Rick James Sexy

You probably couldn't make up a story crazy enough to compare to the real life s#it that you've heard about the one and only Rick James.  Born in Buffalo, New York in 1948, James Ambrose Johnson Jr. had a tumultuous upbringing in a hard neighborhood with his single mother, who was a dancer, after his father left the family when he was 10 years old.  Rick suffered abuse as a child and turned to music as an outlet, but he also turned to some petty crimes and ended up doing some time in juvie.  To avoid any more trouble he enlisted in the Naval Reserve, but more bad behavior led to his ticket getting punched to go to Vietnam, so he bailed on the Navy and went on to pursue a career in music, north of the border in Toronto.  He started some bands, became known around town, and then was eventually signed to Motown Records, but him being AWOL caught up with him and he did a year for desertion.  After getting out, he moved to Los Angeles, and that is where the legend of Rick James begins!  He broke out of the mold of music he was accustomed to record companies trying to fit him in and he became the "Superfreak" of neo-funk in the late 70s and early 80s.  He went platinum multiple times, had more serious run-ins with the law after kidnapping a woman, and maintained a lifelong drug habit which eventually cut his life short at only 56 years old when he died in 2004.  Rick has plenty of mythology built around his life and after becoming immortalized on Chappelle Show, he became a caricature of a rock star that you could only see for yourself to believe and his friends and family tell the tales in Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James (2021).