
The Godfather of Soul was well known for his spoken-word songs, including the anthem “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud.” That call-and-response song includes some bits of singing, unlike “King Heroin,” which is purely a monologue set to a slow, melancholy beat. Brown describes a dream in which he runs into heroin personified. Heroin tells its story of controlling people from all walks of life: heroin “can make a good man forsake his wife” and send “a greedy man to prison for the rest of his life.” Brown, who had his own problems with drugs, rereleased the song in 1991, three years after voluntarily checking himself into an outpatient drug-dependency clinic to be treated for addiction to an undisclosed drug.
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