Prince Rick James Super Freak 1999

Rick James Super Freak Album: Street Songs (1981)
Prince 1999 Album: 1999 (1983)

Explaining how he came up with Super Freak, James he told Musician magazine in 1983: "I wanted to write a silly song. I was in the studio and everything else for the album (Street Songs) was done. I just put 'Super Freak' together really quickly. I wanted a silly song that had a bit of new wave texture to it. So I just came up with this silly little lick and expounded on it. I came up with the bass part first. Then I put a guitar on it and keyboards, doing the 'ehh ehh,' silly keyboard part. Then I found a tuning on my Oberheim OB-Xa that I'd been wanting to use for a long time - it sounds like ghosts. And I put a very operatic vocal structure on it 'cause I'm really into opera and classical music. You probably hear a lot of that in my music. So I put (sings in a deep voice) 'She's all right'; very operatic, sort of funny, stuff."

"Super Freak" was the biggest pop hit for Rick James, reaching #16 in the US. He had just modest success on the Hot 100 but had four #1 R&B hits and secured a legend as a prolific producer and innovator of funk. The big R&B hit from the album was "Give It to Me Baby"; "Super Freak" made #3.

Super Freak was released on Motown Records, and featured backup vocals by The Temptations, something James points out in the song when he screams: "Tempations sing." One of their members, Melvin Franklin, was Rick James' uncle.

Super Freak was released in the summer of 1981, around the time MTV went on the air. With director Nick Saxton, James made videos for "Give It To Me Baby" and "Super Freak," hoping to get them on the network. At the time, however, MTV refused to play videos by black artists, and they rejected them, continuing to feed America a steady stream of rock and EuroPop. This refusal to play black music was a holdover from radio station programming, where conventional wisdom was that you would lose your white listeners if you played black music. The first black artist to make MTV with a new song was Musical Youth, who despite adapting a song about smoking marijuana, was a lot less scary to network executives than the glitter-vested James singing about kinky sex. This color barrier was shattered by Michael Jackson, who brought a new sound and sophistication to the network with the videos for his Thriller album.

Even though the network didn't play this video, Rick James eventually made peace with MTV and put their co-founder, Les Garland, in the video for Eddie Murphy's song "Party All the Time," which James produced. As for exactly why MTV passed on "Super Freak," their director of acquisitions, Carolyn Baker, explained in the book I Want My MTV: "It wasn't MTV that turned down 'Super Freak.' It was me. I tuned it down. You know why? Because there were half-naked women in it, and it was a piece of crap. As a black woman, I did not want that representing my people as the first black video on MTV."

Over the years, the word "freak" became very popular in hip-hop and R&B lyrics. It's a versatile word that can be used as both a verb ("Freak Me") and a noun ("The Freaks Come Out At Night"). Use of the word peaked in the mid-'90s with the phrase, "Get your freak on."

MC Hammer sampled the famous bass line for his biggest hit, "U Can't Touch This." James filed suit against Hammer, which ended in an out-of-court settlement giving James a songwriting credit on the track. This resulted in James' only Grammy Award when "U Can't Touch This" won in 1991 for Best R&B Song.

The Dutch dance duo The Beatfreakz covered this in 2006. Their version reached #7 in the UK, the first time this song charted in Britain as Rick James original version wasn't a hit there.

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, the little girl Olive does an inappropriate dance to Super Freak in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant.

Super Freak also shows up in these movies:

A Madea Family Funeral (2019)
Love, Simon (2018)
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Suicide Squad (2016)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins (2008)
Norbit (2007)
American Dreamz (2006)
Biggie and Tupac (2002)
Batman Returns (1992)
Doctor Detroit (1983)

And in these TV shows:

Scandal ("It's Handled" - 2013)
The Simpsons (Treehouse of Horror XXIV - 2013; Treehouse of Horror X - 1999)
Ugly Betty ("Derailed" - 2007)
Two and a Half Men ("Squab, Squab, Squab, Squab, Squab" - 2005)
Gilmore Girls ("We Got Us a Pippi Virgin" - 2004)
King of the Hill ("Returning Japanese" - 2002)
Boy Meets World ("Shallow Boy" - 1996)
In Living Color ("The Black Man's Guide to Understanding the Black Woman" - 1990)
The A-Team ("The Heart of Rock N' Roll" - 1985) >>
When James implores, "Blow, Danny!," he's talking to his sax player Daniel LeMelle just before his solo.
A Los Angeles DJ named Alonzo Miller is credited as a writer on this track along with James. Miller worked on the lyrics with James, helping tone them down so the song had a better chance of getting airplay and crossing over to a white audience. Miller was able to get the song played at the station where he worked, KACE.

Written in 1982 during the height of the Cold War, this party jam has a much deeper meaning, as Prince addresses fears of a nuclear Armageddon. Under the Reagan administration, the United States was stockpiling nuclear weapons and taking a hawkish stance against the Soviet Union, which he referred to as the "Evil Empire."

This scared a lot of people, and Prince voices their concerns:

Everybody's got a bomb
We could all die any day

He's far more optimistic though, responding by making the point that we should enjoy whatever time we have on earth while we still can, even if it all ends by the year 2000:

But before I'll let that happen
I'll dance my life away

In this purple-skied world, life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last.
Prince doesn't sing on this track until the third line. The first lead vocal is by backup singer Lisa Coleman:

I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray

Next up is guitarist Dez Dickerson, who sings:

But when I woke up this mornin'
Coulda sworn it was judgment day

Prince takes the next part:

The sky was all purple
There were people running everywhere

All three voices come in on the next line:

Trying to run from the destruction
You know I didn't even care

Originally, Prince envisioned 1999 as a 3-part harmony with Coleman, Dickerson and himself, and they sang it all together. Prince later decided to split up the tracks, letting each voice solo on a line (this is something Stevie Wonder did on "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life"). The second verse follows this same pattern, dividing the vocals amongst the three singers.

Prince gave a rare interview in 1999 when he spoke with Larry King on CNN. More surprisingly, he explained the meaning behind 1999. Said Prince: "We were sitting around watching a special about 1999, and a lot of people were talking about the year and speculating on what was going to happen. And I just found it real ironic how everyone that was around me whom I thought to be very optimistic people were dreading those days, and I always knew I'd be cool. I never felt like this was going to be a rough time for me. I knew that there were going to be rough times for the Earth because of this system is based in entropy, and it's pretty much headed in a certain direction. So I just wanted to write something that gave hope, and what I find is people listen to it. And no matter where we are in the world, I always get the same type of response from them."

When the new millennium approached, there was a great deal of concern over the "Y2K Bug," since programmers didn't always account for the change to 2000 in their code. There was minimal impact: When the new year hit, we still had dial tones and internet access, and no major networks were compromised. Prince had no fears. "I don't worry about too much anyway," he told King.

Prince was a creative volcano during the time he created this song. After completing a tour for his fourth album, Controversy, in March 1982, he set to work on 1999, but also produced albums for The Time (What Time Is It?) and for the female trio he put together, Vanity 6. Those albums were released in the summer, and in September, "1999" was released as a single. The album followed a month later, and in November, he launched a tour. By the end of the tour in April 1983, the second single, "Little Red Corvette," was climbing the charts and his videos were getting airplay on MTV. With 1999 on its way to selling over 4 million copies, Prince had crossed the threshold into superstardom.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, when Prince recorded this track, he would go all day and all night without rest, and turn down food since he felt eating would make him sleepy.

Prince grew up in a household that adhered to the Seventh-day Adventist faith, which believes in the Book of Revelations and the apocalypse that will lead to the return of Christ. Prince rejected the religion as "based in fear," and in this song, he puts his own spin on the end-of-the-world prophesy, turning it into a party.

Leading up to his pay-per-view that aired New Year's Eve 1999, Prince said it would be the last time he performed the song. The special a broadcast of a concert held on December 18 at his Paisley Park Studios, with some additional footage from a show by Morris Day & The Time recorded there the night before. "1999" was the last song in the set, which was later released on video as Rave Un2 The Year 2000.

Prince did retire the song, but brought it back in 2007 for his Super Bowl halftime show performance and kept it in many of his subsequent setlists.

A fourth vocalist appears on this song, most notably on the line, "Got a lion in my pocket, and baby he's ready to roar"). That's Jill Jones, who was a backup singer for Teena Marie before teaming up with Prince. She released a self-titled solo album in 1987 on Prince's Paisley Park label. She also appeared in Prince's movies Purple Rain and Graffiti Bridge.
Prince re-recorded this song in 1998 after leaving Warner Bros. Records, who retained rights to the original recording. Prince had serious beef with Warner Brothers when he found out they owned his masters, so he re-recorded this song in an attempt to keep them from profiting from the original version as the titular year approached. The new version reached #40 US at the beginning of 1999.

On January 16, 1999, the song spent a week on the Hot 100 at #40, thus making it the only entry to appear on the US singles chart in the year synonymous with its title. Here are four others with the year they charted in brackets:

James Blunt "1973" (2007)
Smashing Pumpkins "1979" (1996) Spirit "1984" (1970)
Bowling for Soup "1985" (2007)

Also, Estelle's 1980 was a #14 hit in the UK in 2004.

Many listeners, including Phil Collins, have compared this song to Collins' similar-sounding "Sussudio," released three years later. Collins admitted he was a big Prince fan and often listened to the 1999 album while on tour.
The song only reached #44 in the US when it was first released, but after "Little Red Corvette" took off, the song was re-released, and this time it landed at #12.

Following Prince's death, "1999" re-charted on the Billboard Hot 100 at #27, making it the first song to reach the Top 40 in three different decades ('80s, '90s, '10s) with the same version. "Bohemian Rhapsody" became the second song to reach this milestone when it charted a third time in 2018 following the release of the movie of the same name (its second chart run came in 1992 following its inclusion in Wayne's World).

James had particular disdain for The High Priest of Pop and accused him of stealing his moves during their joint Fire It Up tour, which would later be known as the Battle of Funk, according to James' 2014 autobiography, Glow. Per MassLive, James also criticized Prince's music, saying, "I can't believe people are gullible enough to buy Prince's jive records," according to an interview with Rolling Stone, adding, "You can't take his music seriously." Prince wasn't especially fond of James either and refused to sign an autograph for James' mother, which almost prompted an actual fight between the two musicians.

During an American Music Awards aftershow in 1982, James' mom was in attendance and asked Prince for his autograph when she saw him backstage since she was a huge fan. According to Glow, Prince ignored her and turned around and walked away, refusing to sign anything for her.

James got wind of Prince's petty refusal and went to fight him about it. However, no punches were ever thrown, since James recalls Prince's manager stepped in and made Prince apologize. "I was a little disappointed 'cause I really did wanna kick his ass," James wrote.

While that night almost brought the musicians' feud to a violent turn, Prince did James dirty in another way that night. During that same aftershow, Prince met James' ex, Denise Matthews, who would become Prince's girlfriend and protege under the stage name Vanity, as told in Prince FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Purple Reign. According to the book's author, Arthur Lizie, James called Prince "a little b**ch" whenever possible after that night.

Rick James said it best: "Cocaine is a hell of a drug." It's also a hellfire of a drug in that Richard Pryor set himself on fire while freebasing the stuff in 1980, and 10 years later James went up in flames during a freak crack accident. The latter incident happened shortly after an MC Hammer concert. James had recently ended a beef with Hammer, who infamously ripped off "Super Freak" to make "U Can't Touch This." Rather than rip the rapper, James got on stage with him.

One feel-good moment deserves another, and James thought it would feel good to smoke rocks. As described by his drug supplier Rayce Newman, things went awry when James set a plate ablaze in an attempt to burn smokable crack pipe residues. While walking with the flaming plate he dropped it and his robe caught on fire. The flames raced up his robe, spreading to his sleeves. Newman extinguished them with a bedspread and James, "still smoldering, picked up the plate as if nothing had happened and took it into his room."

As James described in his autobiography, while staying at the Los Angeles home of Hall of Fame rocker Stephen Stills, he awakened to find "a young dude sitting on the floor in the lotus position." That marked "the start of the extreme strangeness." That strange man turned out to be Morrison, and blood was dripping from his wrist. The Lizard King just marveled at it, remarking, "Isn't the blood beautiful? Isn't that the deepest red you've ever seen?" James alerted Stills, who stemmed the bleeding and introduced the musicians.

Morrison picked James' brain about Motown and read a poem about "the dead angels of history returning as groupies." James appreciated his trippy poetry but considered Morrison a terrible singer. They attempted a group trip to Disneyland but were denied entry. However, James went on a different trip when Morrison tricked him into taking LSD by passing it off as mint. Along the way James learned something valuable from the Lizard King: a singer's persona is just as important as their voice.