Whenever I'm riding with "new" people in the car, and we're sharing musical tastes, I always end up putting on today's song of the day, "Super Freak". And I am almost invariably pushed to frustration when one of two comments invariably come up.
The first is, "I thought this was MC Hammer!", or some variation of that statement.
The second is, "I'm Rick James, bitch!".
Yes, MC Hammer SAMPLED Rick James' brilliant masterpiece, Super Freak. Yes, a slightly exaggerated (but only slightly) version of Rick James appeared in the admittedly hilarious and infamous sketches on Chapelle's Show. Rick James was indeed a chronic addict to a wide range of substances, was a known abuser of women, and did, indeed think that cocaine was a hell of a drug.
So I get it. Rick James deserves our shame and scorn for what he did to those women, and deserved the prison sentence which he served for that crime. As Chapelle shows (ha), his over the top destructive behavior was so extreme as to be comical, although it is a dark comedy indeed.
Many people, however, have absolutely 0 knowledge of the talented person he was, and the potential that he destroyed by allowing himself to destroy his life and the lives of others around him.
Super Freak is a window into the soul of the man who could have been, a supremely talented songwriter, bassist, and fantastic singer. He remains, in my opinion, one of the largest "what-ifs" in music history, with a career cut short by his own self and others-destructive behaviors. Listening to his phenomenal discography just highlights what a terrible loss he inflicted on the world (very similar to Michael Jackson). Anyway, enjoy the great track, and mourn a once rising star and the destruction he wrought.
-TRO
P.s. MC Hammer was only popular because of the extremely high quality of Rick James' Super Freak. This is simply empirically true, and I dare anyone to argue.
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