Rick James Parties All the Time
Trapped by "paternalistic indifference," a comeback surfs the big funk.
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This Boston Phoenix piece ran in the fall of 1988 as James toured behind his Wonderful comeback. It was a barometer of how much had changed since his earlier days, with both Prince’s stardom and Terence Trent D’Arby’s upstart energy. James would have turned 75 on February 1st; he died in 2004.
RICK JAMES SEEMS like a perfect case of a performer who peaked too soon. About 10 years ago he threw together James Brown with freakout guitars and George Clinton with low-minded rationality and called it “punk funk.” It was a fusion whose time had about come, but not enough people were convinced (or not enough after the one big hit, “Super Freak”) that James was the man to bring it off. Sure enough, Prince came along and stole James’ commercial spotlight, some clothes and moves and funk appeal (but not his cornrow locks), and left him beached on the shores of semi-legend-dom, a lightweight but not undeserving funk-aholic trapped in the paternalistic indifference of Berry Gordy’s latter-day Motown. James did what any self-respecting self-sufficient careerist would do: waited for his contract to expire, went for the comeback, and began to test his act out in clubs, as his first single in two years, “Loosey’s Rap,” hit the number-one slot on Billboard’s Black charts (as usual, white fans, for the most part, are not listening as closely to James).
Like the Jacksons’ Victory Tour, which eschewed all songs from the album of the same name, James was out to prove his longevity more than to hawk his new product…
Not that James has been idle. Since he stopped touring five years ago, he’s played Svengali to the Mary Jane Girls, collaborated with Smokey Robinson (“Ebony Eyes”) and Eddie Murphy (“Party All the Time”), produced records for Process and the Doo-Rags and Val Young, and fiddled about at his home studio in Buffalo while shopping for a new label. There were rumors of drug and alcohol abuse and general life crisis, a stint in a dry-out tank. But the period also produced more than 24 new numbers, which got winnowed down to 10 for his debut on Warner Bros, Wonderful. The record traverses familiar James terrain—lotsa songs about sex, simpleminded grooves that get stretched beyond their limitations, all self-produced with the same one-man-band intensity. But James played it safe on the first of two nights at the sauna that was the Channel last week, with songs from his sharpest Motown LP (1981’s Street Songs) and assorted tunes like “17” and “Mary Jane” that positioned him more as a returning hitmeister than as a born-again songwriter. Like the Jacksons’ Victory Tour, which eschewed all songs from the album of the same name, James was out to prove his longevity more than to hawk his new product.
Wearing matching skin-tight Adidas sweatsuits and James’ trademark long curls, his band set out to funk an already perspiration-doused (and fully integrated) oversold crowd that was so hyper-stoked for the Rick James experience it began chanting “We want Rick” to house music by Eric B. and Rakim a good 20 minutes before the man took the stage. When he did, to the bump and social grind of “Ghetto Life,” the combined heat from the band and the audience was inspirational—James seemed to sweat for all of us. Jumping up onto Limo Reyes’ drum cage and leaping off, to the delight of the crowd, he made the most of what little mobility was available on stage. With this audience so glued to him, James could do no wrong, though as music goes there wasn’t a whole lot to get excited about.
Perhaps because he’s primarily a bassist, James excels at the mid-tempo groove that draws strength from exertion rather than velocity. Unfortunately, his facility almost always overwhelms his inspiration, making for any number of sound-alike funk essays. “Sweet and Sexy” and “Standing on the Top” are virtually interchangeable, exercise machines that don’t extend the meanings of dancing or sex into more than self-referential odes. James bellows more than either Terrence Trent D’Arby or Prince, which means he hits on the one with more gut urgency than curly falsetto, but his vigor in medium-tempo grunge gets him into trouble in ballads, which sag the longer they spin themselves out.
them Grammys: traffic’s a bitch
On New Yorker Radio Hour, Bonnie Raitt talks about the early 1970s Cambridge club scene, Dick Waterman, meeting Son House, and that call from Prince. All this and four Grammy nominations. When she picked up the Song of the Year statue for “Just Like That,” septuagenarians everywhere saw themselves in her shock. Then, Kelefa Sanneh interviews Public Enemy’s Chuck D. to plug the PBS documentary Fight the Power: How Rap Changed the World.
the pile
The Recruit (Netflix), created by Alexi Hawley, starring Noah Centineo, Laura Haddock, Aarti Mann. Season 2 in the works for 2024.
Women at War (Netflix), created by Cécile Lorne, starring Audrey Fleurot, Julie De Bona, Camille Lou.
The 1619 Project (Hulu), starring Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (Crown, April 2023), by Del Fuego Warren Zanes.
Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles (Nonesuch), for
“I Am the Walrus.”
incoming
Not Funny, by Jena Friedman (Atria/One Signal Books, April 2023)
Mozart in Motion, by Patrick Mackie (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, June 2023)
Stage-Plus, Deutsche Grammophon’s streaming platform with archives and live concerts
RJ Smith on Chuck Berry
Springsteen’s ticket rebates
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