"In My House" (Mary Jane Girls)

"In My House" from the album Only Four You (1985) was the biggest hit for the Mary Jane Girls and also the beginning of the end for their mentor Rick James, whose infamous taste for cocaine and bad behavior derailed him creatively and financially soon thereafter.
In reality, the Mary Jane Girls didn't exist.  Not as they appeared on their album covers, anyway.
In the early 80s, James had tried to put together a girl group trio, fronted by his former backing singer/protégé Joanne "JoJo" McDuffie, whom he'd molded in his own image, right down to the braids and freaky leather.  After recording a few demos, the other two singers dropped out of the project, leaving only McDuffie.  Not to be defeated, though, James convinced McDuffie that he could get her a contract as a solo artist.
After shopping around the demos, James was able to land a contract with Motown Records.  Only problem was, the label wanted a group.  So James lied and told Motown execs that his "group" consisted of McDuffie and three other singers.
He quickly found three attractive stand-ins, who looked the glammy/streetwise part but had limited to no singing ability, to create the illusion of a group.  McDuffie along with several session backing singers did all of the vocals on all of the Mary Jane Girls records—which created another problem: the group couldn't book high-profile T.V. gigs like The Tonight Show because programs like that weren't interested in broadcasting four girls, lip syncing.  Consequently, the group's ability to reach fans had a ceiling, pretty much sealing their fate from the get-go.
At age 7, I didn't really know or care about any of that stuff.  (Rick James scared the bejesus out of me anyway; he seemed like the kind of dude that D.A.R.E. and Nancy Reagan had warned us kids about.)  I just knew I liked the catchy electro-funk of "In My House," which in typical Rick James fashion combines danceable R&B with a hint of rock flavor, courtesy of that persistent guitar riff (which still reminds me a bit of the riff from the 1970 single "Venus" by Dutch band Shocking Blue).  
My favorite moment of the song comes after the second chorus: there's that funky synth breakdown, and then McDuffie starts singing her own little multi-tracked call-and-response: In my house / ooo-ooo-oooh.  Actually, that was the section I sang to my grandma in the Summer of '85 when I was trying to describe which single I wanted to buy with my allowance.  (As I've mentioned before, she was in charge of stocking the records and tapes at our local department store.)  I remember her standing there, leafing through the sleeves of 45 singles, and landing on "In My House," which had a somewhat provocative photo of the group on the cover.
"That's it!  That's the song," I told her.
She took one look at it, raised her eyebrow, and grunted at me.  
"Floozies."
Pretty sure I ended up with a copy of "Sussudio" that day instead.