"...We’ve witnessed the worst this world can throw our way, Chapman suggests on her debut, at times through her working-class characters. But the album creates a world where no force exists without a counter. The worst of what we’ve endured, she also offers, makes righteous justice inevitable. It’s a worldview that many could tune into. By the end of the summer of 1988, a few months after the Nelson Mandela tribute, Tracy Chapman was a platinum album and the singer was a star."     - Pitchfork