Newpower Soul (1998)
The simple, unwavering beat may be “specially designed to make you lose your phone number to somebody fine” but that can only be through the persuasive joy of repetition as it’s pretty unmemorable and doesn’t so much as blink until the fade-out. But like Dirty Mind it’s all that’s needed to carry the cream of the song: Prince delivering on the title by surfing in on funky guitar licks and crowd chants while the horns sing Feel U Up. At two minutes Doug E Fresh is on and the original Human Beat Box, the Entertainer, performs passably in the role of Not Prince, a hard and thankless role to pull off, especially for a rapper. Overall it’s hardly a “brand new groove” but you could sooner outrun entropy than fail to dance to it.