THE RISE AND FALL OF RICK JAMES

[ReedeFox]

Obviously we all know the legend that is Rick James - he's the dude behind the hit song Super Freak and and infamous party animal. Even though he died back in 2004, his soul still lives on through his funk music and his insane drug addled stories.

Rick James first began his music career by singing on street corners in his home town of Buffalo from a young age. It was at this early age where he began experimenting with drugs. We aren't just talking a bit of weed and a few lines on a Friday night, he was bang into heroin in his early teens and started robbing to pay for his habit. It was around the age of 15 that he joined the Navy Reserve so he could preemptively avoid being drafted into the military. He also started drumming for local jazz groups but between the drugs and the music he kept forgetting to attend his fortnightly Reserve sessions and found himself drafted to Vietnam.



Rick wasn't having any of it, so he fled to Toronto where he became friends with a few local musician who then formed a band called the Mynah Bird, who managed to sign to Motown Records. However, Rick being the crazy bastard he is, he had a row with the financial backer of the band and ended up beating him up, which cost the them the Motown deal. There was also a warrent out for Rick's arrest. He did latr turn himself in and wound up spending a year in prison.

After his stink is jail, Rick released his breakthrough album Come Get It! which sold more than two million copies. That's how Rick James, the funk and soul artist was born. He later went on to release his most popular album, 1981’s Street Songs, which catapulted him into superstardom thanks to songs like Give It to Me Baby and Super Freak. Rick was a huge success and the money started rolling in, but so did the cocaine and by the 90's he was totally out of control.



He started partying in bizarre ways and doing crazy things, spending Christmas with Diana Ross, he even had an affair with Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia. He accused Prince of copying his act and he started covering his windows in tin foil to block out the light. His coke binges were so frequent that it began to affect his song writing and his album sales started to dwindle. He went from bad to worse and in 1993, was convicted of assaulting two women, one of which he burned with a hot crack pipe during a week long binge. He did two years prison for the assault and it was during this time that he began writing his autobiography, Memoirs of a Super Freak.



Rick James claimed to have slowed down on the drugs in the late 90's/early 2000's but was sadly found dead at his LA home in 2004. His autopsy revealed that there was alprazolam, diazepam, bupropion, citalopram, hydrocodone, digoxin, chlorpheniramine, methamphetamine, and cocaine floating around in his bloodstream. That's enough to knock out a bloody rhino! So there you have it, the meteroric rise and fall of a funk soul legend. It's pretty sad when people go out in such a way. Chuck Creekmur, who interviewed Rick James said:

I hope he's not remembered for his legal issues and exploits in the 90's.
I hope people look at his body of work and listen to his music. We've lost a musical genius.

True that!