With the acclaim she won at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1972, keyboardist/singer Patrice Rushen became an in-demand session player for much of the '70s, performing with jazz stalwarts like Jean-Luc Ponty, Lee Ritenour, and Stanley Turrentine. She also released several albums of her own which featured Rushen's brand of jazz, R&B, and funk.

However, her solo success was relegated to the R&B charts with her only single to chart on the pop Hot 100 being 1980's "Haven't You Heard," which just missed the US Top 40, peaking at #42. In 1982, Rushen issued her seventh album, Straight From The Heart, and it did, indeed, prove to be lucky. Not only did the album reach the Top Ten on the R&B album charts, it became her highest-charting release on the Top 200 album chart and provided her with a major crossover smash single, "Forget Me Nots."

With a funky bassline and playful keyboards, "Forget Me Nots" managed to blend pop, R&B, and dance music deftly and topped it all off with an infectious chorus and Rushen's sassy vocal. In June, the song became her first US Top 40 hit and remain there for nearly two months. Although it only climbed as high as #23, where it spent three weeks, "Forget Me Nots" was a Top Ten smash on the R&B and club charts.

With the emerging popularity of rap and hip-hop in the late '80s and into the '90s, Rushen, whose career momentum had slowed, found new attention being focused on her music due to its use as samples by acts like Def Jeff and Zhane. "Forget Me Nots," though, would again prove to be her best-known calling card when Will Smith would revive it through his use of the song in his own smash, "Men In Black."

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