"I'm Going Down" (Rose Royce)

After flying the coop at Motown Records in 1973, famed (and infamously difficult) producer Norman Whitfield set out to create his own label, Whitfield Records.  (Subtle, huh?)  
Thing was, he needed acts to record for his new label.
So after nabbing the Sly & The Family Stone-facsimile group The Undisputed Truth from Motown, Whitfield set his sights on Rose Royce, a struggling but talented instrumental funk band out of South Central LA.  Whitfield spent time grooming the band—teaching them about stage presence, picking out their clothes, etc., with the intention of turning them into the cornerstone act on his label.  He also unilaterally decided that the band needed a charismatic female lead singer (think: Chaka Khan & Rufus), and brought in vocalist Gwen Dickey from Miami and promptly renamed her "Rose Norwalt."
As you might guess, Whitfield's interjection of Dickey created tension in the long-established band.  Eventually, Dickey left the band (or was fired, depending upon what source you want to believe on the Interwebs).  But not before recording some of the sweetest R&B ballads, rawest vocal funk, and one of the best original soundtrack albums ever in any musical genre.
Speaking of, the song "I'm Going Down" from the Car Wash soundtrack (1976) is the topic at hand.  
Like most of the band's hits, "I'm Going Down" is a Whitfield composition, through and through.  It works the same kind of minimalistic groove as songs like "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (the Marvin Gaye rendition, specifically).  At first blush, it seems kind of repetitive and simplistic: two chords and two notes, played over and over on the Fender rhodes, with some wailing guitar and occasional bass.  But the moment you realize it's a song about a young woman who is counting the minutes until her estranged lover returns, its brilliance reveals itself.  The backing track is ingeniously repetitive to give Dickey the opportunity to unravel her story of love and loss before she comes unraveled on each explosive chorus.
I'll admit, Mary J. Blige did a fantastic and true cover of the song on her 1994 album My Life.  But there's just something so singular and raw about Dickey's read of the song that I have to go with the original in this case.