Papa Don't Take No Mess

James Brown scored the soundtrack for the blaxploitation flick Black Caesar in 1973 and wrote this and other songs for the sequel Hell Up in Harlem. Director Larry Cohen, however, didn't like any of the music Brown recorded and rejected it all. He hired Motown's Edwin Starr to replace him, but Brown wasn't about to let his work go to waste. The majority of the nixed soundtrack became his 1973 album The Payback, but this song ended up on his following album, Hell.

Janet Jackson sampled this song in her 1993 chart-topper "That's The Way Love Goes."

The full-length version of this song runs nearly 14 minutes and includes a piano solo by Brown, but an edited version was also released as a two-part single.