Inside James Brown’s Secret War Against Funk’s “Outlaws”: The Seven Artists the Godfather of Soul Couldn’t Forgive

For the public, James Brown was the unstoppable titan of funk — a preacher of rhythm, discipline, and black pride who moved like lightning and ruled the stage like a general.

But behind the slick hair, sweat-drenched suits, and trademark screams, there lived another James Brown — one driven by fury, envy, and a deep, unspoken fear that his musical kingdom was slipping from his grasp.

The man who once sang “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” carried within him a darkness that no beat could shake off. As the culture around him began to evolve — blurring the lines between gender, race, and rebellion — the Godfather of Soul saw the very music he created become something he could no longer control.

In his later years, Brown spoke bitterly about seven artists — seven men he believed had “poisoned” the house of funk. To him, they were not revolutionaries. They were traitors.

And the list of those he despised — Prince, Sylvester, Little Richard, Rick James, Billy Preston, Sly Stone, and George Clinton — reads like a who’s who of black music’s most daring innovators.

Each one, in their own way, defied the laws James Brown had written. Each one threatened his sense of identity. And each one forced him to confront a truth he could never admit out loud: that funk — the empire he built — no longer belonged to him.

1. Prince — The Purple Provocation

Of all the artists James Brown loathed, none provoked his rage quite like Prince.

In the early 1980s, Prince wasn’t just another musician; he was a revolution in heels and lace. His gender-fluid image, his unapologetic sensuality, his refusal to obey any rule — musical or moral — was everything James Brown found intolerable.

It began innocently enough in 1982. Brown, then in his late forties, saw the cover of 1999: a black man in eyeliner, a lace shirt, and a guitar slung low across a bare chest.

“What the hell is this?” he shouted, tossing the magazine across his Georgia studio. “Funk has turned into a toy for these gender benders!”

It wasn’t just disgust. It was fear.

For two decades, Brown had been the definition of black masculinity: slick, strong, unflinching. Prince, by contrast, was soft, fluid, and sexually ambiguous — yet somehow even more powerful. Where Brown’s funk demanded submission, Prince’s invited surrender.

Their collision came to a head on one unforgettable night in August 1983.

At the Beverly Theater in Los Angeles, James Brown hosted an all-star performance being filmed for broadcast. The audience was electric. Brown, in full command, called Michael Jackson onto the stage.

The two icons hugged, danced, and laughed. It was a moment of unity — until Michael turned to the crowd and said, “Prince, come up here with us!”

From the shadows, Prince walked out — not smiling, not bowing, just striding across the stage in purple velvet. He took a guitar, tuned it arrogantly, and started to play — off-key, off-tempo, defiant.

The sound screeched through the theater. Then, just as abruptly, he dropped the guitar, turned, and walked off.

Brown stood frozen. His stage. His spotlight. His kingdom — hijacked.

Backstage, he smashed a TV and screamed, “I let a viper in!” From that night on, he refused to utter Prince’s name. To him, Prince wasn’t a musician. He was an insult.

Years later, when Purple Rain exploded and “Darling Nikki” shocked America with its explicit lyrics, Brown’s fury only deepened. He called Prince “garbage,” hissing that the world had lost its moral compass.

And when Prince died in 2016, Brown’s family issued no statement. To the Godfather of Soul, Prince had died long before — the moment he stepped onto that stage in 1983 without bowing.

2. Sylvester — The Disco Saint He Couldn’t Stand

If Prince humiliated James Brown in public, Sylvester offended him on a spiritual level.

In the 1970s, Sylvester James Jr. — known simply as Sylvester — was the flamboyant falsetto who gave disco its gospel soul. His hit “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” became a liberation anthem for queer America.
But for James Brown, it was blasphemy.

“Funk is sweat and fire,” Brown once said. “Not perfume and lace.”

Sylvester’s sequined gowns, wigs, and angelic voice — the way he made audiences rise to their feet without ever pretending to be “masculine” — cut directly against Brown’s definition of what black manhood should be.

Worse still, white critics adored Sylvester. They called him “the black David Bowie,” “a disco diva,” “a miracle of freedom.” To James Brown, that was hypocrisy.

He had fought his whole life to make white audiences respect black music. Now a man in high heels was being called a genius for doing what he’d been punished for.

When Sylvester’s name began appearing on Billboard charts in 1978, Brown’s jealousy turned to rage.

Then came the photo that broke him. One of Brown’s former dancers, Ricky Campbell, was featured on the cover of a gay magazine, lounging in a pool with Sylvester, both wearing bikinis. Brown fired anyone remotely associated with Ricky. To him, it wasn’t just betrayal — it was contamination.

When Sylvester was invited to perform at the New York Pride parade in 1983 — becoming the first openly gay black artist to headline the event — James refused to play any venue within the same city limits.

“I’m not playing near where that guy is singing,” he told his manager.

Five years later, when Sylvester died of AIDS, his funeral became a landmark of queer culture — open casket, red kimono, disco lights, and hundreds of mourners dancing through their grief.

James Brown didn’t attend. He never spoke his name again.

To the world, Sylvester was a trailblazer. To James Brown, he was funk’s original sin.

3. Little Richard — The Mirror He Couldn’t Bear to Face

Long before James Brown screamed and sweated his way through the ‘50s and ‘60s, there was Little Richard.
And deep down, James knew it.

Little Richard wasn’t just a pioneer — he was the spark that lit the entire fire of rock and roll. The wild pompadour, the eyeliner, the shrieks of ecstasy, the gospel-gone-wild energy — all of it had shaped the young James Brown.

But admiration curdled into resentment.

By the time Brown was rising, Richard’s private life was already legendary — and controversial. He wore makeup, flirted openly with men, and blurred gender boundaries that Brown spent his career trying to reinforce.

To Brown, black masculinity was armor. To Richard, it was a costume.

“Don’t trust that guy,” Brown once warned his band. “He changes gender like he changes underwear.”

Every scandal — from Richard’s arrests for “indecent behavior” to his fiery religious conversions — confirmed Brown’s disgust.

When Richard returned to the stage in the late 1970s preaching about sin, salvation, and sexual confusion, James rolled his eyes. “He wants to be a man when there’s money,” he scoffed. “And a woman when he wants love.”

Yet behind the contempt was something deeper — fear.

Richard had done the one thing James Brown never could: he had let himself be free.

4. Rick James — The “Super Freak” Who Broke the Rules

If Prince was the rebel and Sylvester the saint, Rick James was the monster.

Wild, brilliant, and terrifying, Rick embodied everything James Brown despised about the new era of funk.

In the late ‘70s, while Brown was still clinging to his self-made moral code, Rick James was turning the genre into a carnival of sex, drugs, and chaos. “Super Freak” wasn’t just a song — it was a manifesto.

Backstage, Rick’s parties were notorious: cocaine lines across pianos, naked dancers in hotel bathtubs, cameras rolling. He called himself “the funk priest” — and to Brown, that was sacrilege.

In 1979, when Rick was accused of assaulting a 15-year-old girl, Brown exploded. “I told everyone — that guy doesn’t make music,” he said. “He hurts people with it.”

From that moment, James Brown banned Rick James and any of his collaborators from sharing a stage with him.

By the early ‘90s, Rick’s addictions had turned catastrophic. When he and his girlfriend were convicted of kidnapping and assault in 1994, Brown — by then old and weary — simply nodded at the television. “Evil exposes itself,” he said quietly.

Even from beyond the grave, the feud between “the Godfather” and “the Super Freak” symbolized a generational divide — one that neither man would survive.

5. Billy Preston — The “Holy Hypocrite”

Billy Preston was once hailed as the “fifth Beatle” — a prodigy who played keyboards like he was channeling God himself. But to James Brown, he was proof that talent could rot behind a smile.

Brown distrusted Preston from the moment they met in the 1970s. “He’s the kind of man who makes white men feel safe,” he muttered.

What Brown sensed — and what the world later confirmed — was a duality that made him furious: the church boy who couldn’t stop sinning.

By the 1990s, Preston’s private life imploded in a series of scandals — arrests for assaulting minors, drug charges, and insurance fraud. Each headline reinforced Brown’s belief that moral corruption had infected black music.

He banned Preston from his shows and refused to acknowledge his legacy. “He doesn’t represent funk,” Brown said. “He represents rot hiding in gospel clothes.”

Preston’s fall from grace — from Sunday choirs to prison cells — was, for Brown, vindication. Another cautionary tale in a world gone mad.

6. Sly Stone — The Genius Who Lost His Mind

Sly Stone was a miracle gone wrong.

In the late ‘60s, Sly and the Family Stone had changed everything — merging funk, rock, and psychedelia into a sound that defined a generation. But what began as revolution ended as tragedy.

At Woodstock in 1969, drenched in glitter and LSD, Sly shouted “I want to take you higher!” and America believed him. But in that moment, James Brown — watching footage from Texas — folded his arms and muttered, “That guy will kill funk.”

Sly’s descent into addiction and madness became legendary. By the mid-1970s, he was hallucinating on stage, talking to speakers, locking himself in hotels for days. By the ‘90s, he was homeless, sleeping in a van in Los Angeles.

Still, to the world, he was a cult hero. To James Brown, he was “a zombie.”

Their feud was never public — because it didn’t need to be. Brown’s silence said it all.

To him, Sly wasn’t a rebel. He was a warning — proof that freedom without discipline was death.

7. George Clinton — The Mad King of Funk

If funk was a religion, then George Clinton was its heretic pope.

With his psychedelic costumes, cosmic stage sets, and intergalactic narratives, Clinton turned funk into theater — and James Brown hated every second of it.

When Brown saw Clinton’s famous “Mothership” stage in 1976 — complete with lasers, smoke, and UFO props — he walked out mid-show.

To Brown, funk was about control — the tight rhythm, the razor-sharp choreography, the precision of black excellence. Clinton, on the other hand, preached chaos: “Free your mind and your ass will follow.”

To Brown, that was blasphemy.

When Clinton spiraled into drug abuse and financial ruin in the ‘80s, Brown refused to gloat. But privately, he kept a clause in his contracts banning any collaboration with “Parliament-Funkadelic or related acts.”

Even when Clinton resurfaced decades later — celebrated by hip-hop as a visionary — James never forgave him.

Because Clinton had done the unthinkable: he had survived by breaking every rule Brown believed in.

The Godfather’s Fear

By the 1990s, James Brown’s rage had turned inward.

He watched the men he once condemned become icons. Prince, Sylvester, Little Richard — all celebrated by new generations. Rick James and George Clinton were sampled by rappers. Sly Stone became a tragic legend.

The world had moved on.

Brown saw himself as a soldier left behind on the battlefield he built. He wanted funk to be moral, masculine, and sacred. But history wanted it wild, queer, and free.

And maybe that was the final truth James Brown couldn’t bear — that the chaos he despised was also the chaos that kept funk alive.

Legacy of a Divided King

James Brown died in 2006, still convinced he had saved funk from corruption. But in a twist of fate, the artists he despised most became the torchbearers of his legacy.

Prince’s defiance, Sylvester’s courage, Sly’s experimentation, Clinton’s madness — they were all extensions of the rebellion James himself had started.

He once said, “I don’t just make music. I make order out of noise.”

But funk was never meant to be orderly. It was born from struggle, sweat, and sin — from the collision between pain and freedom.

In the end, James Brown’s greatest enemies weren’t other artists. They were his reflections — seven men who dared to live in the chaos he spent his life trying to control.

They didn’t steal funk from him. They liberated it.