Dirty Mind (1980)
The first 15 seconds of Dirty Mind are Prince’s heartbeat at rest. The base level of funk that pulses through him when his mind is clear of all thoughts. Then Dr Fink plugs in. His synth riff arrives as the first official non-lyrical collaboration on a Prince record. A Van Halen-esque rock fanfare announcing the expansion of Prince’s universe. Only Chris Moon has shared a co-writing credit before (for the lyrics to Soft & Wet) but this is the first time Prince has acknowledged that the music wasn’t entirely ‘produced, arranged, composed and performed’ by himself. It came about during a rehearsal jam where a chord progression Fink was toying with scored him an invite back to Prince’s house to turn it into a new song. The keyboard player was dismissed in the early evening and by morning Dirty Mind was born, both as the song and the direction of his third album. A new Prince was created that night – probably the most important out of all of his between-album metamorphoses. His naked vulnerability got replaced by a seedy flasher mac and a ‘rude boy’ badge, two symbols that will feature on his next three album covers, showing the endurance of his lewd new sexuality. The song starts off tentatively. His vocals are low; his kick-drum and bass-synth chug along like they’re sizing up the alien element caught in their web. Cautiously the guitars spin their silk around the foreign body and slowly devour its essence. By the end Prince is screaming the chorus while dancing on disco’s ashes. A new funk/rock sex centaur has been born and the 80s stretches out before it, fresh as virgin snow.
