James Brown channels his anger into a revenge fantasy in the influential funk classic The Payback, much sampled by hip-hop artists in later years.

There’s not a lot to The Payback – just a sparse funk loop with James Brown throwing out verbal jabs like a boxer, sparring at the rival who tried to “Get down wit’ my girlfriend – that ain’t RIGHT!”

Over the tightest of funky beats and wah-wah guitar, the Godfather of Soul ducks and weaves with his barbs, encouraged by the girl backing singers: “I can do wheelin’, I can do dealin’…” (“Yes you can”)… “But I don’t do no damn squealin’.”

There’s a marvellous moment around 4:30 where the beat stops and, after the briefest of pauses, the horns come in like sucker punches raining down, emphasised by a chilling scream from Brown.

The Payback, co-written by Brown with his bandleader and trombonist Fred Wesley and drummer Jabo Starks, was commissioned for the soundtrack of a blaxploitation film called Hell Is Harlem.

In a display of wayward judgment they no doubt came to regret, the producers rejected the entire album as too generic: “The same old James Brown stuff,” said the producer to an incredulous Brown, who claims they told him this tune was “not funky enough.”

Releasing it himself in December 1973, his 37th studio album turned out to be his biggest-selling one – incredibly, it’s the only one to earn a gold disc – while Edwin Starr took over the film soundtrack.

The anger in the lyrics (“I can do rappin’, I can do scrappin’ – but I can’t dig that backstabbin'”) can be attributed partly to Brown’s failing health as the self-proclaimed Hardest Working Man In Show Business’s hectic schedule of more than 300 dates a year began to take its toll, but also the loss of his son in a car crash easrlier that year