Background
As one of his earliest hits as a solo artist, it is one of his most notable songs. It was composed by James, along with keyboardist Billy Nunn, who was credited for the keyboards, strings, background vocals, helping to compose the song, arranging flute parts, and other instrumentation work. The lyrics of the song are a thinly veiled ode to James' love of marijuana aka "Mary Jane". During live performances of the song, James frequently had stage props that looked like giant joints and then would light up an actual joint. [2]
Sampling (Live Version)
"Mary Jane" has been sampled many times within Rap, Pop, and R&B, many coming from Rick James's live performances of the song in 1981 (Mary Jane Live in Long Beach) and 1982. For example, "Look at ya" was a 1 second phrase in the 1981 live performance, that was then used 20 years later as the Vocal Refrain following the piano intro of Kanye West's Runaway.
In the same video, 3 minutes after the first, Rick James exclaimed "Sing". This exclamation was used in Lana Del Rey's Blue Jeans.
3 months before Kanye West released "Runaway", he appeared on and produced, Live Fast, Die Young, for Rick Ross. Here, Kanye sampled the same 1981 Live Performance 20 seconds before the "Look at Ya" sample"
"I wanna show you how you all look like beautiful stars tonight"
Kanye also used the "Sing" sample in this song.
"Sing" was used on Travis Scott's song, Sin City, on Kanye's album, Cruel Summer.
In January 2011, used the 1981 live performance once again, sampling Rick James saying "Come on Baby", on the song "Eyes Closed", that was going to be on Snoop Dogg's 2001 Album, Doggumentary.
The 1982 Live Performance of "Mary Jane" was sampled by Kendrick Lamar, on his song, DNA, where Rick James exclaimed, "Give me some Ganja". [3]
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