Rick james movie biography of john

Before Rick James became a tabloid sensation, before Dave Chapelle’s cocaine-loving caricature, long before the women and the prison stints, before he feuded with Prince and sold drugs to George Clinton, back, all the way back to the early 1960s, Rick James was just a kid.

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It’s hard to picture him like that, isn’t it? That’s because somewhere between signature lyrics like, “She's a very kinky girl // the kind you don't take home to mother” and the viral catchphrase “I’m Rick James, bitch!” James, morphed from man to myth; his life reduced to a cautionary tale about excess and addiction.

Bitchin, a new documentary about the artist that airs tonight on Showtime, revisits in tremendous detail Rick James’s early years as a draft-dodging teenager in Buffalo, New York and Toronto, Canada. In its most interesting moments, Bitchin’ reminds its viewers that James’s life extended well beyond the ou