23. Prince’s Other Feud
Prince’s beef with Michael Jackson was not his only one. Early in his rise, another feud developed between him and Rick James – although most of it was driven by James. A brilliant but seriously troubled artist who was eventually undone by his crippling addiction to drugs and alcohol, the Give it to Me Baby and Super Freak singer liked Prince when he was still a relative unknown. He brought him on as his opening act in a 1980 tour, but the admiration soon developed into a love-hate relationship, and then into a simmering feud.
Rick James was territorial, and he got mad when Prince began to copy 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**k I wanna do!’” Things got worse.