Rick James Laughed at Michael Jackson’s Music — 4 Minutes Later, 300 People Were on Their Feet D
Michael Jackson is standing backstage at the Soul Train Music Awards when Rick James walks over, looks him up and down, and laughs. Says, “That pop music of yours ain’t real soul brother.” What Michael does in the next moment doesn’t just silence the room. It creates a performance that gets talked about in music circles for the next 40 years. Los Angeles, January 1981.
Saturday evening, the Shrine Auditorium on Jefferson Boulevard. Not the Grammys, not the American Music Awards. This is Soul Train, the show created by Don Cornelius. The most important night in black music. The night where the community comes together to celebrate its own on its own terms. Where authenticity matters more than album sales.
Where you can’t fake your way through the crowd because this audience knows the difference between real and manufactured, between soul and spectacle. The shrine holds six. 300 people tonight. It’s packed every seat, filled every aisle, crowded the air thick with perfume and cigarette smoke, and the electric anticipation of people who came dressed to be seen and ready to be moved.
Michael Jackson stands backstage, 22 years old, wearing a single sequined glove on his left hand, a black military jacket with gold epolettes, red shirt underneath, black trousers with the ankle hem just high enough to show his white socks when he moves. His hair is freshly Jerry curled. His face is young, almost boyish. Still the face that launched the Jackson 5. Still the face of the kid who’s saying, “I want you back.
” at age 11 and made the whole world stop what they were doing and just listen. But tonight is different. Tonight, Michael is no longer the kid. Nobody is calling him little Michael tonight. He is the artist who released Off-the-Wall 2 years ago. The album that sold 7 million copies.
The album that produced four top 10 hits, the first solo album in history. to do that. Four top 10 singles from one album. Nobody had ever done it before. Michael did it quietly without announcing it was going to happen. Just did it the way he did. Everything with complete total obsessive dedication to the work. But in certain circles in the old guard of black music, there are whispers questions about whether Michael is still truly one of them.
Or whether he has crossed over too much, gone too pop, too white, too commercial, too safe. The whispers say he’s not soul anymore. Rick James stands nearby and he is everything Michael is not. In this moment loud where Michael is quiet large where Michael is lean draped in velvet and fur and chains that catch the light from every angle. His hair and braids his confidence that of a man who has never once doubted himself in any room he released.
Street songs the previous year it went triple platinum. It made him the biggest name in funk. The hottest thing in black radio. His hit super freak had been everywhere. Every party, every car radio, every club from Detroit to Los Angeles. Rick James walks through rooms like he owns them because in his mind he does.
Rick sees Michael standing quietly in the wing watching the stage, watching the performers studying, not socializing the way Michael always studies everything he sees. A body of knowledge in every movement he watches. Rick walks over not to connect, not to congratulate, just to talk the way a man talks when he’s already decided what he thinks about you. Rick says, “Michael, you nervous?” His voice is carrying loud enough for the people around them to hear.
Not by accident, by design. Rick is a performer, even when he’s not performing. Michael says no, he’s not nervous. Rick nods slowly, says, “You should relax, man. It’s your people tonight. Although, he pauses just long enough to make the pause do work. I don’t know how much of your people they still are after all that pop music you’ve been making.” He says, “Pop music.
The way you say a word that doesn’t belong in your mouth. The way you say a word that doesn’t belong in your mouth. The way you say something that doesn’t quite deserve to be in the same sentence as soul. The people nearby go quiet. The assistants, the other artists, the handlers, the makeup people, all of them feel the weight of what was just said. Feel the challenge beneath the joke. Rick is smiling when he says it.
Smiling the way people smile when they want to say something and then claim they were only kidding if the landing goes wrong. Michael looks at Rick for a moment. His expression doesn’t change. Not angry, not hurt, not defensive, just present the same quality of attention he brings to watching performers on stage.
Bringing it now to this man in front of him, he says simply, “Let the audience decide.” Rick laughs says, “Oh, they’ll decide.” All right, says they always do. And walks away back toward his entourage, back toward the noise and the laughter and the velvet and the fur and the absolute certainty that he is exactly where he belongs. But those three words, Michael said, “Let the audience decide they stay in the air backstage like a frequency everyone can feel, but not everyone can name.” The show moves forward.
Don Cornelius, smooth as silk, working the crowd the way only Don Cornelius can, working it. Like the crowd is an instrument, and he’s been playing it his whole life. Performers go on and off the stage. The audience responds with exactly the right level of enthusiasm for each one politely. For some, genuinely, for others, the shrine is a sophisticated crowd. They give you what you earn, nothing more.
Rick James performs super freak. He owns it completely. The band is tight. The groove is locked. The crowd responds with everything. They have women in the front rows screaming, men nodding with the kind of approval that means something here. Rick James works the stage like a man collecting what’s already his. He finishes the crowd, erupts, he takes a bow with the certainty of a man who already knew that was going to happen.
Backstage, he finds Michael again, still standing calmly, still watching, still waiting. Rick says, “That’s what soul sounds like. Little brother like affection. Little brother like affection, little brother like hierarchy, like reminder.” Michael just nods. Says, “Yes, you were great. No sarcasm, no edge, just the truth.” Rick was great. And Michael can acknowledge truth even when it comes from someone trying to diminish him.
Then the announcement comes. Michael Jackson to the stage. 300 people in the backstage area. The crew, the performers, the handlers, the production team, all of them pausing, all of them watching, the monitor, all of them wondering whether Michael is going to give them a performance or whether he’s going to give them a moment. Those are different things. A performance is what you rehearsed.
A moment is what happens when preparation meets something alive, something in the room, something you can’t plan for. Michael walks to the stage. He doesn’t run, doesn’t bounce, doesn’t shake hands with the audience before he starts. He just walks to his mark and stops standing completely still. The band starts the opening notes of Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough. The groove drops.
The bass comes in deep and locked. And for just one second before Michael moves, there is silence inside the sound. A pocket of pure anticipation, every person in that auditorium holding something waiting. Then Michael moves. Not a step, not a gesture. A full complete total commitment to movement.
The way a match commits to flame all at once. And suddenly the thing that was potential is now fire his feet. Find rhythms inside rhythms. His body finds angles that shouldn’t be comfortable but look inevitable. The white socks catch every light.
His right hand shoots out index finger pointing to somewhere only he can see. and the Shrine Auditorium, which has seen everything, which cannot be surprised, which has had every great performer on that stage since 1971. The Shrine Auditorium loses its mind. The sound is not applause. It is recognition.
It is a crowd of people who know what they’re looking at, saying, “Yes, we see you. We recognize you. This is real. This is ours. This belongs to us.” The people who said Michael had gone pop were in that room. Watching pop is what you call something when you can’t explain why it works. When the thing transcending category makes you uncomfortable. When something can be too many things at once.
Too black, too white, too fast, too street, too polished, too everything at the same time. Michael Jackson was all of those things simultaneously, and none of them fully. And the crowd at the Shrine Auditorium understood it. The way bodies understand rhythm before the mind. He performs three songs.
Don’t stop till you get enough rock with you. She’s out of my life. Three different worlds, three different temperatures, three different demands on an audience, and he delivers all three with the same terrifying complete precision. The crowd rides every transition like they knew it was coming, like their bodies were waiting for it. Backstage, Rick James is watching the monitor.
The fur and velvet still there, the chain still catching light. But something has changed in his posture. Something has shifted in the way he’s standing. The certainty is still there. but quieter now, making room for something else. The way you make room for something you didn’t expect to need to make room for. Michael finishes the crowd doesn’t stop.
The applause continues past the point where applause is polite into the territory where it becomes a statement into the kind of response that says something happened here that we will still be talking about next week, next year, in 10 years from now. Michael walks off stage back to the same place he was standing before, like he never left.
like the performance was just a fact that needed to happen and now it has happened and he is back to being who he was. His breathing is slightly elevated. That’s the only evidence that he just moved in ways that most human bodies cannot manage for four sustained minutes.
Rick James is standing there when Michael returns. Doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just looks at him then says quiet this time not performing for anyone else. Just two musicians in a corridor. Just the truth between them. says, “Where did that come from?” Michael looks at him, says, “Same place yours comes from.
” Rick shakes his head, says, “No, it doesn’t. It comes from somewhere different. I don’t know where that is.” Michael says, “I’ve been working on it since I was 4 years old.” Rick says, “I know.” Says, “I knew that.” Says, “I was testing something.” Michael says, “What were you testing something?” Michael says, “What were you testing?” Rick takes a moment.
Says, “Whether you knew it, too.” Says, “Whether you believed it?” says, “A lot of people in this industry have real talent and they stop believing in it when the wrong person tells them it isn’t real.” Says, “I’ve seen it happen a hundred times.” Says, “Someone says the wrong word and suddenly the artist starts performing for the person who doubted them instead of for the music.
” Michael looks at him for a long time, then says, “I was never performing for you.” Rick James laughs. The real laugh, not the performing one, says, “No, you weren’t.” Says, “That’s the whole thing. That’s everything right there. Says, “I’ve been in this business long enough to know the difference between someone performing for the crowd and someone performing for the music you were performing for the music.
” Says, “You know what that is?” Michael says, “What?” Rick says, “That’s soul brother says. That’s exactly what soul is.” Says, “It has nothing to do with genre. Has nothing to do with whether a white station plays. It has nothing to do with how it’s categorized. It’s about whether the music is the most important thing in the room when you’re playing it.
Says, “When you were out there, the music was the most important thing in that room.” Michael says, “Yes.” Rick says, “Then don’t let anyone tell you different.” Says, “Not critics, not industry people, not me.” They stand there for a moment. Two men who came at each other sideways finding something more useful than either of them was looking for.
Don Cornelius passes by, looks at both of them, says, “Whatever you two are working out, I’d pay to watch it.” And keeps moving. The industry noticed that night the performance got talked about. The way performances get talked about when they shift something, when they move a marker, when they establish something that didn’t exist as clearly before Michael Jackson was already successful, already proven, already undeniable.
But that night at the shrine, something settled into place. Something that had been questioned got answered, not with words, with movement, with music, with the thing itself. One year later, Michael goes into the studio with Quincy Jones to record Thriller, the album that will become the best-selling album in human history. The album that will put Michael Jackson into a category no other artist occupies.
Not before, not after he will think about that night backstage. Will think about Rick James asking where it comes from. Will think about his own answer. Same place yours comes from. Will understand that the answer is incomplete. That it comes from the same place and also from a different place.
and that the combination of those two truths is what makes it impossible to categorize and therefore impossible to contain. Rick James will do interviews for the rest of his career. Talk about the musicians he admires, the artists who changed something in him. There are not many names on that list, but one of them appears in almost every interview. One of them he returns to again and again.
He says, “Michael Jackson showed me something I thought I already knew. He showed me that soul isn’t a sound. It’s a commitment. He showed me that the deepest commitment to the music sounds like freedom. That’s the deepest commitment to the music sounds like freedom. That’s the paradox. That’s the whole thing right there. The more completely you belong to the music.
What Rick James said to Michael backstage was designed to plant doubt, to make him perform for the wrong reason, to turn the art into a defense. And Michael refused. That refusal wasn’t loud, wasn’t hostile, wasn’t even visible. It was just a 22-year-old man standing quietly waiting to go on stage knowing what he knew. And that certainty, the certainty that couldn’t be argued with, couldn’t be mocked, couldn’t be shaken because it lived somewhere.
Doubt couldn’t reach. That is what 300 people witnessed that Saturday night in Los Angeles. That is what the shrine auditorium felt when the applause went past polite into something that sounded like recognition. That is what Rick James understood when he watched the monitor and felt the velvet, “Who in your life is Rick James right now? who is testing you with the wrong word, with the casual dismissal, with the question designed to make you perform for the doubt instead of for the work.
And when that happens, do you defend yourself? Do you argue? Do you try to prove it in words? Or do you go on stage and let the music answer because the music always answers better than you can? The music says the thing that lives below the place where other people’s opinions can reach.
Michael understood that at 22 years old, standing in a corridor at the Shrine Auditorium, three words, let the audience decide. And then he walked out and proved that some things don’t need defending.
