I’m Dead, Bitch

Or

Cold-Blooded

Or

Get the Funk Out

Funk legend Rick James has died of natural causes at the age of 56. That meaning that a heart incredibly scarred by an out-of-control cocaine habit and a body infested with every known venereal disease after decades of whoring around will naturally give out prematurely. Best known for the 1981 hit Super Freak, James was definitely not the kind you brought home to mother. At one point in the 1980s, he had a $10,000-to-$15,000 a week cocaine habit, then in 1991, James tied a woman to a chair, burned her with a hot crack pipe and forced her to perform sex acts, then was arrested again a year later for a less interesting assault. His later years have been a series of dubious comebacks. MC Hammer ripped off the bass line from Super Freak for his 1990 hit U Can’t Touch this, earning a Grammy for Best R & B song for James and Hammer. A stroke in 1997 derailed his comeback tour after his final album. He’s probably best known today as a Dave Chappelle punch line: “I’m Rick James, bitch.”