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On the morning of Friday, August 6, 2004, singer-songwriter-producer Rick James was found dead in his home, the victim of an apparent heart attack. Commenting on the magnitude of our collective loss, Neil Partow, president of the Recording Academy, made the following statement:
“Today the music world mourns a musician and performer of the funkiest kind. The Super Freak will be missed.”
Indeed, Neil, The Super Freak will be missed. And not just for stripping bare a 24-year-old Georgia woman whom he believed had swiped his cocaine, strapping her to a chair, dousing her in alcohol, and spending the ensuing hour pistol-whipping her and burning her with a hot knife, lighter, and crack pipe, only to then hand her a check for $320, saying, “Go buy yourself something nice.” No, that James—the man fueled by a $7,000-a-week coke habit, who beat yet another woman for hours on end, leaving her to tell a judge, “I still have problems with my left eye. There is a constant throbbing behind the socket” —won’t be missed.
No, sir.
We’ll be missing the other Super Freak—the man who revamped the ol’ fat-funk formula, injecting neck-snapping beats with a progressive, even punk rock attitude. The man who dropped 1981’s triple-platinum Street Songs on a nation’s tired ass, endowing us with the jams “Super Freak (Part I),” “Give It To Me Baby,” and “Fire And Desire.” Which says nothing of his other monster jams: “You And I,” “Standing On The Top – Part 1,” “Cold Blooded,” “Mary Jane,” “Bustin’ Out,” “Dance Wit’ Me – Part 1,” “Glow,” and “Sweet And Sexy Thing.” It’s this Super Freak who saw his “Super Freak (Part I)” reborn as the foundation to MC Hammer’s Grammy-winning “U Can’t Touch This”; who, since being released from the Stoney Lonesome in 1998, had gotten his life back together and was working on his memoirs; who was rightly honored this past June at the annual Rhythm & Soul Awards; who had found his way back to his hard-earned spot atop Big Funk Mountain.
It’s on the occasion of this Super Freak’s passing that we’re considering a slightly older release than would typically grace the Sex & Rock ’n’ Roll Spinners column, a collection that thoroughly captures the mighty Rick James at the height of his powers. Released in the summer of 2002, Anthology is bigger and better than the other James retrospectives, the super-saver-priced Millennium Collection and the full-priced single-CD set Ultimate Collection—a two-disc, 140-minute mother crammed with 18 of his 23 Top 40 R&B hits, plus some of his choice album cuts, including “Fire And Desire” and “Happy,” which he recorded with his hotter-than-hot protégé, Teena Marie. The most complete Rick James compilation, Anthology also boasts collaborations with Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Roxanne Shanté, and more.
Hey, we realize that digging up a two-year-old retrospective is not our style, but we can’t help but be saddened by the passing of a genius whose life, unfortunately, got away from him to the point where, for a time, his musical gifts became little more than a footnote to his extracurricular activities. At a time like this, it’s important to remember what Rick James gave us, and to credit the man for what he was first and foremost—one of the most important musicians of the past quarter-century. Anthology captures that Rick James, spreading his funk real thick, just the way he made it—and just the way he would’ve wanted it.
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