Quentin Tarantino established himself as one of the few filmmakers to effectively use pop music with his first film Reservoir Dogs, a movie where the music was integral to the success of the film yet also worked well as a collection of songs. Jackie Brown, Tarantino's long-awaited third feature, finds him exploring new territory, creating an homage to blaxploitation flicks as well as a surprisingly subtle character study and love story, and its soundtrack appropriately finds him in new territory as well. The soundtrack still features snippets of dialogue, which simply aren't as effective separated from the film as those from Pulp Fiction, but the unified collection of '70s soul and funk is refreshing. He has wisely selected a batch of songs that haven't been worn out by oldies radio, building the bulk of the album with cult favorites like Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street," Bill Withers' "Who Is He (And What Is He to You?)," Randy Crawford's "Street Life," Minnie Riperton's "Inside My Love".

Until 1999's Free Soul (Capitol) and 2001's exhaustive but more excellent overall Petals (The Right Stuff) came along, Capitol Gold offered the best summation of this true original's horribly undervalued solo career. As with Free Soul, Capitol Gold leaves a significant gap by excluding the best moments from Minnie Riperton's debut (Come to My Garden), an album that was released on GTR. This issue would be rectified by The Right Stuff, a subsidiary of Capitol, for Petals. Still, Capitol Gold makes for a fine substitute introduction to Riperton; it includes all of her significant singles and a good survey of album tracks that didn't receive the notice they deserved when they were originally released.