B, a veteran of London’s sound system scene who’d been dabbling in hip-hop (not nearly a household phrase in the late 1980s, especially in the UK), flipped a Larry Graham drum fill into a proto-jungle rhythm track, incorporated string stabs nodding to Chic and Gamble & Huff, and topped it off with rich piano chords and stop/start squelches owing to London’s quickly boiling-over house music craze. Wheeler’s vocal is perfect enough on its own, but B and Hooper surrounding it with elements from the past and present to predict the future turn the track into a classic. Jazzie B and Nellee Hooper’s production work burnishes her voice with a slight digital sheen, rendering Wheeler's passion slightly paranormal. Wheeler, a veteran of London’s lover’s rock scene since the late 1970s, had more than a decade of experience projecting soul not through volume, but via shading and tone, and she doesn’t sing those hooks as much as chant them like mantras. One (re-titled Keep on Movin’ in the U.S.), "Back to Life" is built around two mesmerizing vocal phrases from Caron Wheeler: "Back to life/ Back to reality" and "However do you want me/ However do you need me," which (as anyone who's been to a club or party over the last 25 years can tell you) take turns functioning as the song’s central hook. See also: Mary Jane Girls: " All Night Long" / Eddie Murphy: " Party All the Time"Ī remix of an a capella track at the end of Soul II Soul’s first LP Club Classics Vol. Rick was who he was, unapologetically crass, defiantly crude, and-back then, anyway-as alive as anybody ever was. While the sweat-soaked horns and pulse-quickening bassline of "Give It to Me Baby" feel a tad out of step with the mechanized precision of most early '80s funk, Rick was never the type to change with the times. Undeterred, James cajoles, hectors, begs all it seems to get him is a "say whaaaat?" Rick's persistence in the face of so much resistance verges on the predatory, but he makes enough show of being turned down, you get the sense he's poking a little fun at himself: the would-be lothario who can't seem to get the timing right. He just wants to love her, he pleads, but she's not having one bit of it.
James returns from a night out, half in the bag and looking to party, only to find his beloved half-asleep and fully annoyed. "Give It to Me Baby" is a song about Rick James' fundamental incompatibility with the non-Rick James lifestyle. To say the least, Rick James led a colorful life: a draft dodger, a failed pimp (too lenient, by his own admission), ex-bandmate of Neil Young and ex-lover of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Rick picked up the cup of life and proceeded to spill it all over the carpet. We'll never see the thing Rick pocketed Dalí's sketch, got stoned, went for a swim, and ruined it.
Dalí was supposedly so taken with Rick's appearance-he was one beautiful motherfucker back then-he insisted he draw him. Rick James met Salvador Dalí once, at a dinner party in Hawaii.
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