Rick once said to me, “No one can start over and make a brand-new start, but you can always start right now and make a brand-new ending.”
—Actor Darius McCrary
Rick’s last major act in life was to record the remarkable album Deeper Still. Its contents clearly show that he was seeking musical change. He recorded the album in 2004, the year he died, but it wasn’t released until 2007.
The press release announcing the album took “the old Rick is back” approach, saying that “Just when you thought the dance floors were safe comes a tidal wave of funk from the super freak himself.” Reviewers unanimously disagreed with this analysis, saying Rick had graduated from his past and produced a work of high achievement.
Various reviewers said Deeper Still was so different from Rick’s previous albums that it could be called his White Album, a reference to the album officially titled The Beatles (referred to as the “White Album” because of its otherwise blank white sleeve). The Fab Four had prepared themselves to record that 1968 album by immersing themselves in a Transcendental Meditation course in India. The New York Times reviewer thought Rick’s songs on Deeper Still were so similar to those on the White Album that he said Rick “was also a hippie,” and Billboard commented that Rick seemed to be “channeling an introspective muse.”
The White Album had been a double album, and likewise Rick originally wanted to record an album that would have contained many more of the songs he had written in prison than it eventually did. When Deeper Still was released, however, it was a single CD containing eleven tunes.
It’s easy to imagine what a Rick intent on his usual filthy vibe would have done with this album’s title song earlier in his life. However, only one of the eleven songs on the album, “Funk Wit Me,” qualifies as Rick’s old-style semiporn, although “Do You Wanna Play” rises only somewhat above that level. In spite of their suspicious titles, the songs “Taste,” “Stroke,” “Stop It,” and “Deeper Still” are porn free, as are the remaining songs on the album. Such restraint by Rick, coupled with his unusual inclusion of the song “Guinnevere,” which he didn’t write and is the tale of a woman who wanted to be set free, signals that Deeper Still contained his final thoughts about his life, plus his death wish set to music. The album’s title song includes lyrics such as “My soul is satisfied, Because I’m with you / And you I won’t deny or ever quit you,” Rick appeared to be promising to be a faithful, loyal, and loving person, a much different person than he’d been toward anyone but some of his blood relatives for most of his life. The Buffalo News said Rick was “pledging fidelity and vowing to start his life over.”
Sexy Spanish-language vocals by singer Ivonne Contreras graced this song, but Billboard opined that “nothing about the song is street-wise or gritty in the least, which is unfortunate since being street-wise and gritty was what had made Rick a star.” But it wasn’t what Rick was trying to be on this album. Billboard dubbed “Guinnevere” a “soulfully intriguing” take on David Crosby’s 1969 folk song of the same name, which was popularized by Crosby, Stills and Nash. The New York Times said Rick had “altered the hippie solemnity of the song, grounding it in an exaggerated but quite beautiful lothario croon,” fleshing out Guinnevere, and making her seem “more like someone you don’t bring home to mother,” an obvious reference to “Super Freak.” The Times’s comment seemed off base, however, because in this album, Rick seemed to be ignoring his previous hits.
Billboard called the bouncy, autobiographical “Taste” a candid reflection on Rick’s sex, drug, and legal problems. The Buffalo News liked it for its “velvety sensuality” and the “relaxed jubilation of its melody.” “Taste” is part of Rick’s effort to produce his autobiography in song, but it’s far from complete. Although he tells people not to ask him questions about his life because it’s all in his songs, none of the songs, including this one, mention his betrayals of others for the sake of money, dope, or fame.
On the other hand, he hints at them early on in this song, when he refers to himself as “born a beast set out to feast at an early age,” reminding some religious listeners of the two beasts described in the biblical Book of Revelation. He also denies once again all the abuse and related charges that eventually sent him to Folsom. And he ends the song with a stunning cosmic bang by singing an only slightly altered version of the words that by the time this song was released were already engraved on his tombstone: “Had it all baby . . . done it all . . . seen it all. I still see, it’s all about love, and God is love baby.”
The “stroke” Rick refers to in “Stroke” could be his actual 1998 stroke or his prison sentence. The song’s an upper, though. Rick says mildly he’s not mad about the bad things that happened to him, discloses he plans to go back to singing and songwriting, and admits he’s lived his life “on shaky ground.” By the end of the song he also appears to be using “stroke” to mean the beat of the music, as in “Get on up . . . on the stroke” but that phrase could also mean “keep going even while bad things are happening to you.” Billboard seemed to agree when it opined that “Stroke” was a song about Rick’s self-realization after two years behind bars and showed that he was determined to mount yet another comeback.
Rick reverts to form, however, in “Do You Wanna Play,” a treacly love song that includes such lines as “Girl, you’re sweeter than a lollipop / just as sweet on the bottom as you are on the top” and “I wanna be the only man that you come for” as well as “the easier I do it girl the more you blow.” On “Funk Wit Me,” which bears no resemblance to Rick’s earlier tune “Dance Wit’ Me,” an unidentified but sexy female voice accompanies Rick as he makes it totally clear that “funk me” has joined “freak me” as a synonym for “fuck me.” Billboard noted that Rick displayed what the magazine called his “signature carnal/romantic side” on both these songs.
In the song “Maybe,” in an amazing reversal, Rick, the conquering sex hero, becomes in song and in his real life (Tanya had left him), the forsaken lover pleading with the love of his life to return. “When did your heart turn to stone . . . why is your silence so loud . . . Maybe we could still be friends,” he sings.
On the front cover of Deeper Still, a somber, overweight, and discouraged-looking Rick leans against a wall and wears dark glasses, a black jacket, and a white shirt heavily darkened by thick black stripes. On the back cover he is wearing a black shirt with white dots, and black pants. With his head down and his hands hanging at his sides, he walks in profile toward an open door through which bright light is streaming.
Either Rick’s voice improved near the end of his life, reviewers had come to appreciate it more, or his death three years before the album was released made them giddy with grief, because Billboard called him a “rich-voiced singer.” The Buffalo News commended the “undiminished resonance” of Rick’s voice, calling it “thick, rich, emotive and marked by a grandiose vibrato,” and claimed that it “rescued” at least three of the tunes on the CD. No such praise had ever been applied to Rick’s previous vocal efforts.
Deeper Still rose to number 19 on the Billboard R&B album chart, becoming Rick’s highest-charting album on the R&B list since Wonderful went to number 12 in 1988. This success was doubly surprising because Rick wasn’t alive to promote the product. With Deeper Still, Rick’s creations had been appearing on the R&B chart for more than twenty-nine years.
In early 2004, after Deeper Still was completed, Rick joined Teena Marie in a duet titled “I Got You” on Teena’s album La Doña. In it, Rick and Teena go over the story of their romance and breakup and pledge their eternal love for each other. With its jazz overtones and interlocking rhythms, it’s the most musically complex, and most moving, tune this fiery duo ever recorded.