# The Buffalo Funk *A Biography of Rick James* — Legendary Biographies No. 004 - **Subject:** James Ambrose Johnson Jr. (Rick James) - **Written by:** Tariah Robinson - **Shelf:** Music / R&B & Soul - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 215 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 215 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-046-1) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Nadia Kerr (ISBN 979-8-90623-219-9) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/004-the-buffalo-funk.html ## About this book He was born James Ambrose Johnson Jr. in Buffalo, New York, on February 1, 1948, deserted the U.S. Navy at nineteen, fled to Toronto, played in the Mynah Birds with a kid named Neil Young, signed to Motown for Come Get It! in 1978, and proceeded to put Mary Jane (1978), Bustin' Out (1979), and Street Songs (1981) on the R&B chart for the better part of three years. Super Freak alone has been sampled across two generations of hip-hop. The 1981 Street Songs tour took $40 million on the road and put a punk-funk hat on the entire decade. Tariah Robinson's biography opens earlier and follows the arc with the documentary rigour the subject demands. The book traces the early Buffalo years, the AWOL escape to Canada, the Mynah Birds and the Greenwich Village years, the Motown signing, the long second act of Teena Marie collaborations and the Mary Jane Girls and Eddie Murphy's Party All the Time, the 1991 Linda Blair conviction and the 1996 release, the 2004 Chappelle's Show I'm Rick James sketch, and the death at fifty-six on August 6, 2004 of a cardiac event at his Burbank hilltop home. What emerges is a portrait of a punk-funk pioneer whose drug habits the rest of his peers caught up with in the 1980s and whose sound the two decades that followed have been mining ever since. ## Contents 1. Buffalo Child 2. The Mynah Birds 3. Wandering Years 4. Come Get It 5. Stone City 6. Super Freak 7. Prince and the War 8. Anatomy of Funk 9. The Fire Inside 10. The Pipe 11. The Crimes 12. Folsom 13. Aftermath 14. I'm Rick James 15. Last Sessions 16. August Sixth 17. The Sample 18. The Groove Remains ## Questions **Who is The Buffalo Funk about?** James Ambrose Johnson Jr. (Rick James). The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Buffalo Funk — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,875 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 62,500 words, 18 chapters, 215 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Born and raised in Detroit, Tariah Robinson began her career writing about the city's rich musical heritage. Her work as an R&B critic for Pitchfork and The Ringer established her as one of the careful chroniclers of late-1990s Black radio, focusing on the cultural impact of the era's production styles. Transitioning to book-length projects, she wrote The Buffalo Funk, The Marsh Harbour Charter, The West Adams Bullet, and The Note She Declined. These biographies examine the intersection of geography, community, and musical innovation across different decades. She lives in Detroit, where she collects vintage soul records and mentors high school journalists.