HITnRUN Phase One (2015)
My guess is Joshua Welton, Like a Mack‘s co-producer, is a Nintendo Head because this track is addled with old-school console sound effects, power-ups and gold coins, making Prince sound like a pimped up Wreck-it Ralph. I can visualise him shrinking, Mario-style, with every pitchshifted “looking, looking, looking…” In the midst of this 8bit orchestra the horns seem lost and bewildered. The trumpets just do their thing, refusing to mingle, and the sax towards the end seems particularly downbeat but it’s a welcome return for the NPG Hornz nonetheless. Like a Mack is the third song on HITnRUN Phase One to mention the moon, and the second to rhyme it with June which makes me think of Yoko Ono’s diss on Paul McCartney that he only writes moon-June-spoon rhyming songs. But hey, if it’s good enough for Sign o’ the Times (and even John Lennon but don’t tell Yoko) then it’s good enough for The Curly Fries. I don’t know too much about this female duo but the sparring verses they deliver are pure fire. Overall it’s a spiked turtleshell of a pop song – a King Koopa club banger – and if released as a single I bet it would show that a fifty-something Prince could still run the bulls of the millennial charts. Plus it taught me what a THOT is, not that I’ll be using it in polite (or even impolite) company anytime soon.