21. A Royal Grudge: Prince and the King of Punk-Funk
Early in his rise, Prince had a grudge going on with Rick James – although most of it was driven by James, AKA the King of Punk-Funk. A brilliant but seriously troubled artist who was eventually undone by a crippling addiction to drugs and alcohol, the Super Freak and Give it to Me Baby singer liked Prince when he was still a relative unknown. He had him perform as his opening act in a 1980 tour, but the admiration soon developed into a love-hate relationship, and then into a growing grudge.
Rick James was territorial, and grew upset when Prince copied some of his concert moves. As James’ manager put it: “Rick would go ooh-ooh!, and his audience would go crazy every time he would do that, and Prince would start doing the ooh-ooh! before Rick would come out. Rick was like, ‘Man, you can’t do that ooh-ooh! stuff, that’s what I do!’ And Prince was like, ‘Dude, you don’t have a monopoly on ooh-ooh! I can do what the f-u-c-k I wanna do!’” It got worse.
