Okay, real talk. I always loved this song. “Give It To Me Baby” was filthy in the best way—Rick James throwing down that wild-eyed, raw, sweaty lust with a bassline so funky it practically grinds against your hips. But Michelle Ann Owens? She didn’t just cover it. She claimed it. Reimagined it. Turned that bad boy on his head, tied him to the bedpost, and whispered now it’s my turn in his ear.
From the first slap of that exposed bassline—yes please—you know this version isn’t some overproduced rehash. It’s real instruments. Live horns. Gritty drums. No slick programming, no glittery gloss, just pure, unfiltered groove.
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Here’s the twist: Rick was out there strutting, high as the sky and drunk off his own sex appeal, but still begging for it, right? Michelle flips the script. Instead of bragging about getting some, she’s frustrated AF that she isn’t. She walks in the door, fire in her veins, and what does she get? A man who’s passed out and won’t even talk to her. The audacity. The blue balls of it all. “You went fast asleep,” she sings, voice dripping with disbelief. “You wouldn’t even talk to me.”
I’ve been that girl. Haven’t we all? You’re in the mood, you’re hot, you’re lit from head to toe with that post-party electricity, and he’s curled up like a damn kitten. And instead of sulking, you strut right into your own power. You say, “Give it to me baby.” Not a request. A command.
And when she hits that bridge—“Give me that stuff / that funk / that sweet / that funky stuff”—I died. Dead. Ascended and resurrected just to dance my ass off in my kitchen in nothing but a T-shirt and underwear, wine glass in one hand, hair wild and frizzed from too much heat and not enough care.
What makes this cover so juicy, so wickedly irresistible, is the sheer audacity of a woman demanding pleasure. And not just emotional closeness or “date night” intimacy. I mean real, carnal, “I’ve been out dancing and I need you to take me up the wall” kind of pleasure. Michelle makes no apologies. She’s not here to be polite. “Wait ’til I squeeze you,” she teases, smirking through the verse. “Maybe then you’ll start to groovin’.”
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Honestly, I want this song playing the next time I walk into a club, or better yet, when I walk out of one with someone in tow. It’s that good. It’s playful, it’s horny, it’s frustrated, and it’s alive. There’s something so empowering about a woman putting her pleasure front and center, especially when it’s dressed up in glittering horns and a bassline that humps your ear in the best way.
And let’s not forget, this song was already taboo. Rick James, a Black man in the early ’80s, singing straight-up sex anthems for white suburban kids to blast in their Camaros. It was already scandalous. The only way to make it more deliciously illicit? Have a woman—a grown, sexy woman—sing it instead.
So grab a drink, grab a lover, or just grab your damn self and turn this one up. Michelle Ann Owens didn’t just cover Rick James—she out-seduced him. And I am so here for it.
