The book came together after Gaye had contacted Ritz shortly after seeing a review Ritz had given on Rolling Stone about the album, Here, My Dear, criticizing critics who he felt didn't get Marvin's message in the album, which was panned at the time of its release in late 1978.

Gaye and Ritz had ongoing conversations of the singer's life story, most of it recorded on audio tape.

In 1982, while visiting Gaye in Belgium where he was on a self-imposed exile, Ritz continued work on the autobiography when Ritz searched Gaye's room finding explicit comic books, telling the singer, who struggled with depression and other issues, that he "needed sexual healing".

Their interviews ended abruptly after Gaye was shot and killed by his father on April 1, 1984.

Devastated over Marvin's death, Ritz began writing the book and took quotes that Marvin had recited to him over his life from his troubled childhood being brought up in the Pentecostal faith by his father and suffering physical abuse from the same man, to his breakthrough years with Motown and his depression over the death of Tammi Terrell and his tumultuous relationships with Berry Gordy and his two wives Anna Gordy and Janis Hunter.