James Brown^†

He recorded Live at the Apollo in 1962 on his own dime because King Records refused to pay for it. Label executives told him live albums didn't sell. It hit No. 2 on the LP charts, stayed on the charts 66 weeks, and sold over a million copies. Brown understood his audience in ways his label never did. He forged that instinct early: grew up in his aunt's brothel in Augusta, was arrested at 15 for breaking into cars, and met Bobby Byrd through a prison baseball game. Byrd helped get him released, and Brown joined what became the Famous Flames. The industry kept saying no. Brown kept going anyway.

One of the most sampled artists in recorded music history, and the estate still hasn't funded the scholarships he intended to leave behind. Brown's will directed the bulk of his assets to underprivileged children in South Carolina and Georgia. Nearly two decades of litigation later, that fund sits empty. His catalogue and likeness sold to Primary Wave for a reported $90 million, settling the 15-year dispute over who legally qualified as his widow, while the children he meant to help got nothing. His music is everywhere. His actual last wish wasn't.

Al Sharpton was Brown's protege from around age 9 and served as his road manager from 1973 to 1980. The cape routine, where Brown collapses on stage in apparent exhaustion and gets revived under a sequined cape only to rip it off and keep performing, came from watching professional wrestler Gorgeous George. He reportedly had a vasectomy in the 1980s to avoid paternity suits, a detail that later complicated a DNA dispute over his son James II.

Brown died Christmas morning 2006 with no autopsy, despite his attending physician raising concerns about the cause. A 2019 CNN investigation interviewed around 140 people and alleged someone introduced a toxic substance through his endotracheal tube. His son-in-law Darren Lumar publicly accused specific parties in 2007 and was killed in an unsolved Atlanta shooting a year later. His daughter LaRhonda, who shared those suspicions, died before the investigation ran.