Yep...I remember this tour big time. Didn't get to see him on this one, had to wait untill the Controversy tour. But I remember hearing about it, reading about it in Right On magazines.

In Dez's book, Dez stated openly that at first, there were no problems between P and Rick. Or between P's band and Rick's band. But that over time, shit did start to get bad. Of course Dez said nothing of P stealing from Rick's show. I had always heard about P going to Rick's shows, trying to upstage him on stage by having Chick carry P on his shoulders through the crowd. When I first heard that, I thought that was the freakiest sounding shit. I wasn't sure if I believed it untill I heard on the radio that P was carried up on stage at the James Brown concert out here in 83. The dj's on 1580 KDAY were talking about it the next day on the radio because 2 of the dj's went to the show. They were saying how cool it was that Michael got on stage and sung and danced. Then when P was coming to get on stage, Chick carried him up there. I was like "What the fuck is THAT shit? WHY on earth would P, who's a grown ass man, let another grown ass man carry him up on stage?!" I didn't know what to make of it. Then it years later when I finally got to see the footage of the James Brown show. Sure enough, there it was on tape. I was like "Gawt damn!" So I have no reason to doubt what Rick was saying about that. I could tell that P had taken a few things from Rick in his stage show. P just kept escalating as a performer and pretty soon he had sailed on by Rick.

nyse said:

not at all, the 1st 2 album might have come across as tame by Dirty Mind standards but Prince's live shows were raunchy

He & Gayle Chapman would french kiss on the stage during the performance of Head(this was the tour prior to the release of Dirty Mind)

And not only did Prince perform in a G string but Dez performed in briefs and a trench too,

naw they had it going on

Have U ever seen a live performance of Head during the Dirty Mind tour?
it was straight up guitar masturbation. I really mean it was like a man jerking off... He wasn't rude boy for nothing

I can remember the ridiculous rumores about how Prince kissed some dude in his band onstage and got butt naked and grinded everybody.

not at all, the 1st 2 album might have come across as tame by Dirty Mind standards but Prince's live shows were raunchy

He & Gayle Chapman would french kiss on the stage during the performance of Head(this was the tour prior to the release of Dirty Mind)

And not only did Prince perform in a G string but Dez performed in briefs and a trench too,

naw they had it going on

Have U ever seen a live performance of Head during the Dirty Mind tour?
it was straight up guitar masturbation. I really mean it was like a man jerking off... He wasn't rude boy for nothing

quote]

Show me a pic of Dez in briefs onstage. I guarantee it doesnt exist.

blackguitaristz said:

Right - I have seen some Rick James shows and he was never the showman that Prince is - lets face it. In fact, I have some of Rick's gigs on CD and he was awful sometimes. He voice was thrashed by the last 80s and the shows meandered with Rick simply pulling random crap out of his butt in order to maintain the rock n roll stage cliches and posturing. Even at his peak (see the live DVD), his mundane call and response tactics were almost embarrassing in their lack of substance - and must have looked really lame after Prince. Prince and Rick were my music hereos and are my favs to this day.
[Edited 6/5/09 9:10am]

...the people at the box office told my grandmother that I'd probably be the only white person there. My reply was...."So".

vainandy said:

I can account for the fact that you would have NOT been the only White person there. At that time, the audience was about 10-15% non-Black, and there was ZERO racial tension (White, Black, Puerto Rican, EVERYBODY was just'a Freakin - Trust me: Good Times were rollin!)

aarontj said:

Uh, did u REALLY say that when u saw Michael with Emmanuel or are u just copying what I said? I actually thought that when I saw Chick carrying P. Yeah, I too thought it was crazy looking Michael carrying Webster at the award show. I was like "Damn Michael, you have a date with Brooke Shields. She's there with you...Ditch that little motherfucker and concentrate on Brooke's fine ass." That's what I actually thought when I saw Michael with Emmanuel. Kid or no kid. It looked strangely fucked up. Has NOTHING to do with if Michael danced on stage with James and P played some guitar, danced and then knocked a lamp post prop into the crowd and shit. At the end of the day, P's grown ass looked weird having Chick carrying him to the stage. As acrobatic as P was, he didn't even need to get a running start...He could have just leaped on stage.
[Edited 6/5/09 4:15am]

jackson35 said:

i was on this tour working as a production person and let me tell you rick james kick princes ass like it was nothing.at the time rick had the material and the right kind of band and it didnt hurt that he had ahorn section. also in reference to the live cd it was super tight what we have here are people who cant be objective when it comes to prince and rick james... rickjames rules and prince cant hold a candle to him.

blackguitaristz said:

Your point is not about the facts, it's about promoting that Rick James was better then Prince, but sorry to say this bro, that never happen, there isn't a single rock history book (or publication) that confirms that Rick James was on Prince (or even MJ) level, in fact I have a bunch of Rolling Stone magazines with articles about how Rick was so high to do a good show.

"It was the student that had mastered the teacher" this sounds like typical Rick James fanatic.

blackguitaristz said:

Your point is not about the facts, it's about promoting that Rick James was better then Prince, but sorry to say this bro, that never happen, there isn't a single rock history book (or publication) that confirms that Rick James was on Prince (or even MJ) level, in fact I have a bunch of Rolling Stone magazines with articles about how Rick was so high to do a good show.

"It was the student that had mastered the teacher" this sounds like typical Rick James fanatic.

blackguitaristz said:

Your point is not about the facts, it's about promoting that Rick James was better then Prince, but sorry to say this bro, that never happen, there isn't a single rock history book (or publication) that confirms that Rick James was on Prince (or even MJ) level, in fact I have a bunch of Rolling Stone magazines with articles about how Rick was so high to do a good show.

"It was the student that had mastered the teacher" this sounds like typical Rick James fanatic.

blackguitaristz said:

You are thinking to much, it was for fun.

By the way I think he looks cool,

aarontj said:

Is he even saying that rick was better than Prince?


I believe what blackguitaristz is saying is simple: From 78 to 1981 Rick James was the artist Prince was chasing...In fact Rick was the artist that mostly everyone in R&B was chasing...Whether he was drugged out onstage is moot...

James was selling out arenas, going double platinum and single handedly keeping the lights on at Motown...And yeah, Prince did take some of his early stage show from James..It's been well-documented....

But the great thing about Prince is he learned from that tour and went on to take it to a whole other level....Giving props to Rick James does not mean you fall into the role of fanatic...It means that you have an understanding of R&B music history in the early '80s....

Brofie said:

i was on this tour working as a production person and let me tell you rick james kick princes ass like it was nothing.at the time rick had the material and the right kind of band and it didnt hurt that he had ahorn section. also in reference to the live cd it was super tight what we have here are people who cant be objective when it comes to prince and rick james... rickjames rules and prince cant hold a candle to him.

jackson35 said:

-----
The Rick James fantasy never ends will it. Rick was a great songwriter. I enjoyed his music but having viewed official and bootleg recordings from this era Prince was just a better performer. When you get people who are eyewitnesses to mobs of people leaving after P's set how can you still continue with the fantasy.

Times were changing and as Dez has said people were ready for something different and Prince knew how to feed into that.
This is the reason he did not have horns and came out on stage dressed so crazy. I can't figure out why 30 years later Rick James fans still have not figured this out.

laurarichardson said:

I love it...U go for the easier target and skip the more nuanced posts....

I think most open-minded folks will admit that Prince turned out to be the more influential figure in music....And his stage show eventually eclipsed Rick's....Yes, I am a bigger Prince fan than I am a Rick fan (Who I dig)...But folks who don't just live in Prince Land also know the huge impact that artists like James had on R&B music and on Prince..

It's okay...I get it...It's easy to dismiss James as a bitter man who was obsessed with hating Prince.....His beef with Prince was over-the-top at times...But does that mean you have to dismiss the man's impact like he was some one-hit wonder?....

I suggest you read up on James beyond some Rolling Stone piece about how he was stoned out of his mind on stage...Here is an interview I did with Rick James a few months before he passed away....As a Prince fan, it was quite an interesting experience...He even gave props to Prince towards the end of the piece, which was truly surprising...Enjoy...

----


What’s My Name?

Today, Rick James is part of a famous catchphrase. But in the late 70s and early 80s the infamous R&B star spent $7000 a week on cocaine , had $30 million in the bank and ruled the funk landscape. Ain’t that a bitch?



Story by K. Murphy

Rick James asks a question that is as absurd as it is strikingly ironic. The brash funk rebel, who plowed his way through the late ’70s and early ’80s with a legendary fuck-you arrogance and a $7,000-a-week cocaine habit, is asking if he can light up a joint. “I can spark up in here…can’t I?” he politely inquires after arriving two hours late for a photo shoot in the bustling residential section of Los Angeles’ Echo Park. On this breezy evening, James, 56, is wearing a black velour sweat suit and matching velvet slippers, his hair in curly, shoulder-length braids. It’s a conservative look for a man whose flowing, glittered, corn-rowed and beaded hair was once the trademark for his wild counter-culture image.

“I could have brought Monte Carlo as much as I’ve snorted,” he bluntly recalls of his drug-addled past. “I’ve smoked half of Paris and most of Russia. And I’ve shot up Puerto Rico and drank up Mexico. I [went through] five yachts, three planes, 17 cars, four mansions, any bitch that I wanted, and had $30 million in the bank. People were disgusted with the way I lived. Let’s talk real. I was a dumb motherfucker.”

Nowhere was Rick James’ once-subversive aura so blatant than on 1981’s triple-platinum Street Songs, a landmark Motown release that featured the seedy top-20 crossover hit “Super Freak,” a leering groove that nine years later would give MC Hammer a No. 1 mega-pop hit “U Can’t Touch This.” James’ sneering bassline and lurid lyrics (Never mind the “very kinky girl” line, check this oft-skipped couplet: “Three’s not a crowd for her, she says / Room 714 I’ll be waiting.”) fueled the year’s biggest decadent party anthem. And as legend has it, no one could party harder than Rick James.

(line break)

Like most of his peers wasted by years of drug debauchery in the ’80s, James was tossed into the fallen-rock-star scrap heap, even when he tried for a comeback in ’97 with the release of the respectable Urban Rhapsody. But a funny thing happened on the way to Rick becoming the answer to a music trivia question. Irreverent comedian Dave Chappelle unveiled a riotous skit on his highly rated Chappelle’s Show, parodying cast member Charlie Murphy’s (Eddie’s brother) hilarious run-ins with James. The episode featured Chapelle as a young—and obviously coked-out—Rick James in his glory, pimp-slapping a shell-shocked Murphy as he fired-off the memorable one-liner, “I’m Rick James, bitch!”

A good-natured James even popped up to offer laugh-out-loud flashbacks of the funk star getting beat down by the Murphy brothers after indignantly soiling a white couch with his platform muddy boots. Soon, the most omnipresent catch phrase since “Show Me The Money!” could be heard everywhere from college campuses and neighborhood barbershops to work offices, Internet chat rooms and even ESPN.

So what does Rick make of his reentry to pop culture?

“It has ruined my life,” James jokes. He is now draped in a fuchsia-on-black flower-print shirt and rhinestone-studded velvet slacks, an outfit more becoming of a funk icon. His walk is notably a half a step slower due to a mild stroke he suffered in 1998, but the rock star swagger is still there (“I hope KING is going to have more than one picture of me in this motherfucker!” he snaps).

James then cracks a sly smirk and muses, “I love Dave and I think he’s doing cutting-edge comedy. And Charlie Murphy is a very dear friend. So it was fun watching them spoof on me and me spoof on him. Of course some of it was a little exaggerated. I don’t want all you haters to get too caught up about Charlie kicking my ass because it didn’t happen.”

As a collection of James’ own hits blast from a medium-sized boom box, it’s clear that the funk master has enough material to fill up three more episodes. When asked about his thoughts on funnyman Chris Rock lampooning him on his recent high-profile comedy tour, he fires back, “Chris Rock bores me to tears. He needs to find somebody else to fuck with or I’ll give him a bitch slap.” He also scoffs at hip-hop’s current obsession with the pimp game, claiming, “I’ve written songs about pimps and pimping ain’t no glorification. A hoe would never be able to afford to support me.” And he applauds the business savvy of hip-hop moguls like Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, even if “they don’t know a G flat from a E minor.”

Yes, the Chappelle factor has played out well for James. T-shirts immortalizing “I’m Rick James, bitch!” are a hot item on the web. And a club reunion tour with former protégé and blue-eyed soul legend Teena Marie has been doing strong business across the country. “It’s just wonderful to be doing this again with him after all these years,” praises Marie. “I’ve stayed on the road for the last 20 years, but Rick had stopped touring for a long time. So to see him out there doing his thing and us doing our thing together…it’s like we’re tied, we’re connected.” James’ Grammy-winning music is even finding its way onto television commercials, most recently a car ad for Chevy, which used his light-hearted workout jam “Give It To Me Baby.”

Line Break

Nelson George, author of Post-Soul Nation, a history of black popular culture in the ‘80s, covered the bombastic performer as a music editor at Billboard magazine. George sees Chappelle’s Show as simply capturing the outlaw spirit of Rick James for a hip-hop generation raised on Tupac. “The mythology of Rick was similar to the larger-than-life, rock & roll, drugs and orgy O.G.,” George says. “You could walk into a Los Angeles club, go to the VIP room and Rick would be sitting there with three or four white girls with breast implants. He had the tightest group of musicians backing him up, the Stone City Band, the best funk and the best drugs—he was king of L.A.”

Rick James can back up the lofty stories. He recalls headlining the Street Songs tour with Teena Marie and a young upstart named Prince. In 1981, Rick was packing in 50,000-plus at mammoth venues like Michigan’s Pontiac Silverdome and the New Jersey Meadowlands, commanding as high as $500,000 a show. The lavish tour, which featured such stage props as a 20-foot smoking joint, explosive pyrotechnics, marijuana flags and street lampposts, was a hedonistic affair that broke all R&B touring records. And in the middle of it all was James, a vastly underrated bassist, songwriter and producer who kept the groove moving onstage and off.

“The whole set up early on was Rick James & The Stone City Band,” he recalls. “And who was the Stone City Band? They were just about the baddest motherfucking funkers on the planet who could play jazz, rock, Latin… anything. Prince use to open up for us and wear his little ass high heels and shit. George Clinton and Parliament would always try to put their foot up our ass, but it never worked. [The Stone City Band] funked a hole in their chests.”

Continuing on his exploits with the Stone City Band, James says, “[In the studio] we always kept an ounce or two [of cocaine] on the mixing boards. The band kept three or four bottles of Jack, a bag full of Quaaludes. We didn’t know about the Betty Ford Clinic or any of that shit. We thought that’s how the rock & roll boys did it, so that’s how we should do it.”

Of course, like most people who have over-the-top tales of sex, drugs and rock & roll, Rick James ignored the warning signs of excess and addiction. But what separates James’ bad boy meltdown from the likes of Bobby Brown and Ol’ Dirty Bastard is just how spectacular his crash was.

In 1991, James and a female companion were arrested and charged with two instances of violently abusing women who refused to take part in group sex. One of the women, Frances Alley, told an unsettling story of James holding her captive at Sunset Strip’s St. James Hotel, where he allegedly burnt her leg and knee area with a crack pipe during a marathon drug binge. There were also allegations that he poured alcohol on her burns, slapped her across the face with a gun, and burnt her groin and torso area with a hot knife. “He made me take my clothes off and sit in the chair," Alley testified during the trial. “He started smoking crack…every time he took a hit, he held part of the crack pipe to my knees." After spending eight months at California Rehabilitation Center, Rick James was sentenced to five years, four months in prison. “I didn’t go visit him while he was in prison,” Teena Marie somberly admits. “I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to see him like that.” James, who says he “can’t explain the love,” for his longtime friend Teena Marie, was eventually released from jail in 1996.

Line Break

At a table in a stylish West Hollywood neo-Asian restaurant, James is reliving the darkest period of his life. As patrons gawk and whisper, the singer takes a stoic turn. According to him, his jail stint was essential in helping him kick 35 years of hardcore drug addiction. Yet, James is still bitter about his experience with going through what he saw as an unbalanced legal system.

“The world knows I’m a addict, a junkie,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “But transportation to sell?! I never sold cocaine. [The courts] had possession of cocaine as a charge, but I never had cocaine on me. They’d been wanting me in jail for a long time. I told [the court] that I punched that girl in the eye for kicking my old lady in the stomach. But all the burning and bullshit…this was a crack bitch who had a pimp. She spent too much time with Rick James and came home with no money.”

As always, James is being remarkably candid. Born James Johnson Jr. in racially divided Buffalo, New York, Rick was raised by a “strong” mother who worked as a maid and ran numbers for the Italian mob. At 15, the musically inclined James (he already played drums, guitar, and piano) joined the Navy, but soon went AWOL at the start of the Vietnam War. He escaped to Canada and formed a rock band. When a 1968 deal with Motown fizzled, he stayed on as a staff songwriter, commuting from London and North America for the next seven years.

With his smoked-out funk & rock sound perfected, James re-signed with Motown where, from 1978 to 1984, five of his albums went platinum or better. James also oversaw and produced platinum albums for Teena Marie and sexy R&B chick outfit The Mary Jane Girls. At his prime, he was getting a million dollars per release, an unheard of amount for an unfiltered R&B artist who was virtually ignored by MTV. The joke around the music industry was that Rick James was keeping the lights on at struggling Motown. He was also becoming a monster, and that is no joke.

“I got lost in the ‘Rick James’ character,” he testifies. “I would go to a restaurant, lay cocaine out on the table in front of everybody and snort it. Or take a chick, put some tables together and have my security stand in front of us while I did my business. My life was becoming insane and I suffered.”

When James’ mother died of cancer in 1991, he claims he was so strung out on dope that he almost didn’t make her funeral. He completely dropped out of the music industry. Today, James says he surrounds himself with “good people and a support group” in his daily struggle to stay clean. He maintains that savvy business deals and his much-sampled song catalogue—which has been mined by everyone from Mary J. Blige and Will Smith to Redman and Ol’ Dirty Bastard—has allowed him to live a comfortable life. Consider this: His “Super Freak” sample on MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” single helped propel Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em to more than 10 million copies. “The deal with Hammer was somewhere around 80/20,” says Rick, “and I got the 80.”

James’ round, aged face lights up when he discusses his unlikely role as a family man raising an 11-year-old son. There’s an upcoming album project in which he is eyeing a collaboration with OutKast’s Andre 3000 “to show the youngsters that there’s a way to keep the integrity of black music.” James has even found respect for his one-time nemesis from Minneapolis ("I have to admit Prince is keeping the funk alive...you have to give it up to him.") He’s also currently finishing up an autobiography entitled, what else, Memoirs of A Super Freak. “It’s about music, love, hate, addiction, insanity and God,” James says.

Of the latter subject, the former funk renegade speaks of his study of Islam (James was introduced to the Muslim religion during his prison time) like a man discussing his dysfunctional marriage. “I will never lose belief in Allah,” he adds steadfastly. “Even when I may curse him out or have arguments. I’ll be mad than a motherfucker. But that’s just me and him.”

Rick James will tell anyone that he has cheated death many times throughout his wild and remarkable journey. With his demons made public, there is little to hide. “I plan on moving out of L.A.,” he says shaking his head, with a telling smile. “Somewhere I can be at peace.” As if on cue, a too-bold redhead approaches the table and pines, “I’m your biggest fan…can you say ‘I’m Rick James, bitch?’ ” Rick turns his head and quips, “Somewhere like Tahiti.”
[Edited 6/6/09 9:31am]

murph said:

VERY cool murph. Wow, what an honor to have been able to not only meet such a legend but to have been able to interview Rick. GREAT interview as well. I've met different popular music artists through my father when I was a little kid and I've met different celebs from being a music artist myself. But on a professional level, when I was able to record with Morris and Andre Cymone at Andre's studio, for me, having grown up not only being influenced by P and The Time, but just flat out digging them to death, it was such an honor to have been able to record with them because THEY dug my guitar playing. I can relate to that for you murph.

PDogz said:

Well I would imagine that it would differ depending on the city and state. But out here in So Cali, every P show that I had ever attended was always mixed. The Controversy show was the only show where I saw it was predominantly black. Maybe 70% black, 30% white. The 2 shows that I went to on the 1999 tour, although both were out here, both shows differed in attendence. The L.A. show was star studded for one...So it was a different vibe. I would say easily it was half and half. But the next show I went to was in Long Beach just a few days later. Maybe 60/40. The PR shows out here, where I attended 3 in all, that's where it was more whites than anything. Everything after that was usually more whites in attendence.

vainandy said:

I can account for the fact that you would have NOT been the only White person there. At that time, the audience was about 10-15% non-Black, and there was ZERO racial tension (White, Black, Puerto Rican, EVERYBODY was just'a Freakin - Trust me: Good Times were rollin!)

laurarichardson said:

I love it...U go for the easier target and skip the more nuanced posts....

I think most open-minded folks will admit that Prince turned out to be the more influential figure in music....And his stage show eventually eclipsed Rick's....Yes, I am a bigger Prince fan than I am a Rick fan (Who I dig)...But folks who don't just live in Prince Land also know the huge impact that artists like James had on R&B music and on Prince..

It's okay...I get it...It's easy to dismiss James as a bitter man who was obsessed with hating Prince.....His beef with Prince was over-the-top at times...But does that mean you have to dismiss the man's impact like he was some one-hit wonder?....

I suggest you read up on James beyond some Rolling Stone piece about how he was stoned out of his mind on stage...Here is an interview I did with Rick James a few months before he passed away....As a Prince fan, it was quite an interesting experience...He even gave props to Prince towards the end of the piece, which was truly surprising...Enjoy...

----


What’s My Name?

Today, Rick James is part of a famous catchphrase. But in the late 70s and early 80s the infamous R&B star spent $7000 a week on cocaine , had $30 million in the bank and ruled the funk landscape. Ain’t that a bitch?



Story by K. Murphy

Rick James asks a question that is as absurd as it is strikingly ironic. The brash funk rebel, who plowed his way through the late ’70s and early ’80s with a legendary fuck-you arrogance and a $7,000-a-week cocaine habit, is asking if he can light up a joint. “I can spark up in here…can’t I?” he politely inquires after arriving two hours late for a photo shoot in the bustling residential section of Los Angeles’ Echo Park. On this breezy evening, James, 56, is wearing a black velour sweat suit and matching velvet slippers, his hair in curly, shoulder-length braids. It’s a conservative look for a man whose flowing, glittered, corn-rowed and beaded hair was once the trademark for his wild counter-culture image.

“I could have brought Monte Carlo as much as I’ve snorted,” he bluntly recalls of his drug-addled past. “I’ve smoked half of Paris and most of Russia. And I’ve shot up Puerto Rico and drank up Mexico. I [went through] five yachts, three planes, 17 cars, four mansions, any bitch that I wanted, and had $30 million in the bank. People were disgusted with the way I lived. Let’s talk real. I was a dumb motherfucker.”

Nowhere was Rick James’ once-subversive aura so blatant than on 1981’s triple-platinum Street Songs, a landmark Motown release that featured the seedy top-20 crossover hit “Super Freak,” a leering groove that nine years later would give MC Hammer a No. 1 mega-pop hit “U Can’t Touch This.” James’ sneering bassline and lurid lyrics (Never mind the “very kinky girl” line, check this oft-skipped couplet: “Three’s not a crowd for her, she says / Room 714 I’ll be waiting.”) fueled the year’s biggest decadent party anthem. And as legend has it, no one could party harder than Rick James.

(line break)

Like most of his peers wasted by years of drug debauchery in the ’80s, James was tossed into the fallen-rock-star scrap heap, even when he tried for a comeback in ’97 with the release of the respectable Urban Rhapsody. But a funny thing happened on the way to Rick becoming the answer to a music trivia question. Irreverent comedian Dave Chappelle unveiled a riotous skit on his highly rated Chappelle’s Show, parodying cast member Charlie Murphy’s (Eddie’s brother) hilarious run-ins with James. The episode featured Chapelle as a young—and obviously coked-out—Rick James in his glory, pimp-slapping a shell-shocked Murphy as he fired-off the memorable one-liner, “I’m Rick James, bitch!”

A good-natured James even popped up to offer laugh-out-loud flashbacks of the funk star getting beat down by the Murphy brothers after indignantly soiling a white couch with his platform muddy boots. Soon, the most omnipresent catch phrase since “Show Me The Money!” could be heard everywhere from college campuses and neighborhood barbershops to work offices, Internet chat rooms and even ESPN.

So what does Rick make of his reentry to pop culture?

“It has ruined my life,” James jokes. He is now draped in a fuchsia-on-black flower-print shirt and rhinestone-studded velvet slacks, an outfit more becoming of a funk icon. His walk is notably a half a step slower due to a mild stroke he suffered in 1998, but the rock star swagger is still there (“I hope KING is going to have more than one picture of me in this motherfucker!” he snaps).

James then cracks a sly smirk and muses, “I love Dave and I think he’s doing cutting-edge comedy. And Charlie Murphy is a very dear friend. So it was fun watching them spoof on me and me spoof on him. Of course some of it was a little exaggerated. I don’t want all you haters to get too caught up about Charlie kicking my ass because it didn’t happen.”

As a collection of James’ own hits blast from a medium-sized boom box, it’s clear that the funk master has enough material to fill up three more episodes. When asked about his thoughts on funnyman Chris Rock lampooning him on his recent high-profile comedy tour, he fires back, “Chris Rock bores me to tears. He needs to find somebody else to fuck with or I’ll give him a bitch slap.” He also scoffs at hip-hop’s current obsession with the pimp game, claiming, “I’ve written songs about pimps and pimping ain’t no glorification. A hoe would never be able to afford to support me.” And he applauds the business savvy of hip-hop moguls like Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, even if “they don’t know a G flat from a E minor.”

Yes, the Chappelle factor has played out well for James. T-shirts immortalizing “I’m Rick James, bitch!” are a hot item on the web. And a club reunion tour with former protégé and blue-eyed soul legend Teena Marie has been doing strong business across the country. “It’s just wonderful to be doing this again with him after all these years,” praises Marie. “I’ve stayed on the road for the last 20 years, but Rick had stopped touring for a long time. So to see him out there doing his thing and us doing our thing together…it’s like we’re tied, we’re connected.” James’ Grammy-winning music is even finding its way onto television commercials, most recently a car ad for Chevy, which used his light-hearted workout jam “Give It To Me Baby.”

Line Break

Nelson George, author of Post-Soul Nation, a history of black popular culture in the ‘80s, covered the bombastic performer as a music editor at Billboard magazine. George sees Chappelle’s Show as simply capturing the outlaw spirit of Rick James for a hip-hop generation raised on Tupac. “The mythology of Rick was similar to the larger-than-life, rock & roll, drugs and orgy O.G.,” George says. “You could walk into a Los Angeles club, go to the VIP room and Rick would be sitting there with three or four white girls with breast implants. He had the tightest group of musicians backing him up, the Stone City Band, the best funk and the best drugs—he was king of L.A.”

Rick James can back up the lofty stories. He recalls headlining the Street Songs tour with Teena Marie and a young upstart named Prince. In 1981, Rick was packing in 50,000-plus at mammoth venues like Michigan’s Pontiac Silverdome and the New Jersey Meadowlands, commanding as high as $500,000 a show. The lavish tour, which featured such stage props as a 20-foot smoking joint, explosive pyrotechnics, marijuana flags and street lampposts, was a hedonistic affair that broke all R&B touring records. And in the middle of it all was James, a vastly underrated bassist, songwriter and producer who kept the groove moving onstage and off.

“The whole set up early on was Rick James & The Stone City Band,” he recalls. “And who was the Stone City Band? They were just about the baddest motherfucking funkers on the planet who could play jazz, rock, Latin… anything. Prince use to open up for us and wear his little ass high heels and shit. George Clinton and Parliament would always try to put their foot up our ass, but it never worked. [The Stone City Band] funked a hole in their chests.”

Continuing on his exploits with the Stone City Band, James says, “[In the studio] we always kept an ounce or two [of cocaine] on the mixing boards. The band kept three or four bottles of Jack, a bag full of Quaaludes. We didn’t know about the Betty Ford Clinic or any of that shit. We thought that’s how the rock & roll boys did it, so that’s how we should do it.”

Of course, like most people who have over-the-top tales of sex, drugs and rock & roll, Rick James ignored the warning signs of excess and addiction. But what separates James’ bad boy meltdown from the likes of Bobby Brown and Ol’ Dirty Bastard is just how spectacular his crash was.

In 1991, James and a female companion were arrested and charged with two instances of violently abusing women who refused to take part in group sex. One of the women, Frances Alley, told an unsettling story of James holding her captive at Sunset Strip’s St. James Hotel, where he allegedly burnt her leg and knee area with a crack pipe during a marathon drug binge. There were also allegations that he poured alcohol on her burns, slapped her across the face with a gun, and burnt her groin and torso area with a hot knife. “He made me take my clothes off and sit in the chair," Alley testified during the trial. “He started smoking crack…every time he took a hit, he held part of the crack pipe to my knees." After spending eight months at California Rehabilitation Center, Rick James was sentenced to five years, four months in prison. “I didn’t go visit him while he was in prison,” Teena Marie somberly admits. “I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to see him like that.” James, who says he “can’t explain the love,” for his longtime friend Teena Marie, was eventually released from jail in 1996.

Line Break

At a table in a stylish West Hollywood neo-Asian restaurant, James is reliving the darkest period of his life. As patrons gawk and whisper, the singer takes a stoic turn. According to him, his jail stint was essential in helping him kick 35 years of hardcore drug addiction. Yet, James is still bitter about his experience with going through what he saw as an unbalanced legal system.

“The world knows I’m a addict, a junkie,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “But transportation to sell?! I never sold cocaine. [The courts] had possession of cocaine as a charge, but I never had cocaine on me. They’d been wanting me in jail for a long time. I told [the court] that I punched that girl in the eye for kicking my old lady in the stomach. But all the burning and bullshit…this was a crack bitch who had a pimp. She spent too much time with Rick James and came home with no money.”

As always, James is being remarkably candid. Born James Johnson Jr. in racially divided Buffalo, New York, Rick was raised by a “strong” mother who worked as a maid and ran numbers for the Italian mob. At 15, the musically inclined James (he already played drums, guitar, and piano) joined the Navy, but soon went AWOL at the start of the Vietnam War. He escaped to Canada and formed a rock band. When a 1968 deal with Motown fizzled, he stayed on as a staff songwriter, commuting from London and North America for the next seven years.

With his smoked-out funk & rock sound perfected, James re-signed with Motown where, from 1978 to 1984, five of his albums went platinum or better. James also oversaw and produced platinum albums for Teena Marie and sexy R&B chick outfit The Mary Jane Girls. At his prime, he was getting a million dollars per release, an unheard of amount for an unfiltered R&B artist who was virtually ignored by MTV. The joke around the music industry was that Rick James was keeping the lights on at struggling Motown. He was also becoming a monster, and that is no joke.

“I got lost in the ‘Rick James’ character,” he testifies. “I would go to a restaurant, lay cocaine out on the table in front of everybody and snort it. Or take a chick, put some tables together and have my security stand in front of us while I did my business. My life was becoming insane and I suffered.”

When James’ mother died of cancer in 1991, he claims he was so strung out on dope that he almost didn’t make her funeral. He completely dropped out of the music industry. Today, James says he surrounds himself with “good people and a support group” in his daily struggle to stay clean. He maintains that savvy business deals and his much-sampled song catalogue—which has been mined by everyone from Mary J. Blige and Will Smith to Redman and Ol’ Dirty Bastard—has allowed him to live a comfortable life. Consider this: His “Super Freak” sample on MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” single helped propel Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em to more than 10 million copies. “The deal with Hammer was somewhere around 80/20,” says Rick, “and I got the 80.”

James’ round, aged face lights up when he discusses his unlikely role as a family man raising an 11-year-old son. There’s an upcoming album project in which he is eyeing a collaboration with OutKast’s Andre 3000 “to show the youngsters that there’s a way to keep the integrity of black music.” James has even found respect for his one-time nemesis from Minneapolis ("I have to admit Prince is keeping the funk alive...you have to give it up to him.") He’s also currently finishing up an autobiography entitled, what else, Memoirs of A Super Freak. “It’s about music, love, hate, addiction, insanity and God,” James says.

Of the latter subject, the former funk renegade speaks of his study of Islam (James was introduced to the Muslim religion during his prison time) like a man discussing his dysfunctional marriage. “I will never lose belief in Allah,” he adds steadfastly. “Even when I may curse him out or have arguments. I’ll be mad than a motherfucker. But that’s just me and him.”

Rick James will tell anyone that he has cheated death many times throughout his wild and remarkable journey. With his demons made public, there is little to hide. “I plan on moving out of L.A.,” he says shaking his head, with a telling smile. “Somewhere I can be at peace.” As if on cue, a too-bold redhead approaches the table and pines, “I’m your biggest fan…can you say ‘I’m Rick James, bitch?’ ” Rick turns his head and quips, “Somewhere like Tahiti.”
[Edited 6/6/09 9:31am]