Rick James, Jay & the Fire That Grooved

The Funk Chronicles

Let me lay it down for you plain — the Dave Chappelle bit? That wasn’t parody. That was scripture. Testament. Chapter-and-verse from the Book of Rick. Because when Rick James walked into a room — no matter if it was Studio 54 or some back-alley speakeasy in East L.A. — the air changed. The molecules got funked. Gravity dipped. Time loosened its belt and said, “I’ll sit this one out.”

It was 1981. Reagan was preaching morning in America while Rick was selling midnight in a bottle—velvet—lined, feather-drenched, sweat-soaked midnight. “Give It to Me Baby” was not just a hit. It was doctrine. That bassline could knock down walls. And when Rick walked into that West Hollywood club in full crimson leather with a boa that looked like it moulted off a disco phoenix? That wasn’t fashion. That was theatre. That was funk opera.

Then came the flame. Candle. Boa. Spark. Flash. Now, any other man-any lesser mortal—would’ve panicked, maybe squealed, maybe stopped the music. Not Rick. Rick looked the fire dead in the eye and funked through it. He baptized that boa in bubbly and shouted, “Fire and desire, baby!” like James Brown had just risen from the smoke. You don’t choreograph that. You live it.

Now shift scenes. Studio lights. Motown West. Enter Jay Beckenstein — Buffalo kid, smooth jazz prophet, soprano sax in hand, sleeves rolled. Jay walks into a world of incense, leather, and loose electricity. Rick greets him shirtless, suspenders dangling, with a baby-carrot blunt and a Cheshire grin.

“Play something sexy,” Rick says. “Make the girls take their tops off.”

Jay, being a proper jazz gent, tries a little spa vibe, some candlelight cruise. Rick stops him cold.

“Hell no. That ain’t it. I want strip club at 2AM, man. I want dollar bills in the air and somebody's uncle breakdancing in dress shoes.”

Jay gets it. Switches horns. Channels a little Maceo, a little Gato Barbieri after three shots of Crown Royal. The room gets hot. Rick starts hollering like he found the gospel inside a baritone lick. Nobody wrote it down. No charts. Just a groove so dirty it needed a shower and a lawyer.

Never made the record. Didn't chart. But word has it, Rick kept a reel-to-reel in his basement labelled: “Jay’s Freak Tape.” He’d play it at parties like it was a secret weapon — waving a joint like a conductor’s baton, yelling, “This the white boy with soul, y’all!”

Jay once said, “Rick didn’t speak in keys or scales. He spoke in vibe. In sweat. In cologne and neon.” And if you were in his orbit, you better come ready to burn — not out, but up.

Because Rick James wasn’t a man, he was a one-man solar flare in snakeskin boots.