Showtime Debuts New Trailer for Upcoming Rick James Documentary

Showtime released a new trailer for Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James a month ahead of its release.

The two-minute clip was shared on Tuesday, exactly a month before the documentary’s premiere. In the clip, viewers hear from Ice Cube, Bootsy Collins, and others about singer Rick James’s complicated legacy. James died in 2004 of cardiac and pulmonary failure, per the New York Daily News.

The trailer starts with thoughts from the man himself through rare archival footage.

“This isn’t the Wizard of Oz,” James said. “There are Black people here, and we make music. I mean, don’t we exist?”

The trailer features James speaking on his desire for freedom to create on his own terms and how Black artists are pushed to do stereotypical music.

“I want to write about whatever. I want to be able to wear whatever. I smoke marijuana. I can write about it,” the punk-funk singer said in one clip. “If I don’t like Richard Nixon, I can call him an asshole. I want to be nasty. I want to be raw.”

Bitchin’ appears to cover every aspect of James’ life, including sexual misconduct. In the trailer, interviewees listed various labels attached to James, including “sexual abuser.”

In the 1990s, James spent more than two years in prison after he was accused of kidnapping and torturing two women on separate occasions during a drug binge, Today reported.

“The ‘wild’ side of Rick James often eclipses his musical genius, but the mathematical equation that is his life depends on all of the numbers to make a whole,” Sacha Jenkins, the film’s director, said in a statement.

“Our aim was to create a balanced portrait of a brilliant artist who both chased his dreams and stalked more than a few demons,” she continued. “Still, his influence on funk and popular music and culture is unparalleled, and his eventual rise to the top is easily more compelling than any freebase rush.”

Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James will premiere on Showtime on September 3.