I guess, here, that I was white, which is the reason why I have blue eyes (on the cover). I don't have blue eyes – I have green eyes. They made my eyes blue because they didn't know."

Teena's friendship with James blossomed into romance but then the relationship went sour, with drastic consequences. "I broke up with him the first night of a tour," remembers Teena, who says it was scheduled to last a full year. "Imagine that, doing a tour with somebody you just ...hate." Teena laughs loudly at the thought. "We would fight on stage and the audience thought it was part of the act but it was really serious and we were both very dramatic and so we would use that to make the show even more exciting." It was certainly a must-see tour and one that went down in the record books: "We broke a lot of records that year – we broke the Rolling Stones' records in concert sales and ticket sales and we broke Elvis Presley's record in attendance - there was like 170,000 people in Memphis. I was just a kid, so for me it was like a star is born. They flew us in by helicopter and there were some many people they looked like ants."

How did she cope with instant success and fame? "I'm very grounded," Teena responds. That wasn't true of Rick James, though, who's drink and drug excesses were legendary. "Because Rick and them were so crazy I could look at them say 'Oh, I don't think I want to do that' because I just saw that it wasn't a good thing. And just the way I was brought up helped. I was just like 'no'– that's not to say that I never did anything, 'cos I'm not a saint. But because I was younger, he (Rick) was very protective of me and I was able to see that there was certain things that I didn't want to do because I could see what it was doing to him."

There's no bitterness or pain when she talks of Rick James today. "He was great," she enthuses. "He was my best friend. He was fun and as funny as hell. We played a lot of pranks on each other."

Although Teena got her big break as a result of working with Rick James, for her second album - 1980's 'Lady T' - she hooked up with Minnie Riperton's husband and producer, Richard Rudolph. What does she recall about the sessions for that album? "I remember that I felt that Minnie (Riperton) was there with us," reveals Teena, alluding to the fact that Minnie had died from cancer just a few months earlier. "The song 'Now That I Have You' was written for her. It was a beautiful experience." The album's killer cut was 'Behind The Groove,' now acknowledged as a dance floor classic. More importantly, 'Lady T' represented a significant step forward as regards Teena's ambitions to producer herself. "Working with Richard I got the confidence to do myself. After that album I did 'Irons In The Fire' – which is my favourite record because of the spiritual connection that I had and where I was in my life - and I started producing my all own albums."

At that time it was almost unheard of for a woman to produce and write her own records. Says Teena: "It was just wasn't as prevalent I think. There were just more male producers than women. Back then it was just me and Patrice Rushen. A lot of people just thought because Rick produced my first album that he had done most of the albums."

After three brief but incredibly successful years at Motown, her relationship with the company badly deteriorated. In 1983, she elected to quit the company while still under contract because she felt the terms of her contract were unfair: "The contracts that I was under were made in 1911 – it was only like 6,000 dollars a year and that was a lot of money in 1911 but in 1981 it was nothing. I decided to leave and they sued me. I was a kid, I was scared and I didn't want to be there any more. I countersued and I won and because of that they changed the amount that they paid artists after that and they lowered the amount of time that you could hold an artist – in 1911, you could hold an artist under contract for seven years. Now because of the lawsuit and because I have a congressional bill in my name – it's called the Brockert Initiative (Brockert's my last name) – you can now only hold an artist for five years."

Happily, and despite the lawsuit, there was no permanent damage done between her and Berry Gordy: "Mr Gordy and I are very, very close and he's like my dad."

In 1983, Teena freed herself from Motown and went to Epic. Ironically, she scored her first US R&B chart topper at the label – 'Ooh La La' in 1988 – but it wasn't the same atmosphere as that at Motown: "Motown was like a family. All of us are still really, really close. And no matter what, when we all get together it's like we just pick up where we left off. Epic was a big label and I never felt that family kind of feeling ever again."

After leaving Epic in 1990, Teena made an album called 'Passion Play' for an indie label in 1994 and then disappeared off the radar for a decade. She made a triumphant comeback in 2004 with 'La Dona.' It was the first of two albums – the other one was 2005's 'Sapphire' – for the hip-hop label, Cash Money. Now firmly back on the map and wowing young R&B listeners as well as long time devotees with her blend of classic and contemporary soul, Teena recently joined the resuscitated Stax label. "I was getting a lifetime achievement award in Philadelphia about a year and a half ago and somebody from Stax was there," she says. "They heard that I had a really awesome album, which was 'Congo Square.' I was about to sign to Hidden Beach, where Jill Scott was. They said 'what do we have to do to get hold of this record?' I said 'you've probably got to outbid Hidden Beach.' And they did."

One last question: why after thirty years, is she as popular as ever? Teena deliberates for a second or two before answering. "I think because I'm very truthful in my music," she says, "and I'm still very passionate about it and still love what I do. Also, I'm very true to myself and to my fan base. I'm not a contrived person. I just do what I feel. I'm blessed and I'm lucky because I have such a big fan base."

The interview is over. Pleasantries are exchanges, photographs taken, old vinyl albums autographed and then she's gone. Fingers crossed it's not another nineteen years before we see her in person again.