he threw shade at Alicia Keys lol
Now what’s going on with you and Alicia Keys?
Rick James: “I don’t know. She calls her first album, ‘Songs In A Minor,’ and all of the songs are in E and D. I don’t think she knows her grammatical skill, personally. I think she’s ‘The Gong Show.’ When she did the Donny Hathaway song in front of millions of people and f@#%ed it up, that just goes to show you right there what’s going on…What about Rachelle Ferrell, or Lalah Hathaway? What about all these serious bytches that can really sing? Alicia Keys? Because Clive Davis eats the best See’s Candies and gives the best whatever, and wants to show Whitney [Houston] that she ain’t s@#%, yeah, he’s going to put his effort in Alicia Keys.”
Well, Alicia is playing the piano…
Rick James: “Yeah, in a key of A flat, right? Try playing one of those songs in A flat.”
The album is called “A Minor”! “A Minor, A Flat…we call it A Flat. A Minor -- my ass. Minor is giving her an A-Plus”. Well, she is a minor.
You don’t cut these new kids no slack, huh?
Rick James: “I got a 13 year old girl in Buffalo who will take Alicia Keys eat her up and spit her out like a suppository. I’m not saying her name because she’s underage, number one, and her mother is a friend and won’t let her get in the business because she’s in church.”
had beef with Prince
The first time I saw Prince and his band I felt sorry for him. Here’s this little dude wearing hi-heels, playing this New Wave Rock & Roll, not moving or anything on stage, just standing there wearing this
trench coat. Then at the end of his set he’d take off his
trench coat and he’d be wearing little girl’s bloomers. I just died. The guys in the audience just booed the poor thing to death.
I always felt our competition was healthy, although I was jealous when he started getting big—more than jealous—I was pissed, because here was this little short ego’d-out fukker who I had a feeling didn’t like people of his own race and wanted to be white and taller. I was pissed because I felt his songs about incest with his sister and a lot his stuff wasn’t real, and it was dangerous for the race. A writer and a recording artist has to be careful with what they write. We are obligated to at least be real. There have been enough motherfukkers running around talking about devil-worship or gangster rap, whereas I always felt that black people had to be a little more concerned with the influence they had on younger generations. All the power he had became scary when you think of it being in his little fukked up hands. When he wrote “Controversy,” “Am I Black, Am I White, Am I Straight, Am I Gay?” me and my band would say “Who Gives a fukk?” I never saw Prince hang with a Brother or a Sister. In fact his whole demeanor was like that of a short uppity white boy. He would sing songs like “Give Head Till Your Red.” I mean that motherfukker probably never gave head in his life.