You can only pack so much living into fifty-six years. Rick James reached his capacity today.

Rick James is perhaps most famous for his 1981 ode to sex and drugs, "Superfreak." Almost a decade later, his signature song would again dominate the airwaves--at least its infectious bassline would--as MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This."

In the '60s, James ran afoul of the law by going AWOL from the Navy. In the '90s, he provoked the interest of law enforcement by participating in a three-way gone bad with his future wife and a woman they had picked up. Things got too "superfreaky," apparently, and James did time. Amazingly, James became a family man after his prison stint. He allegedly put his drug problems behind him, but a stroke in the late 1990s curtailed touring. In the last year of his life, the Buffalo native had again become a pop-culture sensation with his appearance on "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories" on Chappelle's Show. As a result of the wildly popular segment, "Cocaine is a helluva drug" and "I'm Rick James, bitch" became catchphrases.

Over the course of his long career, James collaborated with as diverse of a cast of characters as Neil Young, The Lemonheads, Smokey Robinson, and Eddie Murphy, for whom James wrote the song "Party All the Time"--which seems an appropriate epitaph for the leader of the Stone City Band.

Maybe the often, boring and lackluster John Kerry would revitalize his campaign and gain an edge in the race for presidency by adopting the phrase, "I'm John Kerry bitch!"

Rest in peace, bitch.

Ric James did time for what used to be called a Montreal breakaway. You know when the Canadiens where skating toward the goalie and all the Bruins would jump off the bench and hammer the skater. Well thats what it was...bitch

Can't touch it now, I guess.