We all remember when the late, great Rick James released his girl group, Mary Jane Girls. They were dominating the music game with hits like, “In My House,” “All Night Long,” and “Candy Man.”
Well over the past 3 decades since their release, a few of them have been very vocal about their once tarnished relationship with Rick. One of the members, Maxi B., has recently put it ALL out there and what she said about how she felt when Rick passed away is shocking. Before we go any further, we want to point out that what she is referring to has also been confirmed by Rick himself, in his autobiography and overall it’s just really sad that the relationship turned that sour on both sides of the coin.
In an interview on Blog Talk Radio, Maxi B had this to say:
Maxi B.- He (Rick) mishandled all of our (The Mary Jane Girls) careers. He blocked us all from having prosperity in the industry. People often ask me, you know, why didn’t any of you do anything? The reason is Rick James….he held us back….he signed us to a 20 year slave contract. […] He just didn’t let us step out of our box like Vanity and Appolonia (Prince’s artists)…all of those girls got to step out and brand and now they can do things and it still hurts us because people are looking at us and realizing that we haven’t done anything in over 30 years. So when Rick died…it’s when I decided okay ‘That demon is off of my back. Ding dong the Wicked Witch is dead. Now I can go on and pursue…[it’s] never too late. I’m older now, but I’ll just go on and do it in another demographic.I believe that if you had talent then, you have talent now.’ And now I’m doing things that I never got to do thanks to the internet.”
Maxi also said Rick was doing everything he could to make sure they didn’t succeed and that she was crushed after Rick allegedly put out the word in the industry, that no one can do business with any of the girls, because they were in a 20 year contract with him and that he no longer wanted to make money off of them. She also said she was extremely hurt when she read Rick’s book, “Memoirs Of A Superfreak,” and saw that he said he wanted to “break the Mary Jane Girls” so that they couldn’t make money. Wow!
Rick James Told His Side…
Here’s what Rick revealed in his book about that whole situation in his true RAW style…
Rick James- “One of the most upsetting things happened when the Mary Jane Girls went behind my back to Motown saying all these lies about me. Joanne (JoJo) McDuffie, the ugly duckling, was the biggest liar of the bunch. She said the cruelest things about me to the press, things that just weren’t true.”
Joanne had married this neighborhood Buffalo trick named Robert Thunderbird who was always hanging around trying to get his slimy hands on any of the girls. Joanne, being the homeliest, was weak for him. The day they got married, I could see he was after the fame and the money.
JoJo started to change after “My House,” was released. She started to get stuck up. The Mary Jane Girls were scheduled to do a video, JoJo wanted $30,000 to do the video. I screamed, ‘What? No one, not me, not Prince gets paid to do videos. We just do them to help our careers.’ I told my brother to deal with the stupid b**ch. I think he gave her $15,000, after that, I was through with JoJo. She embarrassed me, herself and everyone by trying to come across like a f*cking superstar. And I had made her!
I had began to cut another album on the Mary Jane Girls, but after six or seven songs, I said, ‘F*ck it! They aren’t worth it. […] After all the lies and accusations, I deserted them.”
Geesh! It’s very sad that their story ended this way, but like we always say here at ILOSM: great success cannot exist without great failures. We understand that many of our favorite celebs are flawed humans, which is perfectly natural and okay. The more we understand that they are flawed, the better we understand that they are no different than the rest of us.
Source: BlogTalkRadio
