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Super Freak

Give It To Me Baby

Mary Jane

Fire And Desire

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I was about twelve years old when Rick James really entered my musical world.
I remember hearing Give It to Me Baby and Super Freak around my cousins and younger uncles.
I knew one thing immediately.
This music was grown.
It was funky, sexual, suggestive and just a little dangerous.
And my mother wasn’t having it! 🔞

That made me want to hear him even more. 🤷🏾‍♂️

Rick James was really my first racy artist.
Then came Prince.

What’s funny is that even as a kid, I thought Rick and Prince were similar.
I didn’t know anything about their history.
I was just listening.
Both mixed R&B, funk and rock.
Both could write, produce, play and perform.
Both were flamboyant, sexual and completely comfortable pushing boundaries.
They were both 🔥 for a young gay boy learning music, and his place in the 🌎.

Years later, I learned there was a whole story behind what my ears had already picked up.
There was a story behind those two.
Prince actually opened for Rick on the Fire It Up tour in 1980.
Prince was still an emerging artist, but accounts from the tour describe him making a serious impression on Rick’s audiences.
Rick later made his feelings about Prince very clear and accused him of copying elements of his style.
Their relationship became one of those fascinating rivalries in Black Music History. 🎸🔥

But this isn’t about Prince.
Thats a story for another time.

This is THE SETLIST, and these are my Rick James favorites. 🎧

Super Freak
This is Rick James completely unleashed. That bass line alone became part of music history, and years later MC Hammer turned its DNA into U Can’t Touch This.
Rick and Alonzo Miller wrote it, but Rick’s personality is all over that record.
Give It to Me Baby
Honestly, this might be the record I associate most with Rick.
Funky, nasty and ridiculously infectious. It spent five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart in 1981.
Mary Jane
From Come Get It! in 1978, this was early Rick establishing exactly who he was going to be.
The groove is nasty, but laid back at the same time. Kinda like a good Hybrid 🌿
Fire and Desire with Teena Marie
Rick could get downright funky, but don’t forget the man could slow it all the way down.
Rick and Teena together on this one? ❤️ Lawd Have Mercy
Classic!🏆
The chemistry between their voices is EVERYTHING.
Ghetto Life
This is another side of Rick. It’s autobiographical, funky and socially observant, proving Street Songs had more on its mind than sex and partying.
Ebony Eyes with Smokey Robinson
Two completely different voices that somehow fit beautifully together.
It’s one of Rick’s records that reminds you just how good he could be melodically.
Cold Blooded
By 1983, you knew a Rick James groove almost immediately.
Cold Blooded is stripped down, funky and full of attitude. 😎
Give It to Me Baby (12″ Version)
Come on now. I’m a DJ. You knew the extended version was getting in here. 😂
The 12-inch mix runs about 5:43 and gives that groove room to breathe.
You and I
Back to Come Get It! in 1978. This was Rick’s first No. 1 R&B hit and already had the funk-rock mixture that would become his signature.
Dance Wit’ Me
From 1982’s Throwin’ Down, this one closes my set exactly where Rick belonged: on the dance floor. 🕺🏾

All these years later, I can still hear what twelve-year-old me heard in Rick James.
The funk was undeniable.
The attitude was loud.
The lyrics were way too grown for me
But I didn’t care.
There was just enough wrong to peak my curiosity and make me want to keep listening. 😂

I may not have totally understood everything Rick was singing about back then, but apparently my mother did.
And Mama already knew there was trouble on the other side. 😂🎶

DJZ7

PS… Rick would be one of my first suggestive or risqué artist, but he surely wouldn’t be my last.

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