43. RICK JAMES ACCUSED OF SUPER-FREAKY CRIMES
Rick James shot to fame with risqué funk songs like 1978's ''Mary Jane'' and 1981's ''Super Freak.'' But those odes to excess didn't prepare fans for the headlines James made in 1991, when a woman accused him of tying her up, torturing her with a hot cocaine pipe, and forcing her into sex acts with his girlfriend (whom he married in 1997, then divorced in 2002). More scandal came the next year, when another woman said he imprisoned and brutally beat her. Charges from both incidents were combined in one trial; in 1993 James was convicted on felony counts of assault and possessing cocaine and served three years.
CAREER IMPACT Major. His 1997 comeback attempt, Urban Rapsody, was a flop, though the R&B legend briefly returned to pop culture's forefront in 2004 thanks to Dave Chappelle's memorable impersonation on his Comedy Central show (''I'm Rick James, b----!''), before dying of heart failure at age 56 later that year.
