George Clinton will receive his star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame as part of this year’s group of honorees. Clinton will join Martha Reeves, The Black Eyed Peas, Ashanti, the late Nipsey Hussle, DJ Khaled, Avril Lavigne and Los Huracanes Del Norte. Each recipient will have their own individual ceremony later this year. Clinton will be portrayed by Wiz Khalifa in the upcoming Spinning Gold biopic about Casablanca Records and its founder Neil Bogart. This weekend he and his  Parliament-Funkadelic crew will perform at Capital One City Parks Foundation Summerstage in New York City. 

A documentary about the life of Rick James is coming to Showtime soon. Sacha Jenkins has directed Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James. The film looks at James’s career and his triumph as the King of Punk-Funk in the ’80s. There is rare performance footage, interviews with friends, colleagues and recorded interviews with James. “Super Freak,” “Mary Jane” and “Give It To Me Baby” were the hits that established his wild man image in pop culture. He also became just as known for the songs he wrote for Teena Marie, The Mary Jane Girls, Eddie Murphy, The Temptations and Smokey Robinson. By the early ’90s, James had faded away because of legal problems connected to his drug use. 

MC Hammer sampled “Super Freak” for his 1990 hit “U Can’t Touch This” and gave James his biggest presence on the charts after his career peaked. 

In 2004 a new generation was introduced to him thanks to Charlie Murphy’s celebrity stories on Chappelle’s Show. Rick James on Dave Chappelle became its own moment (I’m Rick James B*&+&!) and just as he became popular again he passed later that year. 

Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James premiered at the Tribeca Festival Tuesday. Showtime purchased the rights to the film but no air date has been revealed. 

 

James Brown recorded “The Boss” for the Black Caesar soundtrack in 1973. Larry Cohen directed the movie that starred former football star Fred Williamson as the head of a Black crime syndicate. Brown’s theme song was quickly recognized for its funky guitar and ostentatious horns that fit Williamson’s gait, status and attitude as gangster Tommy Gibbs.  The music for Black Caesar was an important stage in Brown’s pioneering of funk music and a future bedrock for hip-hop. Pete Rock, Madlib and Kendrick Lamar are a handful of endless artists to sample “The Boss” from Brown’s catalog. Black Caesar was one of three blaxploitation film soundtracks Brown created in the ’70s which was also his last era of innovation. By the ’80s his sound stood firmly on its previous foundations but had mellowed out as hip-hop took his blueprint into the next phase. Brown had one more important experience with soundtracks when he recorded “Living In America” for the 1985 movie Rocky IV. The song was Brown’s last big hit and he also made an appearance and performed it in the film. The late Chadwick Boseman played Brown after his 2006 passing in the 2014 movie Get On Up. Mick Jagger produced the Alex Gibney-directed documentary Mr. Dynamite: The Rise Of James Brown which also released in 2014. 

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Who will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame’s 2021 class?