Rick James

Superfreak

Crack, Cocaine, amphetamines, Ho's, and kicking Charlie Murphy's ass!

Star

The Breaks

Funk

The Chappel show

Born James Johnson Jr., the third oldest child in my family
of eight in Buffalo, N.Y., on February 1, 1948, was
credited with establishing the "punk-funk" style. It was my
mother who raised my family. She was a small elegant woman
of great dignity and strength. She always had two jobs.
Sometimes she worked as a maid, but her main income came
from running numbers for the Italian mob. She raised us as
strict Catholics.

As an early 80s icon of rebelling against the
establishment, I started early by joining the navy at age
fifteen and going AWOL soon after. I fled to Canada, and it
was there, in Toronto, that he founded his first group, the
Mynah Birds. Other members of the group included Neil Young
and Bruce Palmer (who later formed Buffalo Springfield),
and Goldie McJohn (who later joined Steppenwolf). It was at
this point that I became known as Rick James.