Not too long ago, sultry singer Anita Baker was mainly concerned about paying her rent. Today, she doesn't have to worry about how to pay for her new Jaguar XJS or her beautiful three-story home on Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe, Mich. But she is paying the price of fame and fortune as one of the music industry's hottest commodities.

Ms. Baker's voice is a rich, romantic contralto, her songs are steeped in passion and feeling. Her current Giving You The Best That I Got LP has sold almost four million copies, gaining on her successful 1986 Rapture album, which sold more than five million. In addition, she has earned five Grammy Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, four Soul Train Music Awards, and two American Music Awards.

In an interview at the ritzy Peninsula Hotel in New York, the high-spirited singer readily acknowledges that her rapid rise to the top in the volatile music industry did not come without a price. She is paying dearly with hard work and tears, with the constant fight to be taken seriously while at the same time trying to maintain her individuality and protect her privacy.

"The price is really high," she says of fame and success, while sipping tea from a beautiful china cup in her tastefully appointed suite. "It's really high if you want to remain a person. If you want to be a 'star' on a pedestal, which I don't want to be, then it is a little easier. I think it is more difficult when you want to remain a real person."

For Anita Baker, the real person is a down-to-earth woman who shuns fancy clothes and makeup, a grown-up who delights in riding her bike and otherwise cutting up with the neighborhood children. She is the homemaker who enjoys decorating her new house and working in her rose garden. She is the ordinary person who loves pizza and Chinese food, the proud wife who prepares homemade biscuits for her husband. She is the somewhat shy young woman who admits that she isn't too good at making new friends, but is especially close to her family. She is also the talented but astute artist who sings, writes music and co-produces her own albums.

Ms. Baker got a well-rounded introduction to coping with the real world while being raised in Detroit (along with five sisters and a brother) by an aunt and uncle she calls her mom and dad. While growing up she sang in small storefront churches and later joined the group Chapter 8, which released an album in 1980. After record company honchos decided that Anita Baker couldn't sing, she temporarily abandoned a recording career and worked as a bar waitress and then as a legal secretary before being lured back into the business with an offer to make a solo album. She never got a penny for the somewhat successful 1983 Songstress LP, which had the hit single "Angel," and she even had to go to court to get the contract voided so she could sign with Elektra Records.

When her Rapture album took the country by storm in 1986 and made Ms. Baker a star, she discovered that life at the top was still filled with inequities and injustices. She's been insulted by fans who probably meant well and by catty "wannabe" stars who obviously meant every nasty word. She's had to endure countless comparisons to Janet Jackson, Sade and Whitney Houston, whom she speaks of warmly and now considers a friend. And she's had to constantly suppress her desire to eat her favorite foods in order to keep her well-proportioned, petite figure from becoming pudgy.

She has also had to contend with being "judged" by the media. During her very first concert tour, which lasted a year and a half, the press circulated the word that though Anita Baker was indeed a gifted singer and a tantalizing performer, she was also temperamental, bitchy and difficult to deal with. These rumors were enhanced by her frequent expressions of displeasure with the sound technicians in the midst of her concerts.

During the more recent tour with Luther Vandross, the sound was excellent but word spread that feelings were so bad between Ms. Baker and Vandross that the two golden-voiced balladeers were not even speaking to each other. But the most painful experience for the feisty, articulate singer was the media exploitation of her pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage last January.

"That was hard enough to go through in private, not to mention in the media," she says, adding that she almost burst into tears when an airport security guard said, 'I'm sorry about your baby.' "The good thing that came out of it was that people from all walks of life came forth to express their concern. It's scary, real scary," she says, reflecting on the horror of losing her baby. "But we hope to have another baby. It's fun trying."

Through all of this, she was comforted by her husband and constant companion, Walter Bridgeforth, an IBM marketing specialist whom she met four years ago while shopping and married on Christmas Eve. "Before I met Walter, I just kept everybody at arm's length," she says. "I had to put distance between my relationships and my music. But Walter and I share everything. Everything! I'm very comfortable with him, and I'd never experienced that before. Now that we are married, people say that it's not supposed to be exciting anymore, but it still is. The sparks are still flying, everyday."

And not just between the newlyweds. The star goes on to tell how a few days earlier, a Chinese carryout restaurant in Beverly Hills had refused to give her the order for which she had paid, accusing her of trying to get a free meal. "I went crying to the police station I was so upset," she says. "They called the restaurant, which offered to give me another order. After the way they had talked to me, I didn't want anything they put in that bag. I wanted to sue them for defamation of character, but Walter said you just don't do that for $20 worth of food."

She says the incident probably occurred because she was a Black woman dressed in "scuffy gym shoes" in a posh Beverly Hills neighborhood. "People see you and immediately make judgments because of the way you are dressed," she says. "This is one of my pet peeves and it still happens to me all the time. When I'm not working, I don't put on makeup. I don't dress up. I pull these fingernails off," she says gesturing with her 10 beautifully sculpted pink nails.

"When I go to the mall, people see me and they go, 'Is that Anita Baker?' And I can hear them saying behind my back, 'No, that's not her. She wouldn't be dressed like that.' But I'm a person and I must be able to relax."