Tazman Johnson landed in jail on a felony warrant tied to a fentanyl case, reviving painful parallels to Rick James’ troubled legacy.
Tazman Johnson, the youngest son of funk legend Rick James, is sitting in an LA County jail cell right now, and the charges he’s facing are hard to separate from the shadow his father never fully escaped.
Tazman was booked on April 29 on a felony warrant connected to a fentanyl possession case that’s been crawling through the courts since March 2024, and he’s got a 2019 burglary charge hanging over him on top of it all.
The original 2024 bust hit Tazman with two misdemeanor counts, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, and he bonded out. But he missed a court date, a judge issued a $10,000 bench warrant, and it took until April to reel him back in.
He pleaded not guilty to both counts, according to TMZ, and the case is still working its way through the system.
What makes this story hit different is that Tazman’s older half-brother, Ricardo Mathews, is already doing 25 years to life at Kern Valley State Prison after being convicted of a prison assault charge in 2022. Two sons of Rick James, two different mothers, and both tangled up in a system that their father warned about from experience.
Rick James himself was one of the most documented addicts in music history, a man who admitted his accountants once sat him down to tell him he’d burned through over $1 million on cocaine.
At his worst, he was spending an estimated $7,000 a week on the drug while the hits dried up and the money disappeared.
He died on August 6, 2004, with nine different substances in his system, though the coroner ruled none were individually at fatal levels. The cause of death was cardiac and pulmonary failure.
He was 56, and he left behind an estate worth just $250,000 after a lifetime that should’ve generated generational wealth.
The world got a comedic glimpse of that chaos through Dave Chappelle’s legendary “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” sketch, where Chappelle played Rick and the real Rick James sat down to narrate his own wild behavior with a signature phrase: “cocaine is a hell of a drug.” The phrase became one of the most quoted lines in television history.
It’s funny until you remember he died the same year it aired.
Tazman was 12 when he lost his father, and he’s spent most of his adult life trying to build something separate from that legacy, including a 2021 debut rap album called Objectify Me.
Tazman’s next court appearance has not been publicly confirmed.
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