Game is Her Middle Name

As a girl, Betty Davis fixed her eyes on stardom and never looked back. After leaving a violent marriage to her husband Miles Davis, Betty took unprecedented control of her musical career for a Black woman working in the 1970s, performing and producing a string of defiantly feminist funk records with a screaming, sexually intense style like no one else. And then, at the crest of her powers, she fell silent – until, with the arrival of the internet, she was rediscovered by a wave of artists who are now international megastars. Gradually, Davis re-emerged, reclaimed some of her legacy, and started to get the recognition her extraordinarily provocative, trailblazing art deserved.

Built on decades of interviews and told through the eyes of Danielle Maggio, Davis’s close friend in her final years, Game Is Her Middle Name reveals new aspects of Davis’s life, music, and struggles. Both a vibrant portrait of a singular artist and a powerful reclamation of a neglected legacy, the book reveals the woman behind one of popular music’s most influential cult figures.