YMMV / James Brown

• Archive Panic: His discography is rather extensive; between the start of his career in 1953 and his death in 2006, he managed to put out a whopping 63 albums, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Many of his earliest albums featured endless instrumental versions and re-recordings of his hits (as was the industry practice at the time). Record Label Hip-O Select even spent a few years re-issuing every single one of his singles from 1956 to 1979, culminating in an 11 volume set. Star Time is by far the best buy to start off with, featuring four CDs full of Brown's greatest and most essential hits— the fact that it spans nearly five hours across all four discs is more than telling.
• Audience-Alienating Era: "The Original Disco Man" era, however brief, was Brown's biggest dork age. A cut-by-numbers disco album, released in 1979, when everyone was well and tired of the genre as a whole. It wouldn't be until Rocky IV and "Living In America" that he finally shook off the stink of the album.
• Awesome Music: Uh, how about everything? James' body of work is historically and culturally important, but even putting that aside, it's absolutely exhilarating on its own terms, and much of it hasn't aged a day.
• Epic Riff: "The Payback", "Doing It To Death", "Superbad", "Blues and Pants"... due to their repetition and being extensively sampled over the years, James Brown riffs tend to be instantly recognizable upon hearing them.
• Funny Moments: Back in 1994, he and Little Richard were paired up for a special "Music Stars Week" on Wheel of Fortune. Who else was playing that week? "Weird Al" Yankovic, who in 2013 recounted an interesting story from that week's rehearsal, which explains why Brown and Richard were paired up...
• Growing the Beard: His stuff in the 50s is some great, classic soul music (put on "Bewildered" sometime!), but let's be real, in the next decade he basically invented his own genre! Also, his late '70s Porn Stache could be considered this as well.
• Memetic Mutation: The opening howl and lines of "I Got You (I Feel Good)" has evolved into this, becoming a very effective Jump Scare in prank videos.
• Minority Show Ghetto: Brown actually avoided this for a long time, but once he released "Say It Loud: I'm Black And I'm Proud", a pro-black anthem released in the wake of Martin Luther King's assasination, he lost almost all of his crossover audience. As the man himself later noted, almost all of his shows afterward were mostly attended by black people.
• Sampled Up: Brown is the most sampled artist of all time, and not just in hip-hop. You may not be familiar with his music, but you've definitely heard his riffs, drums, and vocals sampled in other hit tracks like "Hold On", "Fight The Power", and even show themes like The Powerpuff Girls theme song.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Michael Jackson named Brown his main inspiration and much like him he combined showmanship, an excellent voice, and amazing dancing.
  • Prince borrowed a lot from Brown's sexual energy and outrageousness.
• Unintentional Period Piece: 1968's "America Is My Home" is a pro-Vietnam War song which was written in reaction to civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. speaking out against the war. It advocates for black and white Americans to drop their racial differences to "get up and fight" the enemy, and claims that America is "still the best country, without a doubt". In an era where the Vietnam War is largely considered to be one of the country's worst foreign policy blunders, and Patriotic Fervor is becoming more questioned, the song certainly aged poorly.

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