Very noir take on the Medusa legend. A fun watch.

After a few albums of unabashed celebration of the hedonistic Hollywood lifestyle, James took a different tack, trying to hook into the burgeoning anger of hip-hop along with some of the radical funk of George Clinton. Well, at least he tried that for the album cover. The music within is a different story. It's a lot of the same disposable dance beats from Glow with more political content thrown in. And the content is questionable. "Funk in America / Silly Little Man" is Rick's rambling, overloaded take on Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". Actually, this is really the only song on the record which is expressly political, but this is 1986 Rick James badly ripping off spoken word artists, and the effect is bizarre on so many levels. Any other political comments are sprinkled in bit lines around the record. Part of me wants to like this record because it's Rick James in denial over his obvious freefall mode and trying such a defiant move to boost his career, but there's no music here that's just fun to listen to, either, unlike past records.

By this time, Rick had his hands in a ton of different projects, so when Glow came out, it didn't exactly live up to its' title. If anything, this has to be the blinking Christmas lights of funk albums, and quite a few of the bulbs needed replacing. The pumped-up title track was the only arguable standout.

Cold Blooded contains some stunning moments, but more often than not, it reflects the problem the artist was having trying to simply to focus. And just because I use the word "stunning" I don't mean it in a good way. "U Bring The Freak Out" is a perfect example - the backing music is a cheap mechanized Prince imitation, driven by an oddly effective but dumb party chant-style chorus, and the message of the song blames his sleazy lifestyle on the groupies he regularly hooks up with. But there are quite a few winners here as well - "Ebony Eyes", the duet with Smokey Robinson, is fun overwrought R&B theater, and "P.I.M.P. the S.I.M.P." (with Grandmaster Flash) was one of his better social message songs. The duet with Billy Dee Williams "Tell Me (What You Want)" is just a boring-ass Isaac Hayes imitation. "New York Town" has that super-sleazy feel where he takes you to all of the night spots where all the drugs and money go down. As mentioned before, there are plenty of moments where James' talent gets through despite his flippant approach, but definitely more signs of trouble ahead.

There really isn't a huge leap from Street Songs or earlier Rick James albums to 1982's Throwin' Down, but from the ridiculously costumed look on the cover to the contents within, it's clear there's been a sea change. Up until now, his records had been a moderately fascinating contrast between serious musicianship and outrageous shock behavior, but now it's clear the latter behavior was coming to the forefront. That's not to say Throwin' Down is not worth hearing. It has many characteristics which drew people to his work in the first place, but the increase in opulence combined with an increasing lack of self-awareness becomes hard not to notice. Nearly all of the same structural moves were carried over from the previous record (you even get a Teena Marie duet, "Happy", which is one of the better tracks from the record) but there is none of its' social relevance and authentic energy. Another notable track is the hyper-sexualized "She Blew My Mind (69 Times)". A few months later, Prince and the Revolution released "1999", and the world didn't really need Rick James after that. Still, despite the trappings, this is a decent Rick James record.