-Abandoned at birth, prison, dropping out of school.
There's a level of genius there that is amazing.
-He always used to say "I was born dead,
so I had to make a life for myself."
-"Live at the Apollo" is one of the most important albums
in the history of recorded music.
-They saw all that money.
They said, if you don't pay us tonight, we're going to walk.
-He was a risk taker.
He gave you sex and protest at the same time.
-Say it loud -- I'm black and I'm proud.
-That's one of the most bravest things
that James Brown has ever done.
It's the original Black Lives Matter.
-The Black Panthers pressured James Brown.
If you soul brother number one, then you need to do something
standing for what we're talking about.
-Mr. Brown's endorsement of Richard Nixon,
it was a misstep.
-He said, well, you know what?
Saying these kind of things, you'd be called a Tom.
♪
The way I look back, I say, God. How did I get this far?
But I say thank God, and I also thank the people.
♪
-James Brown is very invested in black self-determination.
That, for him, was his ethic.
It was his way of being in the world.
-♪ Too funky in here
♪ Yeah, uh-huh
-You have to judge where somebody's at by
where they came from and the difficulties
that they had to endure to get there.
-♪ Too, funky, funky, yeah -♪ Say it again
-We give it to James Brown for laying the concrete,
and then everybody else did their thing on it afterwards.
-♪ My name is Brown
[ Vocalizing ]
♪ Let's go
-Brown was doing a show in Las Vegas,
and Sylvester Stallone was at the front desk.
And he said to Brown, "You got to be in my movie."
-♪ Disco soul, the hippest thing ♪
-He dabbled off into other things
because we all tried things,
but it was doing that that caused him a lot of problems.
-♪ Somebody's gonna get a knockdown ♪
-The violence, the abuse that he caused my mom,
I remember it so vividly.
♪
-He never got over feeling
like anyone really cared and loved him.
He never got over the abandonment.
-There's a lot of missteps in his life,
and there's a lot of genius in his life.
For historical purposes, everything can be a lesson,
flaws, warts and all.
-♪ Funky, huh
[ Screams ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Soul music is the truth. He's telling it like it is.
It's life in the raw.
[ Cheers and applause ]
The black community is -- right now,
is the biggest consumer --
consumer market for entertainment.
50% of the album product in the world is black product.
72% of the single soul are Black singles.
Now, why should the black community perish
when they're supporting everything?
♪
-James Brown was always about black capitalism.
You know, you can march and protest all you want to,
but we need some money.
-James Brown, he doesn't get credit for his brilliance.
It's the person, the brain,
the mind that generated the music,
not the other way around.
So he wasn't just a singer and a dancer.
He was a thinker, a philosopher, a builder.
James Brown became the model
of how you could be successful and authentic.
-I want you to know that, only in this country,
the shoeshine boy. can start
from where I started from and be where I am today.
♪ Here's a dime, boy
♪ Gimme a shine, boy
[ Screams ]
♪ Down and out in New York City ♪
♪
-During the Nixon era,
you have Mr. Brown promoting self-determination
and thinking about, well, how can we advance black people?
Post that, you have him doing these soundtracks
for blaxploitation. Well, what is blaxploitation?
It is the anti-hero gaining prominence,
the people who we don't think about --
the hustlers, the pimps,
all of these characters that he's familiar with,
by the way, from his childhood.
-Let's talk about this one, "The Black Caesar."
-Well, this is the one I had the pleasure of doing
with brother Fred Williams,
and it was just a fantastic thing.
It showed that you could take street music,
people music and make it what's happening?
-Those soundtracks were very important
that he was a part of them.
There were not a lot of opportunities for black actors
and black directors,
and blaxploitation films were a medium.
-And you finally get to also
have some of the dopest artists of the time --
you know, Curtis Mayfield with "Superfly,"
Isaac Hayes with "Shaft."
You had James Brown doing "Black Caesar."
So it's just an extension of the black liberation movement
and black freedom struggle that he was already fighting
definitely in the mid to late '60s,
but bleeding over into the '70s.
♪
-"The Payback" was actually supposed to be
the third soundtrack.
-When the song starts, the first voice that you hear
is my voice hitting that high pitch, that high note.
♪
-"Payback" started out to be the soundtrack
for what was going to be called "Hell Up in Harlem."
-It was turned down from a movie
because I said it wasn't soulful enough.
That made me angry, and I put the song out.
♪
-♪ Amen
-"The Payback" -- He hit the mother lode on that.
Both the record and the single itself,
"Payback," number ones.
James Brown, most of his singles were R&B-oriented,
so that's where he had the most presence chart-wise
in the Billboard arena.
So the chart we call now,
it was R&B songs back in the day.
It's called Hot R&B Hip-Hop songs.
He had more than 100 hits on that chart alone,
and 17 of those were number ones.
-The idea that an artist
could consistently reinvent his music
to the point of being considered cutting edge
for as long as James Brown did,
arguably from the "Apollo" album in 1962
up through "The Big Payback" in '73,
that's unheard of.
-And one thing about James Brown,
it's like Coca Cola.
They spell it and say it the same way in every language.
♪ Hit it
♪
-James Brown's marketing and branding was so on point,
and People Records was cool because People Records had
the the purple label People Records,
and then they had the red label People Records.
-The fact that when you bought a James Brown record,
it had his picture on it, it was a James Brown production.
-♪ Look at him, ha
-If you think about that blueprint,
that blueprint was the one where there was a bunch of acts,
but they were all kind of the same group.
Prince very much did that same thing,
where it was a collective of groups
that were all kind of together.
-♪ We're gonna have a funky good time ♪
-♪ Take 'em up -♪ We gotta take 'em higher
♪
♪ Should we take 'em? Should we take 'em? ♪
♪ Hey -♪ Hey
-James Brown always said he was, like, 75% business
and 25% entertainment.
You know, he had a reputation at one point
for his business acumen, which became very questionable
with the failure of his radio stations and the restaurant,
some of the other things that he lent his name to.
But if you look at how he built his career
in the music business,
he had a very sharp business acumen,
inspiring audiences to go home after a James Brown show
and tell everybody, "My God,
you got to see this the next time he comes to town."
-James Brown was invited to do the festival in Zaire,
which I kind of nicknamed Woodstock in Africa.
-First of all, we want to thank all the newsmen
for so graciously coming out at this hour
to see the people -- the champion depart for Africa.
Going to meet George Foreman,
and his quest to regain his crown
as the heavyweight champion of the world.
What I want to do is to add a little bit more to this --
the complimentary proposal we're going to have down there
with a festival that will complement
the greatest sporting event in the history of the world.
Some of the most dynamic performers from Afro-America
will be appearing down there.
It will be James Brown, who is Soul Brother #1,
one of our top leading black artists.
-Is he coming? -Yes, James Brown
will be there performing.
-Not only black liberation was happening here in America,
but internationally, you had these countries
that were getting liberation for the first time.
-I always wanted to go to Africa.
Because I want to know where my soul comes from, the heritage.
I want to know where it really started.
They say I have so much in common,
my music even got the drum,
uh, syncopation, the movements and the sound.
-James Brown liked to have his own people doing his thing,
so of course, I had to go.
He insisted that he have his own engineer
to record his segment of the show.
Prior to getting on the plane,
they had a reception press conference
at the Holiday Inn at Kennedy Airport.
So we all went there.
-It's obvious answer, but I mean, you, of all people,
most respected American in Africa,
going to Africa. -No, I --
You're respected, but, you know -- come on now,
you know where that's at, you know.
-We got on this chartered flight to go to Africa,
the Pointer Sisters,
the Isley Brothers, Bill Withers, B.B. King.
Talk about a plane packed full of interesting people.
-Some beautiful ladies, too.
♪
-♪ Here I come
♪ Baby, here I come
-This is the Rumble in the Jungle,
biggest fight in the world.
-They had postponed the fight
because Foreman got cut during training,
but they did the music festival.
-There were about 100,000 people in the stadium.
And when James Brown hit that stage,
the stadium erupted.
-[ Whistles ] First of all, let's just talk about Zaire.
Like, his live performance in Zaire
when he entered the stage and like, yo, that...
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪ Get down, my girlfriend
And then he starts doing the splits.
-♪ Uh
♪ Payback is a thing you got to see ♪
♪
♪ Yeah
♪ You'll never do any damn thing to me ♪
-It was the best thing ever. The outfit, bananas.
Must -- Yo -- [ Laughs ]
Yo, he killed that joint.
That's one of my favorite performances, period.
-♪ I can't stand it
♪ Ooh, can't stand your love
-People began to go back and forth
in this awakening of Africa being your home,
and it excited everybody and excited the times.
He took black American culture all over the planet.
You know, he reintroduced it to Africa.
-He had those guys over there, you know,
trying to get as black as James Brown.
He made Africans want to be blacker.
Like, think about that.
-♪ When I say hit it, hit it ♪
♪ When I say quit it, quit it ♪
♪ Hit it now
♪
[ Screams ]
-If I speak for Africa itself, I think Africa is doing
what we should have been doing long ago.
They're coming into themselves, and they want to be independent.
Because unless you can control your own destiny,
then you really don't have a chance to live very comfortable.
-I ain't got much to say.
The only thing I got to say is it's been a long time coming.
Now here's the payback.
And remember, as long as you live.
Papa don't take no mess.
-I know he thinks I'm in. -Somebody say, "Hey.
There goes J.B."
As long as I've been around and as clean as I am,
if you don't know me by now, you never will.
-You just don't know. -We have to document our heroes.
We have to chronicle their journeys, you know,
good, bad, or indifferent,
regardless of what happened throughout their life.
Because whatever happened to them, they put into their art.
♪
-Can I get down on Papa?
[ Crowd shouting ]
♪ Papa didn't cuss
♪ He didn't raise a whole lot of fuss ♪
♪ But when we did it wrong, say it ♪
-♪ Papa beat the hell out of us ♪
-And that's just like we said it.
-He wrote the song "Papa Don't Take No mess."
I lived it.
Now, I went to college, but my best life's lessons
Was when I was on the road with my father.
And I could hear him,
how he talked to different people
and how he wanted his business taken care of.
I learned a lot
while I was putting those rollers in his hair.
-Well, Mom was a homemaker. She wasn't in the business.
And she was happy raising her two daughters
And being Mrs. James Brown, period.
I had my own pony. [ Laughs ]
The pony's name was Sugar.
I was born in Augusta, Georgia,
but dad was in Japan when I was born
and he enjoyed the name Mount Fujiyama.
He changed the spelling a little bit,
put two "M"s instead of one.
Yamma, the name, came from Dad,
directly from the Godfather himself.
He was so serious most of the time.
Like, he would always get on me about my hair
when I was a kid.
And just like, "What are you doing with your hair?
You look a mess right now." [ Laughs ]
It's just like, really? You gonna call me out
in front of everybody?
-We lived in a part of Augusta that was old money,
up on the hill.
Black people couldn't live there.
We were the first African American family.
-They moved into a house up on Walton Way.
I don't think people were put out at all.
There might have been some conversation
at the "country club" or somewhere,
but I don't recall hearing any conversation about,
you know, "This is terrible. This is horrible.
He's got to go."
♪
-During Christmas, people would come from everywhere,
black and white, to see the decorations.
Couldn't go outside and socialize with the people,
but I was peeping out the window.
A few years back, a Caucasian woman told me,
she says, "I remember coming to y'all's house during Christmas,"
and that was the first time she ever saw Black Santa Claus.
Dad introduced a black Santa Claus in the Deep South.
-♪ Santa Claus goes straight to the ghetto ♪
-My mom was gorgeous. They really were truly in love.
I loved seeing them like that
because it wasn't always like that.
-His father beat his mom, and he used to get beat, too,
really bad.
And when you see that,
and you think that that's what love looks like
or that's the only love that you know,
then that's how you're going to express it.
-You spend your whole life, you know, doing something,
and you still wind up paying dues, from the day you're born
to the day you die and -- -What are you talking about?
-You know, and you get on your knees every night
and you pray and you do all those different things,
and you go and worship at your church
or your temple or what have you,
and you still wind up doing the same thing.
-James Brown was never taught how to be a son, a father,
or a husband.
He didn't have those examples to fall back on.
-I would explain to James, you got to cool it.
You know, you got to stop with this domestic stuff.
But he would tell me, "Jack,
you're looking out for my welfare,
but stay out of my domestic affairs."
And I did.
-I grew up, of course, seeing the love,
but also seeing the hurt that he caused my mom by abusing her.
-Masculinity in America, period, has been made a toxic thing.
Our efforts to imitate what we think manhood is,
based on the definitions that we've been given,
has always been a detriment to our families
and the women in our community, particularly.
-I came from nothing out of a life of fighting
and a life of trying to survive.
-If you're in a survival state,
who do you take your angst out on?
The people closest to you.
-I remember being like 5 or 6 and just thinking,
"I can't take it anymore."
Like, and you hear about this where, you know, people's kids
stand up to their parents abuser before the parent will.
Oh, I remember it clear as day,
the last time I ever saw him abuse my mom.
Um, [laughs] my mom had on a blue and white robe,
and he literally was screaming and hollering at her
and hitting her, and she was crying.
And I just remember going over there
and trying to pull him off of her.
And the look that he gave me was like, who is this person?
But it didn't even matter to me
because at that moment I was like,
I'm just trying to protect my mother.
But it was enough for him to look at me and, like,
Kind of, "What am I doing?"
-♪ Oh, I wish that I could take back ♪
♪ All the things I've done to hurt you ♪
♪ I didn't mean to be so cruel
♪
♪ And yet, I know I've been selfish ♪
♪ At a time, a jealous fool
-Mom and Dad were married for ten years.
They separated because of domestic violence.
My mother had that experience with my father,
and she left because of those reasons.
-Once I got married and thought about what marriage
meant and your responsibilities,
and then I just thought of him different.
You know, it just always wasn't the best feeling of thinking
about your dad, like, on one aspect,
you knew he was this amazing genius and great talent
and had so much and gave so much to the world.
But then on the other hand, he was this broken individual
that saw something growing up, saw his mom get abused.
I mean, now it's easier to process.
But the five, six year old Yamma?
Uh-uh, no. He was public enemy number one.
-We had had a good run in in '74-'75.
We had a great run. He was on top.
We had million sellers.
We had number one records left and right.
'76, disco hit.
♪
♪ It takes a lot to make a lot ♪
-♪ Oh, yeah -♪ You can't get it free
-♪ No -It's such an interesting time,
especially in New York.
There's everything happening.
You've got punk happening,
disco happening, all getting mixed up.
A lot of other people were sort of left behind in this
because this was a huge change, sea change in the musical scene.
-I'm the one who started disco.
Disco is really the vamp of a soul record.
Like at the very end, you started doing a repeat
of the things, that's what disco's about.
-That repetitive nature of disco
that definitely was influenced by James.
Those grooves -- you think about the things
that the Bee Gees would try to do,
you know, jive talk, all them different things.
You know that comes from James.
-You look on, you see "Saturday Night Fever,"
you see all the disco shows,
you'll see the percussion of James Brown,
things that I got tired of doing.
-By the '70s, you had a lot of James Brown copycats.
The style was already everywhere.
-James Brown's genius sort of got used and eaten up
and borrowed by every other band.
-He got frustrated when other artists
that were influenced by him
started to make records that sounded like him.
When you think about "Fame,"
it sounds like a James Brown record with David Bowie singing.
-♪ Fame, fame
♪ What you need you have to borrow ♪
-In his career, when all these other artists
were making records that kind of sounded
like James Brown records,
or at least there was a solid influence from that,
he would get annoyed,
and then he would try to make a record to outdo that record.
-♪ This morning I woke up all in heat ♪
♪ Couldn't find no dry spot from my head down to my feet ♪
-James Brown is on a mission at this point, in the '70s,
going into the 80s, like, all right, these boys is coming.
I done gave them the blueprint.
They adding on, you know. They breaking walls
and they doing their thing.
And technology was also, you know, starting to push.
-James Brown himself was trying to catch up with disco.
You know, he was trying to be the original disco man
and all those things.
It was sort of like a creative arrested development.
-They do their things. -[ Laughs ]
[ Laughter ]
-Okay. That's good, that's good.
I know when my parents were 45, they could not do that.
-James was still really huge in Europe and Africa.
He just wasn't doing as big in America.
So he had a lot of free time,
and James would just pop up everywhere.
I went to an afternoon movie one time,
and there was James sitting around the front of me,
and there was hardly nobody else in the theater,
and he turned around and talked to me most of the time.
-He was having trouble making hit records.
When he got to that dry spell,
and we were still spending a lot of money recording,
the record company decided to cut back on his budgets.
-He had, simultaneously to all of this,
developed some serious IRS problems with back taxes
that were accruing interest and penalties
and were well into seven figures.
-This is all that's left of the old WRDW radio studios,
where Brown sat as a young boy outside and shined shoes.
When he became more famous and wealthy,
he bought the AM radio station, only years later to have it,
along with eight acres of personal property,
sold at a public auction.
-Look, if you make $100,000 and spend $90,000
in your business, how you going to owe tax?
After I get all the tax shelters I can,
all the deductions I can,
because I'm putting my money back in the business
and back in people.
-He hired some good and some bad accountants.
Went out on the road.
Payment was always in cash.
When you're handling cash, you think all that money is yours.
Even though it's cash, you still have to take care
of the government and everyone else.
-The first time I ever had a conversation
with Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy tells me the story
that when he first met James Brown,
the first thing that James Brown told him,
he was like, "Yeah, I see you're making a lot of money there."
He said, "This is what you do -- get you a big,
giant plot of land and then bury about 5 to $10 million."
[ Laughs ]
And Eddie Murphy's trying to figure out
the logic behind this.
He said, "What if I died?
No one's going to be able to find it."
And James Brown's like, that's right,
and neither will the government.
-♪ I'm paying taxes, but what am I buying? ♪
♪ A whole lot of government muscle and everybody crying ♪
-His musical career also suffered for seven years
during the late '70s and early '80s,
when he failed to produce any gold records,
touring only rarely and butting heads with IRS officials,
who claim he owed $2.82 million in back taxes.
-Our superstar black entertainers,
they have a harder road than most entertainers
outside of the black experience.
They go through a gauntlet of things, learning about business,
learning about their craft,
learning about the people around them as they go.
-Today, I can do a lot of things.
Financial problems, I really don't have them individually.
But I'm in companies, a lot of things I don't understand.
And I'm still fighting because I believe,
because I trust, because I went back to God,
because I believe that there's somebody who made that happen.
I'm not gr-great enough to make it happen.
So I'm telling you, it can't happen unless you believe.
So America, I say to you this way.
If you fail me now, then who can I turn to?
-James Brown was one of those people
that you weren't going to keep down.
No matter what happened to him in life,
he had that determination to get up, try again.
-Now, this is the new album. Now tell me how this came about.
You went to Japan? -Well, I just finished doing
"The Blues Brothers," right, with John Belushi.
-You highlighted that film. -I love --
-Come on, be honest now. That was the highlight.
-Praise God. -All right, all right.
Don't be lost when the time comes.
For the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night.
-When my father did the movie "The Blues Brothers,"
he was a natural.
I mean, I can't say it no simpler than that.
He was a natural because he did the role of a pastor,
which was amazing because he grew up
and performed in a lot of black churches.
-It was just right up his alley,
you know, it's just -- it was the perfect fit for him,
not just the film, and the role,
but just in expressing himself.
And very, very thankful to Dan Aykroyd for believing
that he could have a place and understanding who he was,
and, you know, what that meant for the film
and all of that stuff, and just taking a chance on him.
-His current national popularity
came about mostly because of his short appearance
in "The Blues Brothers" movie.
-I'm glad because I'm broadening my scope,
and this is good for me
because I'll be able to talk to everybody
and hopefully I can give some sound advice.
And thanks to John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd,
they did a lot for me.
-Right now, if you're to ask about James Brown,
I would guarantee you that there's a certain generation
that holds him near and dear,
their experience with him being like the preacher
in "The Blues Brothers."
-In the 1980s,
when I grew up, I didn't really know James Brown's music.
Like, I knew James Brown primarily
through Michael Jackson and Prince,
and they would often make reference back to James Brown,
or people would talk about James Brown
being the progenitor of those two artists.
I also knew him through Eddie Murphy,
because Eddie Murphy would imitate him.
-Ha, ha! I say, ha! Look at that! Ha!
-But the other way I knew him was through "Rocky IV."
♪
-Sylvester Stallone said to Brown,
"I'm making 'Rocky IV.' I want you to do a song."
You're Sylvester Stallone, Rocky. Who's bigger than you?
That's James Brown, that's a legend.
-♪ Living in America
Sing it.
♪ Eye to eye
♪ Station to station
♪ Living in America
-The first time I heard James Brown,
I must have been maybe 7 or 8,
and it was the song from "Rocky," "Living in America."
As immigrants to this country,
you think about what does it mean to live in America,
even when you're a little kid.
It almost became, like, my theme song.
-♪ I live in America
♪
♪ I feel good
[ Cheers and applause ]
-When "Living in America" was released,
it changed James Brown's career at that point,
because he hadn't had a big record in quite some time.
His money went up, his popularity went up,
and James Brown was in heaven again.
-Brown's financial reputation
caused him considerable embarrassment
as a famous entertainer.
His South Carolina home was auctioned off
on the Aiken County Courthouse steps to help pay taxes.
But now, from "The Blues Brothers"
to "Living in America,"
the Godfather of Soul is on the rise once again.
-"Living in America" is one of his last top ten songs,
but it's such a fun song
and it's almost like The Village People.
That's really what it sounds like.
It sounds like "YMCA" or "Macho Man"
or something like that, but it just works.
-♪ You're my only love
♪ My only, only love is you ♪
♪ Oh, baby
-I was there when they met.
She was a makeup artist at Solid Gold,
and we were walking to his dressing room
and he saw her and he liked her. He loved women.
He said, "Reverend, get her number."
So I go, and anyway, they end up going to dinner.
I never thought he'd marry, but they got married
over a period of time.
-Is it hard to be the wife of such a big man,
such a big star as James Brown?
-It's hard to be a wife or a husband to anyone today.
You have to be good in anything you do.
I work at my marriage. My husband works at his.
-I don't want to bad-mouth Adrienne,
but things started to get crazy about the time she came around.
Once Adrienne came in the picture,
that was the beginning of a different Mr. Brown.
-Oh, it's got everything.
This thing's everything on wheels.
And I got you a case to carry it with.
-You don't got the sticks, have you?
-Yeah, sticks still with it, too.
-I'm very happy that I found a man in my life
that has the beliefs I do and that has the energy I do.
He has to slow me down and I have to slow him down.
It's good.
-Adrienne, he loved her dearly.
I mean, they fought, but he loved her, he really did.
-His last wife, Adrienne, is the one that I knew best.
She had a hard time with James Brown.
But then again, I think most of the women
in James Brown's life had a hard time.
I mean, he got into some drug problems, I think, also.
Um, didn't we all?
-It seems like almost every week, something was happening
to put them in the news.
I know she loved him, but they got into those drugs
and it would just turn them into, uh,
something that they really shouldn't have been.
-The Godfather of Soul says he feels good.
This morning, he and his wife, Adrienne,
emerged from a meeting with Aiken County Solicitor Bob Hart
to try and fix the marriage that a few weeks ago
seemed to be rapidly untying.
Easter weekend, his wife went to local police,
claiming she had been badly beaten by the entertainer,
and said he also shot up her luxury car
and beat her with an iron pipe.
She showed, in People Magazine, the gun he used to shoot at her.
A week later, she was arrested at Augusta's Bush Field airport
and charged with possession of PCP, which is still pending.
-What about the potassium bottle
they say they got out of your purse?
-What? -A potassium bottle
with alleged PCP in it.
-I have no idea.
-He used to get high on what he called "gorilla."
"Gorilla" is a version of PCP.
They keep the PCP in a Visine bottle
because you could travel with it.
They would drip it on the cigarette,
and when it dried, you'd smoke a cigarette,
and they'd get wacky.
-But despite all that's happened,
today, she appeared a changed woman.
-You've decided to drop the charges?
-Yes, sir. I mean, I really didn't want to --
I mean, my intention was never prosecuting.
Unfortunately, this matter had gotten out into public,
and it was -- it was all a mistake.
And, you know, my husband and I love each other very much.
-I knew a lot what was going on with him
at that time of his struggle with drugs
and where his place was in society --
you know, in the music business.
It was a difficult time because everybody
wasn't necessarily listening to the James Brown sound.
They had moved on to something else.
And as an artist, a lot of them go through that.
So you see them in the slump and picking up things
that, you know, for whatever reason.
-How did all of this trouble begin?
-♪ Living in America
[ Laughter ]
There's nothing wrong. -Nothing wrong at all?
You're not in any difficulty, but you're out on bond?
-No, I'm not.
-Have all the charges been dropped?
-Yeah. I'm out on love.
-Oh, well, are you out on love or out of love, which is it?
-Out on love.
♪ Alone from night to night, you'll find me ♪
-I already knew that he was struggling just in life.
And another thing I wish I didn't see was the cheating.
And I didn't see that necessarily growing up,
but I saw it when he married his third wife.
-Although she has formally filed a request to drop charges,
solicitor Hart says he'll make the final decision.
Until then, the couple says
they'll spend more time together.
-We're here to clear the air, clear the smoke,
and let everybody know that we're on the good foot.
-♪ Give me some static -♪ You got it
-♪ Hit me
♪
♪ Huh
♪ Say it
-At the time we was working with Mr. Brown...
-He was going through a lot. -He was going through a lot.
But we kind of didn't know it.
Something I never spoke on before,
but we didn't know.
The first song he did was "Time to Get Busy."
It was great. But the other songs,
we had to go back and forth, and I told my brother,
I said, "I know Mr. Brown keep forgetting.
Like he wasn't even on on beat at the time."
-Because he was going through a lot at that time --
through the the painkillers
and the different type of addiction...
- The shooting. -...and all that stuff.
The shooting, all kinds of craziness.
And we were like, I didn't --
I didn't, I don't remember major, major problems.
-Like you having to sing some of his parts.
-Right. -On the record. Okay.
-I solved the problem. You wouldn't even know.
It's all good. -And it's on "Static."
-Me and Mr. Brown. -Right.
-♪ Won't be no static -♪ No
♪ Don't start none, won't be none ♪
-I'm on the air, and I get the news that Mr. Brown
was in a two-state car chase in Georgia
and in South Carolina.
It's like, what is going on?
- Witnesses say Brown went into a classroom
in the office building where his office is located,
brandishing a pistol and a shotgun
and demanding to know who was using his bathroom.
-Someone was using my facility without my consent.
All you have to do is ask me, and I'll be glad to say yes.
-He did get his shotgun out of the pickup,
but he did not fire it.
So James got in his pickup.
He went across on the interstate to the South Carolina side.
-I said, Mr. Brown, pull over, this is Officer Dan.
And he immediately pulled over into the slot.
-I ask the officer, "Should I get out?"
He said, "No, get out on the passenger side.
The man shot eight times at the wheel
at the bottom of the truck.
-[ James Brown scatting ]
♪
-17 bullets hit the truck.
Had only one bullet hit the gas tank,
the truck would have blew up.
-James Brown's pickup, his tires are shot off.
He's on rims, and he -- and he's got, like,
14 police cars behind him with their lights going.
They're doing, what, five, ten miles an hour?
And this is the chase?
-I don't condone people running from the police
like that, but also too, he says,
"I was scared,"
and that's what a lot of black men deal with.
They're scared of what's going to happen to them.
They're scared if they're going to be the next hashtag.
-Mind you, I didn't say my father was perfect,
but nobody deserves to be shot at like that.
We still have the panels with the 17 bullet holes.
He didn't want to throw it away. He wanted to keep it,
to remind himself of what that was about.
-The night that it happened, the high speed chase,
his wife called me. "They arrested James.
This, that and the other." Told me what happened.
I turned on the CNN and I --
you know, he had had then several altercations.
And I said, we just got to get him to calm down.
-I'm not here for it. I'm tired of this mess.
I'm tired of it.
The man's about to have a reckoning.
I'm tired of the federal government, tired!
I'm tired of them!
I'm tired of doing right!
[ Shouting indistinctly ]
-A function of being black in America
is that I don't think we take the best care of ourselves.
Oftentimes, we're trying to live.
So we're concerned with the basics
of living and survival.
Because to be black in America is to have, you know,
affiliation and attachment to pathologies and to trauma.
-I don't think James Brown wanted everybody to know him.
I think James Brown kept a part of him that only he knew.
And I think a lot of that was that he had to protect himself.
Of course, he was abandoned as a child and he grew up in jail.
-Brown just finished three months,
42 grueling dates in Europe, lifting his career there,
and taped a new cable TV special for the U.S..
But meanwhile, prosecutors
in Augusta and Aiken, South Carolina,
have been quietly gathering indictments,
tying together evidence of multiple cases
of what they say is a whole different side of James Brown.
From an alleged drug, gun, and police chase incident
over two days in September,
Brown faces close to a dozen charges.
Police allege Brown tried to run them down in his truck.
Now, authorities say they want to throw the book at James Brown
and claim to have evidence enough
to put him in jail for five years.
-I was in high school.
I was a junior. I won't forget it.
And I'm thinking to myself, he's about to lose everything he has.
Am I going to be able to go to college?
He said he would help me with college.
Is this going to be it?
Like, all of this stuff is going on in my head,
and then you got people not being nice.
They're yelling, "Free James Brown."
There's the, "Oh, your daddy locked up.
What's your daddy -- He doing all this crazy stuff.
What's going on with him?" All of that.
-People who themselves are not totally free
through art open up the door for others to be free,
even if they can't exorcise the demons
that they have themselves.
-He's facing charges of assault with intent to kill
and failing to stop for police.
Early in the day, defense attorneys filed several motions.
Included is a request to move the case to another county,
namely to disqualify the pool of potential jurors
because it contains a small number of blacks.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-Four white policemen came up and shot the truck up
and almost shot the black deputy sheriff.
The deputy sheriff was afraid to testify against them.
I wasn't afraid of them.
-It's just 6-12. -It's cold out here.
-Thank you very, very much. -Thank you, James.
How are you doing today? -I'm doing good.
-When they went to trial,
everybody thought they'd give him probation or something.
-There was talk in the courthouse tonight
about James Brown, philanthropist,
James Brown, legend. I hold here in my hand
a presidential pin from President Reagan
James Brown himself set.
But tonight, James Brown was sentenced
to six years in prison,
plus five years probation and $6,000 fine.
Earlier, a jury found him guilty of failing to stop
when signaled by a law enforcement officer
and two counts of aggravated assault.
-A six year and six month sentence
for a traffic violation is extremely excessive.
And if that were Jerry Lee Lewis
or Roy Orbison or Willie Nelson or whoever --
I mean, I definitely know country people
that have gotten into shootouts and worse
that didn't get that type of treatment.
-If James Brown was not who he was,
was not of the race he is, there's no question
that he would not have been given this sentence.
-I'm doing the time and somebody else did the crime.
-James Brown learned and was reminded
that there are two Americas,
and he learned which America he lived in that day.
♪
-♪ A man have to go back to the crossroad ♪
♪ Before he find his self
♪ Sometimes, it's tough
♪