Dave Wielenga

"I saw it coming," Rick James says, "and subconsciously, I asked for it." He foresaw it in his own public profile, jagged as an EKG, which stretched across nearly 30 years of popular music and eccentric behavior; James had mutated from sing-along '60s folkie to braided-and-spandexed '70s funky to top-of-the-world...

The good news just keeps on coming for Suga Free and DJ Quik. Every ten minutes or so, another bit of it filters into a conference room at the Island Records offices on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard, where the rapper and his veteran producer are answering an interviewer's questions. Somebody knocks:...