We had a janitor in my dorm at UK who looked just like Rick James. None of us really knew what Rick was up to at the time. The guy’s name was Patterson, and he worked in Patterson Hall, which seemed a little too convenient to us.
The answer was clear: Rick had entered the One-Hit Wonder Relocation Program. He was hiding from his Super-Freaky past by cleaning the bathrooms in a dorm in Lexington, KY.
If Patterson is still around, it will shoot our theory down. Or will it?
Rick James is famous for “Super Freak”, but he wrote some slammin’ ballands too. The last time I heard “Ebony Eyes” I felt he was singing to me.
Local (LA) news around here attributed the death to heart failure. They also mentioned that he’d had a stroke several years ago, and had received a pacemaker in recent years. As others have said–he died of natural causes, but the natural causes were sped up by his large-living life.
Memory that comes to mind to me is when he showed up at a party Ron Jeremy was hosting during his Surreal Life days. Guess he did like to party all the time…
My thoughts exactly.
Rick James and Neil Young played in a band together in Canada called “The Magpies,” back before Young drove his hearse to California and joined Buffalo Springfield.
Information, free for your tuition (as my professor used to say).
Regrettably, the guy is better known because of the deranged Dave Chappelle caricature than because of his music.
I wonder how many times he was subjected to “Hey look, it’s Rick James! ‘I’m Rick James, Bitch!’” in the last few months of his life. (Sounds like fun, eh?)
OK, somebody please explain the “I’m Rick James, bitch!” joke to me. It was all over the Internet a few months ago, but since I don’t have a TV, I have no idea why it has caught on so much.
It’s from The Chapelle Show on comedy central. he did an episode called “Charlie Murphy’s [Eddie’s brother and Chapelle show regular] True Hollywood Stories” where Charlie related his encounters with Rick, a la Behind the Music. Dave did a hilarious reinactment of James, made even funnier by occasional commentary by the real Rick James.
James (Dave in Reinactment) slapped Murphy and said “I’m Rick James Bitch”.
When asked to explain his behavior, James (the real one) merely said (repeatedly) “Cocaine’s a hell of a drug.”
Thus a meme is born. They also did a skit about Prince.
Given that his career was over and he did agree to appear in the skit, I would think he had a sense of humor about himself. I hope he got a kick out of it. Not like the kick some get from cocaine, of course, but still.
For any fans who aren’t aware, the expanded two-disc edition of *Street Songs * is well worth buying, IMHO. The second disc is, AFAIK, the only officially released live recording by James, from a show in Long Beach, California, in 1981, and it kicks some serious ass.