Standing On The Top - Pt. 1

"Standing On The Top" was written by Rick James, who also sang on the track with The Temptations. James used The Temptations as backup singers on his 1981 hit "Super Freak," and this was his contribution to the Reunion album, which featured both David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks and had songs produced by Motown mainstays Smokey Robinson and Barrett Strong.

As Rick James explained in a 1983 interview with Musician magazine, he didn't appreciate the work ethic of the legendary vocal group. Said James: "I worked with the Temps once and I gave them all vocal lines. I went out and sang the vocal parts of 'Standing On The Top' and they took the stuff home (a cassette with Rick singing the vocals) and a couple of them came back the next day and didn't know anything. They hadn't even listened to the tune. And I was very upset. I had to give them a long speech about how this was their careers and I'm already rich and I don't need this aggravation. I get very hurt when people don't give me a hundred percent. They've sold over eighty million records and in their minds they're really big stars; they thought they could just come in the next day and knock it out, but it didn't go that way. I demand what I want, not what they want. They ended up giving me what I wanted."