Super Freak by Peter Benjaminson

Author:Peter Benjaminson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2016-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

39

The Mob Comes Calling

Will all your money keep you from madness?

—“Down in the Hole,” Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (1980)

Now that Rick was a successful producer, the Mob reappeared in his life.

Levi Ruffin says Rick had a habit of telling ambitious youngsters who wanted to become recording artists that if they “got it together,” he’d introduce them to influential people in the recording industry and produce their records. Rick rarely followed through, however. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of making this promise to a young white man whose name Ruffin says he can’t remember. That young man’s father was in the Mob.

Subsequently, Ruffin says, a group of threatening-looking men arrived at Rick’s house early one morning and put him in a car. Then they drove over to Ruffin’s house and put him in the car as well, and took the two men to breakfast.

“It was like a fuckin’ movie,” Ruffin says. “This is about six o’clock in the morning, you’ve got these motherfuckers standin’ behind us with suits on, and this older gentleman is saying, ‘You owe my son a record, you gonna produce my son.’ I was sittin’ there scared to fucking death. Rick said ‘Fuck you,’ and we walked out. But we were shaking.”

In The Confessions of Rick James, Rick wrote that he acted more diplomatically than Ruffin’s account would indicate. Before the meeting ended, Rick said, he told the mafioso to call him the next morning. Then he stayed awake all night, and when the mobster called Rick merely told him, “Hey thanks for the offer, but I have to refuse.”

No revenge was taken on Rick as a result of this incident, which Ruffin calls “gangster shit.” Ruffin says, however, that as a result of this incident, he “realized this business ain’t worth a fuck, man. It’s all about the money. There’s too much money in the [record] business.”

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