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About This Author
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Blogocentric Formulations #830171 added October 6, 2014 at 3:21pm
Restrictions: None
A People's History of the Super Freak
** Image ID #2010042 Unavailable **
SONG: "Super Freak"
ARTIST: Rick James
STATUS: Deceased (pulmonary and cardiac failure, 8/6/2004)
ALBUM: Street Songs (1981)
I included Rick James on my list of songs because, for a three-year stint in the 1990s, Rick and I lived in the same small town in Northern California. I spent the first twenty years of my life living around Folsom, California, and Rick James spent 1994-1996 as a resident of Folsom State Prison after being convicted of kidnapping, holding hostage, and beating two different women on two different occasions with his future wife Tanya Hijazi (who was 17 when they first met... 24 years younger than James).
James had a rather colorful life. After dropping out of high school at age fifteen, failed to report for duty when drafted, fled to Toronto, spent a year in a naval prison after moving to Detroit for his music career and getting ratted out by a former manager he fired. He was a songwriter and producer for Motown records, working with the likes of Teena Marie, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, and Marvin Gaye. His relationship with Gaye was put to the test when he started sleeping with Marvin's ex-wife Janis. He had a well-documented drug addiction, primarily to cocaine, and was reported to have spent in excess of $7,000 per week (that'd be over $12,000/week by today's standards) on his drug habit over a five year period. After being released from prison in 1996 and having subsequent sexual assault charges dropped in 1998, James largely disappeared from the public eye, until Dave Chappelle brought him back to the public consciousness with a now-famous sketch for his Chappelle's Show:
 
After James' caretaker found him dead in his Los Angeles home on August 6, 2004, his death was ruled a result of pulmonary and cardiac failure caused by various health conditions including diabetes, and a previous stroke and heart attack for which he wore a pacemaker. Interestingly enough, his autopsy revealed a buffet of drugs in his system: alprazolam, diazepam, bupropion, citalopram, hydrocodone, digoxin, chlorpheniramine, methamphetamine, and cocaine... although none were ruled as a contributing factor to his death.
Perhaps James himself was the Super-est Freak of them all? 
PROMPT: A book I've always wanted to read but haven't yet is...
| ASIN: 0060838655 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 8.96
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Several reputable authorities on history books (including Matt Damon's character from Good Will Hunting ) include this as a must-read history text. I'm actually a few chapters into it, but I keep getting sidetracked by other books. It's not that it's not good... it's actually excellent and even from the first chapter, it's fascinating. It's just very dense. At 729 pages with very small font and tiny margins, it's packed with information.
Maybe the entire history of our country isn't meant to be read in one uninterrupted reading experience. I generally don't like to skip around and read other books when I'm in the middle of one (except for books in different formats... I usually have one audiobook and one text-based book on Kindle or hard copy going at a time). In this case, though, and since A People's History is more of a textbook, maybe I'll give myself permission to read a chapter or two, then tackle something else, then come back and read another chapter or two, etc.
However I end up tackling it, I think it's an important book and I really do want to read it. There's so much about our own country's history that I don't know... or only know vaguely from what I've learned in school or been told in brief overview from Wikipedia pages and other resources... it's important to understand the history - the real history - of our nation. |
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