The Slaughterhouse (2004)
I think it was Machiavelli who once said that the best fortress a prince can possess is a Camille-voiced smackdown over a James Brown break and this is exactly what we have here. A percussive stickleback with Prince playing the elder statesman of funk, wearing his credentials as a peacock tail and belittling newcomers about their “little” grooves and over-reliance on music software. Y Should I Do That When I Can Do This? also doubled as a retort to any concert goer expecting him to just churn out the hits and was probably written in Latin on his family crest, being an apt summary of his modus operandi and echoed in lines such as The Max’s “when they tell me 2 walk a straight line, I put on crooked shoes”. The six minute lesson in paying dues ends with a Hide the Bone style scat of the horn riff and the feeling that you’ve just been schooled by a sensai motherfucker.
