Yes, I kid - I kid because I love. So what if the Super Freak doesn't exactly give Proust a run for his money? Confessions is a hoot and a half because James lays it all out in quick, sharp prose, without any sort of filtering whatsoever. Result? In every single word, you can hear the guy loud and clear. Like having him over for dinner and drinks - before the evening starts to devolve when Mister Special Vibe decides it's time to call over a few "friends," of course.

Like many, my first introduction to James was through the rubberband funk of "Super Freak," that ubiquitous 1981 ass-shaker that launched the leather-lovin' braided one into the national consciousness in a shower of sequin glitter and a stomp of knee-high boots. I'm not sure where or when I heard it first - quite possibly on the car radio, while Mom drove me to swimming lessons, squeezed in between the Commodores' "Lady (You Bring Me Up)" and Kim Carnes's "Bette Davis Eyes," two other pop nuggets forever linked with riding in the back seat of a Plymouth K car, knees already knocking at the prospect of having to hold my breath underwater. Or maybe I was first blown away by "Super Freak" - and here's where I have a big gulp and fess up that I am no longer the young shitstarter I thought I always would be, sigh, as this memory will surely prove - via the rapturous head-swinging and alluring panther-like stalks of Solid Gold's number one dancer Darcel Wynne. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who remembers the hour-long sugar blast that was Solid Gold! Marilyn McCoo? Rex Smith? Dionne Warwick? The Solid Gold dancers, anyone? YouTube away if you need to re-live the magic, or if - sadly - you're a first-timer to the brilliance of the 1980s' finest Top 40 song-and-dance fiesta). I distinctly remember the impossibly long-legged diva dancer tearin' it up atop one of those signature cylindrical-furniture set pieces, swooshing her flowing locks in ecstatic circles as the Rickster pulled my ears about a "very kinky girl / the kind you won't take home to mother."

Whatever my first exposure might have been, I was too young and clueless to really know what he was going on about. Still, at some level I knew there was something a bit tantalizingly lurid about the son. Sure, I might not have yet fully grasped the scope of the word nasty, but damn it I knew that's exactly what this was…nasty. In retrospect, it's still quite the curious chart-topping anomaly when you consider some of the other hits of that year: Sheena Easton's "Morning Train," Air Supply's "Every Woman In the World," Hall & Oates' "Kiss On My List." Cripes! Can you say "sore thumb"?

I didn't buy the album till much later, but Street Songs (Motown) - James's breakthrough release featuring "Super Freak" - remains a pivotal funk album from the '80s, sounding much more raw and organic than the bulk of similarly labeled stuff that surfaced over the remainder of the decade. Funk's embrace of new wavey synths and drum machines and whatnot certainly had its success stories early on - y'know, the Gap Band, Zapp, Cameo off and on - but unfortunately there was also a lot of watered-down pap passing itself off as funk that really belonged in the same category as Phil Collins's "Sussudio."

Not so for Rick…or, not yet, anyway. We won't go into the sordid affair of his woefully pallid, glaringly unfunky Eddie Murphy collaboration, "Party All the Time." Actually, that whole business was so deliciously wack that I'd be doing a bit of a disservice to pass it by, but I'll save it for later in favor of throwing some praise upon one of Mr. James's finest moments. Every guy and girl who likes to shake it should have a copy of Street Songs at the ready, seriously. Yes, with its track five position on the album, "Super Freak" is undeniably the eagerly awaited cork-pop of the champagne bottle, but the whole slab of wax (or plastic, if you prefer) is pure unbridled bacchanalia. Truth be told, my favorite track isn't even that universal number one, but instead it goes to synth-squiggling album opener "Give It to Me Baby" (hmmm, wonder what that "it" he's asking for could be). Such an authoritative bassline, helped along by a beat which can only be describe as ass-smacking. Tasty horns, too. The guy sure could rock the white suit-with-handkerchief combo, couldn't he:

Street Songs wasn't just some artistic one-off. Sure, it's the album which usually gets first mention, but James had quite the impressive career before his serious commitment to crack greased the wheels of irrelevance and self-parody. His 1978 debut, Come Get It! (also Motown), made for a grand announcement of the arrival of a new player in funk, particularly with the under-the-disco-mirrorball slink of "Mary Jane," perhaps the finest celebration of the ole giggly weed to ever blast the hallowed halls of Studio 54.

Its follow-up, Bustin' out of L Seven (Motown), remains a crate-digger's delight. Lacking a sure-thing hit like "Mary Jane," the album shamefully went out of print despite offering equally captivating soulful funk, albeit with less of a disco flavor than on the debut. James could be one hell of a collaborator as well - witness his championing of vocal powerhouse Teena Marie, with whom he worked extensively over the years. Their shining hour? "I'm a Sucker for Your Love," from Teena's Wild & Peaceful (Gordy), of course: a disco-popping strut of a duet helped along by wonderfully cartoony backing vocals which would make George Clinton proud. Couldn't find a video, sigh, but I must urge all of the soulful-diva lovers in the house to run out and hunt themselves a copy of this song, as it is perhaps the most curiously colored feather in the elegantly plumed caps of either artist involved…

And the opposite, you ask? Ah, an easy one: "Party All the Time," no doubt. I mean, really: what were they thinking? I hadn't heard this for a few years, thankfully enough, but then just last week I was rudely yanked from such sonic ignorance when the sorry little morsel of funk-anemia came pumping over a coffeehouse sound system as part of the barista's "irony mix." (Tellingly, it was sandwiched by Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind" and, yes, Phil Collins's "Sussudio".) Proceed at your own peril:

Now, if that didn't leave a bad enough taste in your mouth, you'll surely get one from James's anecdotes about Eddie Murphy's reasons for picking James over Prince for the role of producer of his record: apparently Murphy didn't want Prince involved over fears that Prince was, to quote the only occasionally funny comedian, "a faggot." Heartwarming, isn't it? I'd always wondered whether James might've been homophobic himself - mainly because of his questionable use of that same epithet in a bad-guy character in his song "Below the Funk (Pass the J)" - but his clear condemnation of Murphy for his bigotry in the book was a reassuring discovery.

And that's the best part of The Confessions Of Rick James - he dishes on everybody from start to finish! Take a quick trawl through the index and just feel your eyes widen with the possibilities. Dizzy Gillespie, Joni Mitchell, Dennis Hopper, Donny Osmond - yep, you heard it right. Mr. Squeaky Clean and Bondage Boy were good buddies. Osmond would trek on up to Buffalo all the time to hang out with James. In fact, they came pretty close to doing an album together.

What, you want me to top that? Just read the book already.