Requiem for a Pary Machine: Rick James, 1948-2004
Originally uploaded by the management.
Further developments demand that the management readdress the Rick James tragedy. Yesterday's flippant remarks concerning the Freakmaster's dalliances with the wonders of Bolivian Marching Powder have apparently proved to be rather prescient, as reports indicate that James was once again speeding down the White Line Highway. After an autopsy, no specific cause of death could be pinpointed, and officials are now awaiting a toxicology report. Sources indicated that he was seen doing blow at a party a week and a half back. Keep in mind that this is a man with diabetes who recently suffered a stroke, had a hip replaced, and had a pacemaker inserted. You think your occasional binge drinking is worrisome? You are a goddamn amateur, my friend. Rick... pardon me, Mr. James has joined Kieth Moon in the pantheon of self-destructive party machines.
Let's take a moment to think about Mr. James's contributions to music and popular culture in general. Like many tragic figures, Rick James had a career of dizzying highs, so to speak, and harrowing lows. Artistically, he produced some of the enduring classics of 1970s/80s funk, most notably "Mary Jane," "Superfreak," and "Give It to Me Baby," but he was also responsible for 1988's Wonderful album. As album titles go, it was an example of blatant false advertising. As a producer, James shepherded the Mary Jane Girls to temporary stardom, but he also gave the world Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time." Clearly, the drugs (along with Murphy's Greek-mythology-level hubris) had begun to take their toll. (To be fair, the whole MC Hammer "U Can't Touch This" thing was not his fault.) By the time James was imprisoned for holding a woman captive, forcing her to do drugs, and burning her with a hot crack pipe because she refused to have group sex with him and his girlfreind, the "cracks" in his psyche had clearly become canyons of spiraling insanity.
When F. Scott Fitzgerald said (I'm paraphrasing here) that American lives don't have second acts, he had apparently never heard of John Travolta. Or Rick James. Although the return of the Superfreak owed more to Charlie Murphy and Dave Chapelle than to the man himself, James came to embody the scarred, self-deprecating survivor of his own excesses. A funnier, urban answer to Johnny Cash, if you will. Unfortunately, Mr. James seems to have equated the spotlight with fast living, and it appears that he returned once again to his hard-partying ways. Again, his story attains the weight and pathos of Greek tragedy, with the inevitable fall of a captivating and fundamentally flawed protagonist. Mr. James's tragic flaw was his inability to extract his private persona from his public image and the trappings of fame. That, and his tendency to imitate a bottomless vacuum cleaner whenever anyone left some coke lying around.
How will James Ambrose Johnson, Jr. be remembered? What will his true legacy be? As part of his new contract with Comedy Central, Dave Chapelle has a development deal for a planned Rick James biopic, but it remains to be seen how this deal will be effected by James's death. The management wishes only to memorialize the man behind the music; the young bass prodigy, the funk impresario, the hit-making producer. That, and the twisted badass who snorted and smoked his way into such mind-bending depravity as to become both cautionary tale and eternal bachelor-party inspiration. We salute you, Rick James, you sick, crazy, brilliant motherfucker.
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