The rivalry between ‘Mr. Cold Blooded’ and ‘The Purple One’ started when Prince and his band were the opening act on Rick James’ tour. At that time, Rick was the bigger act, but allegedly Prince was added to the tour’s line-up  to boost ticket sales because Rick’s popularity was starting to suffer. 

Prince opened for Rick James in 1980 and Killed the stage! This started the rivalry between the two. pic.twitter.com/Dz2H8e5PE1

— SheilaEdrummer (@SheilaEdrummer) April 22, 2018

Prince’s guitarist, Dez Dickerson, told biographer, Dave Hill, that “It was a rough period for Rick. We would go over like gangbusters, because the black audience was just dying for something new.”  

Rick also began to publicly take shots at Prince, here’s what he once told Rolling Stone:

“I can’t believe people are gullible enough to buy Prince’s jive records. [Prince is a] a mentally disturbed young man. He’s out to lunch. You can’t take his music seriously. He sings songs about oral sex and incest.”

Ouch!

But Rick Didn’t Stop There…

James even said Prince was jacking his performance style:

[Prince was] emulating my moves like a motherfu*ker. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but because my act followed his, it looked like Rick James was copying Prince rather than vice versa.”

Later, once Prince became famous, he refused to sign an autograph for James’s mother. It didn’t end well.

The you-know-what really hit the fan after Rick got tired of losing, and since many say he felt like he was losing to the new kid on the block, Prince, Rick handled it in a true Rick James-like fashion:

‘[According to Teena Marie, James got back at Prince by] allegedly stealing Prince’s programmed synthesizers and using them on his own 1981 album “Street Songs,” and then sending them back to him “with a thank-you card.” ‘ 

Now that was really “COLD-BLOODED!”

Peep How Prince Got The Ultimate Revenge…

He ‘Stole’ Vanity? Of course Prince was sitting quietly in the cut, plotting his payback at Rick, and he ultimately did the unthinkable- he stole Vanity. That’s right he stole Vanity from Rick, who was Rick’s artist at the time and was going to be the lead singer of The Mary Jane Girls.

After Prince called her up and persuaded Vanity to go on a date with him as his date to the American Music Awards, Vanity never looked back and became the lead singer of Prince’s girl group, Vanity 6, instead.
Rick later admitted to losing his to Prince:

“I always felt our competition was healthy, although I was jealous when he started getting big—more than jealous—I was pissed… because I felt his songs… and a lot of his stuff wasn’t real.”

Here’s another old school fun fact about Prince and Rick’s never-ending beef:

Eddie Murphy and Prince were always cool, but when Eddie was looking to work on his album, which ultimately included his 80’s hit, “Party All The Time,” he first went to Prince. Eddie soon realized that working with Prince in the studio made him uncomfortable, so he asked his friend, Rick James, to help him. Rick eventually agreed because he said that “There wasn’t anything I’d rather have done than write a hit for Eddie — and stick it in Prince’s ear.”
[Sources: Rolling Stone; Pop Matters; Pitchfork]

As far as we know, this rivalry lasted until Rick’s James’ last days. The competitive nature that he and Prince had may have gotten out of line at times, but it also helped to push both of them to be the best artists/musicians they could possibly and as true Old School music fans, we’re eternally grateful to them for that.

-ILoveOldSchoolMusic, old school news with a new point of view

The post Payback: Rick James Did Prince Dirty, But Prince Got Revenge On Him & It Was Epic appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

Anthony Smith, ex-husband of the late former Vanity 6 lead singer, Denise “Vanity” Matthews, was recently convicted of murdering three men in 1999 and 2001.

In 2014, Anthony was convicted in a Lancaster, Ca. court for the 1999 murders and kidnapping of brothers/business owners, Kevin and Ricky Nettles, and the 2001 murder of Dennis Henderson. Smith might also be re-tried in a fourth murder case for the 2008 shooting death of Maurilio Ponce, a 31-year-old auto-mechanic. That particular 2012 Ponce case ended in a mistrial after the jury was deadlocked.

The Nettles brothers’ bodies were found with their heads wrapped in duct tape. Henderson was found stabbed and brutally beaten to death in the back of a rental car.

Embed from Getty Images

Aside from being Vanity’s ex-husband, Anthony may look familiar to you because he is the former star NFL defensive end for the Oakland Raiders (from 1991-1997). After parting ways with the Raiders in 1997, he signed with the Denver Broncos before suddenly walking away from that contract and retiring from the NFL altogether. That’s when life begin to spiral out of control for Anthony, and his friends and family say he had two personalities- a short tempered man who can be cold at times; and the 6’4″ 320 pound gentle giant with very polite manners.

It was during this time that Anthony and Vanity had a short marriage and an even shorter courtship. Word on the old school curb is that Vanity met Anthony, who was eight years her junior, and she actually proposed to him 3 DAYS later. Wow, it must have been love at first sight.

Everything wasn’t all good with their marriage though. Here is what was reported by GQ Magazine about their tumultuous relationship:

After reading an article about the young Raider, Denise Matthews, a.k.a. Vanity, now a born-again Christian, arranged a meeting with Anthony. Three days later she proposed to him, and one month after they met, he made her his second wife. (He’d had a brief marriage to a young actress a few years earlier.) But this new marriage, too, quickly turned to dust, recalls Dwayne Simon, a friend of Anthony’s from that time. Dwayne remembers one uncomfortable team-family breakfast before a Raiders game when Denise said or did something that made Anthony furious. “He grabbed her by the arm, made her sit down,” says Dwayne, a producer with the L.A. Posse and Def Jam who arranged music for Raiders games. “She tried to get up, but he snatched her back down: ‘Get down!’ I was really scared for Vanity. I thought he was going to break her friggin’ arm.”

At the same time, Smith was telling one of his rich-white-businessman friends that he had helped Denise get a kidney. (Her body was hard hit from years of drug use before she swore off that life and turned to God.) What a good guy. What an angry one. Was one of those Anthony’s more true than the other? Or had he just become a violent man who knew how to shine?

It’s a good thing Vanity got away from Anthony before things escalated to the point of no return.

After he and Vanity divorced, Anthony married his third and current wife, attorney Theresa White. Theresa had previously supported Anthony in his past trials, but in his most recent murder trials, there was no one in the courtroom for Anthony, except his defense attorney. The families and children of the murder victims were in the court in full effect though.

Friends and family of Anthony Smith reported that he’d changed a lot and had isolated most of them from his life and befriended gangsters instead.
Those three murders aren’t the only legal trials Anthony has seen. In 2003 he got into a heated argument with a female owner of a furniture store in Santa Monica, Ca. over money. Soon after the argument, the store was set on fire using homemade firebombs that were stuffed with a bunch of mail from Anthony’s home. It had his name and his address on it. Prosecutors just knew that case was a for sure win, but Anthony was tried twice for arson in the case and both times the jury deadlocked. Also, several of his friends, who were alleged gang members, sat in court every day of the trial and stared down the jury. It isn’t certain if that invoked any type of fear into the jurors though, or if they sincerely believed Anthony didn’t commit the arson.
Fast forward to today and Anthony Smith is now serving three life terms without the possibility of parole. His attorneys say they plan to appeal the decision.

After seeing the details of Anthony’s story and his dissent into self destruction, it’s very difficult not to have thoughts of the movie, Concussion, floating through my mind. Thanks to Dr. Omalu Bennett (a forensic and neuropathologist played by Will Smith) study of the brains of NFL players, we now know that a brain condition, called CTE, will continue to affect many NFL players. CTE is the result of taking too many blows to the head, causing damage to the brain, which ultimately causes the players to began to act out in extremely violent, self-destructive ways and even commit suicide.

Maybe Anthony Smith just became a violent man on his own, or maybe he could be affected by CTE…who knows? The downfall is that there is no way to determine this, until after a player’s death. In the meantime, if he did those crimes, he deserves to do the time. We wish peace and comfort over the families of the victims.

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