Be Yourself is the ninth solo album by American singer Patti LaBelle. It was released by MCA Records on June 26, 1989 in the United States. Her second album with the company following her 1986 platinum album Winner in You, it features the single, "If You Asked Me To" which was also featured on the soundtrack to the James Bond movie, Licence to Kill (1989), and the R&B top ten Prince-written hit "Yo Mister." The album marked LaBelle's foray into new jack swing music with the tracks "I Got It Like That", produced by Full Force, and "Love 89", another Prince contribution.
LaBelle shared a stage with Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick for the 1986 HBO special Sisters in the Name of Love. In the same year LaBelle released her best-selling solo album Winner in You, which reached number one on the pop charts. The album included the international number-one hit, "On My Own" and the hit ballad "Oh People". The success of Winner in You would prove to be the peak of her solo success, though she continued her acclaim with the 1989 release of Be Yourself, which featured "Yo Mister" and the hit ballad "If You Asked Me To", which found bigger success in a remake by singer Celine Dion. In the year of that album's release, LaBelle began a successful stint in a recurring role on A Different World, the success of which spawned a brief sitcom of her own, titled Out All Night, which only lasted a season. In 1991, she recorded a hit duet version of the Babyface composition, "Superwoman" with Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick. In the same year, LaBelle released the solo album, Burnin', which went gold, with three successive top five singles on the R&B charts. This success led to LaBelle winning her first Grammy Award in the Best Female R&B Vocal Performance category in the 34th Annual Grammy Award Ceremony of 1992, sharing the win with singer Lisa Fischer, who won for her hit ballad, "How Can I Ease the Pain", in a rare tie in the history of the Grammys.On May 23, 2011, LaBelle appeared on "Oprah's Farewell Spectacular, Part 1" the first show in a series of three shows constituting the finale of The Oprah Winfrey Show, singing "Over the Rainbow" with Josh Groban.[21] LaBelle was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the BET Awards on June 26, 2011.[22] LaBelle and Aretha Franklin, among others, performed at the "Women of Soul: In Performance at the White House" concert hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House, recorded on March 6, 2014LaBelle wrote that she was sexually assaulted by Jackie Wilson while at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre in the 1960s. Around 1964, LaBelle was engaged to Otis Williams, founding member of The Temptations. In 1969, LaBelle married a longtime friend, Armstead Edwards. After LaBelle started a solo career, Edwards became her manager until the couple separated in the late 1990s. In 2000, the couple announced they had legally separated, with their divorce being finalized in 2003. They have a son, Zuri Kye Edwards (born 1973), who beca