Super Freak

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"Super Freak"
File:Rick james-super freak s.jpg
Single by Rick James
from the album Street Songs
Released July 10, 1981
Format 7" vinyl
Recorded 1981
Genre Funk[1][2]
Length
  • 3:24 (Album/7" version)
  • 7:05 (12" version)
Label Gordy
Writer(s)
Producer(s) Rick James
Certification Gold (RIAA)[3]
Rick James singles chronology
"Give It to Me Baby"
(1981)
"Super Freak"
(1981)
"Ghetto Life"
(1982)
Music video
"Super Freak" on YouTube
Music sample

"Super Freak" is a 1981 single produced and performed by Rick James. The song, co-written by James and Alonzo Miller, was first released on James' album Street Songs and became one of James' signature songs. It features background vocals from Motown labelmates The Temptations—in which the bass singer is James' uncle Melvin Franklin—and Canadian singer Taborah Johnson. "Freak" is a slang term for a very promiscuous girl, as described in the song's lyrics, "...a very kinky girl / The kind you don't take home to mother". Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song #477 in its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[4] Nine years later, MC Hammer's 1990 hit "U Can't Touch This" sampled it.

Chart performance

The song was a big hit for James in 1981, charting on the pop, R&B and dance charts in the US. On the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the song peaked at no. 16 in the fall of 1981 and spent 10 weeks in the top 40. Together with two other singles from Street Songs, "Give It to Me Baby" and "Ghetto Life", it spent three weeks at no. 1 on the American dance charts earlier that year.