HITnRUN Phase One (2015)
If you’re a Prince fan, chances are you’re used to his quicksilver output, and can roll with the twists and hairpin bends – not always on board but rarely shocked – but who could have predicted Ain’t About To Stop? This may be the bucking bronco that throws you off. If it doesn’t sound like a Prince song that’s because it initially wasn’t. This club banger was slated for Rita Ora’s album with the London singer providing lead vocals, but for whatever reason it got dropped. Luckily Prince salvaged it for his penultimate album, promoting himself to lead vocal and changing the hometown shoutout to North Minne. To West Indian ears the lyrics are dirtier than Rita’s $100 nails, making this a contender for his sweariest release since Larry had a word in the late 90s. Not that Prince may have known as he still censors out the word ‘ass’, but my money’s on him turning a blind eye to Rita’s potty mouth. The lyrics are best ignored anyway – millennial angst in Prince’s hands becomes Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud – but the music is pure fire. If this is indicative of the rest of her oeuvre then consider me a Ritabot.
265: Mia Bocca
Jill Jones (1987)
Jill Jones was always the most gifted singer in Prince’s harem, and Mia Bocca, sung partly in the language of her father, is her career high point. In this song she tells us she “could never be unfaithful” but for somebody purportedly knocking back an admirer’s advances, she does seem to mention her mouth a lot. Does she think because it’s in Italian we won’t notice her evoking the Bill Clinton defence of sexual relations? Call me a Puritan but I think that would still count as cheating. Mia Bocca was initially recorded on the same day as Little Red Corvette and then put into storage for five years before being wrapped in elegance by the Clare Fischer Orchestra. Although the original benefits from having His Royal Purpleness on backing vocals it feels empty without the strings – when you’ve experienced the finer things in life it’s hard to go back – which makes the 1987 album track the one to head for, with the Arthur Baker extended mix a close second. The single never charted (except for in Italy where it reached #4) but I put that down to Joe Public’s general distaste for anything foreign sounding than a commentary on its pure pop appeal. I’m sure Te Amo Corazón will agree.
266: Undisputed
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999) / Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic (2001)
A lot of noise has been generated about Prince’s forays into hip-hop and how he was deemed to have lost his way once he started chasing trends instead of setting them. Undisputed is his defiant response and answers accusations that he’s out of touch with the killer line “My dear, I AM the touch”. To underscore this he dusts off his signature Linn drum, unseen since the late 80s, heralding a prodigal return that prompts the line “once again, back is the incredible”, leading to the author of said line being invited to deliver a guest verse. (Fun fact: I used to live with someone who believed the preceding couplet on Bring the Noise was “bass, how low can you go / death row water buffalo” and now I can’t hear otherwise.) This collaboration followed years of mutual backslapping between Prince and Chuck D and the appearance of the Public Enemy frontman is met with a burst of chicken grease guitar that truly gilds the cherry on the pudding. Not so for the Moneyopolis mix, which has the chicken grease in high supply but is like walking in on an argument that doesn’t concern you. On this remix, Prince rages at an unknown perceived betrayal and you can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t for your ears. There are suggestions that D’Angelo is the intended recipient due to comments he had in his Voodoo album’s liner notes. These notes, written by Saul Williams but uncredited, called into question Prince’s quality control and described half of his output as shit because he lacks new inspiration and has to serve as his own. If true then what better retort than his critic smackdown that already mentions D’Angelo. Of course there may be nothing in it and the remix could just be an attempt to replicate Bring the Noise’s unbridled testosterone, but unfortunately either way it descends into petulance. You’re much better sticking with the original where, whether his inspiration is Public Enemy or himself in the past, you can’t dispute that whoever decides to throw in a classical harpsichord solo for kicks is certainly not chasing trends or painting by numbers.
267: Hide The Bone
Crystal Ball (1998)
Hide the Bone is p-funk where the P stands for puerile. That’s not a criticism: I miss this side of Prince where the euphemisms are written in pen and the entendres are single. Although surprisingly, in this case, the lyrics aren’t his. According to the Crystal Ball liner notes, the writers’ credit is shared with Brenda Lee Eager and Hilliard Wilson, which may explain how at times Hide the Bone sounds like it’s pretending to be a Prince song. An inauthenticity you struggle to put your finger on – like cats on pet food labels, that have the downturned Vs of their mouths subtly Photoshopped into a smile (an uncanny valley that obviously sells more tins than feline bitchy-resting-faces do). Cartoonish Prince is always good Prince though, even with the guest illustrator, and the music here is peak NPG. This 1993 recording has the Michael B and Sonny T dream team bashing out what could be the third in Prince’s canine trilogy after La, La, La, He, He, Hee and Scarlet Pussy. Canine funk taking sips from the bowl of the alpha Atomic Dog.
268: Splash
Unreleased (1985) / Internet download (2001)
Prince has experimented in reggae on several occasions, ranging from the blatant (Blue Light, Ripopgodazippa) to the subtle (Telepathy, Goldnigga). Splash falls somewhere in between. It has a textbook reggae beat with bass that’s broader than Broadway, but the song’s also drenched with aquatic sound-effects and a melody that’s pure musical theatre. Strange bedfellows that bunk up surprisingly well. Splash sounds like The Revolution having the time of their lives and is more summery than a slip’n’slide through Pimms, although the instrumental last minute could quite easily be the DVD menu-screen music for an animated movie about a mermaid. Here’s hoping future excavations into the vault yield lost classics on a par with this.
269: Thunder
Diamonds and Pearls (1991)
It seems perverse to reach Thunder before we’re done with half of HITnRUN Phase One, as this Diamonds and Pearls opener is one of Prince’s most atmospheric pieces of art and an incredible way to kick off his best selling album of the 90s. But there’s something holding the song back from attaining the soul-soaring heights of Thieves in the Temple or 7. Quite possibly it’s the Funky Drummer loop dating it – a James Brown sample that wasn’t particularly fresh in 1991 and has only gotten staler since. But ’nuff bellyaching, Thunder is still a tour de force. Gothic horror meets Christian rock. We’re back in Nikki’s castle hearing doves cry and watching the devil dance in the pale moonlight to the sound of a sitar. The first 15 seconds alone burn with the intensity of God’s gaze and that’s before the choral elements rush at you like an Omen supercut. Maybe we can’t handle that much raw emotion and need a familiar drum-break thrown in as a life raft. Something mortal to help us on our journey through this realm of pure light, like a coin placed in your mouth to pay the ferryman. As the only solo recording on this album though it does make me wonder what it would sound like if the NPG were unleashed on it.
270: The Dance
The Chocolate Invasion (2004) / 3121 (2006)
The Dance first appeared on The Chocolate Invasion as an unmemorable but technically solid wail of unrequited love – the only song on the album that hadn’t previously been available to download. Prince wasn’t done with it yet though and re-recorded a version for 3121, crafting it into a smoother but still fairly forgettable filler track… until… OMG until… the final act. Then wow! Prince turns up the melodrama dial to full foot-stamping tantrum and screams “It’s not fey-eh! It’s not FAY-EHHH!!!” Histrionic fireworks that sear this broken-hearted breakdown into your brain. It has a redemptive twist on a par with The Usual Suspects. A slow-boil jam that’s three parts If I Love You Tonight, and one part The Beautiful Ones.
271: Lisa
Unreleased (1980)
She would later play down the association but this unreleased song was written about Revolution member and friend Lisa Coleman: a classically trained pianist who could be considered the fountainhead of Prince’s compositional complexity having switched him on to composers such as Cage, Debussy and Stravinsky. There’s no avant-garde boundary pushing on Lisa but what there is is a simple, sleek and hypnotic groove. Prince showing off his keyboard dexterity to his new bandmate by piling seductive synth-lines up like serpents’ coils. I originally was going to feature the NPG song Peace from The Slaughterhouse in this slot but I listened to it repeatedly in readiness and my enthusiasm evaporated away. The beat, so solidly funky at first, seemed to show signs of rigor mortis with every replay. In contrast, I could listen to this lithe track until the sun blinks out in the sky and I would still spend my last moments on this untethered Earth groping for the replay button in the cold, eternal night.
272: Freaks on This Side
Newpower Soul (1998)
The beat may be pedestrian, the live chants overdone, but what better terrain to witness the power of a fully armed and operational brass section? The Hornheadz are on fine form as they break curfew and run riot all over Freaks on This Side like gremlins fed after midnight. Apocalyptic trumpets sound the charge of the undead and inhuman. The lyrics are further dispatches from Prince’s Book of Revelation and repeat Anna Stasia’s ‘God is love, love is God’ refrain but the effect on the vocals is more revolutionary than the content. They sound like a vortex of demons fighting for power and are the reason why I included this song on my Lovespooky Halloween mix. Who else could create a song that sounds like the Ghostbusters’ containment unit getting its funk on? There’s others here with us and they’re freaking their non-corporeal heads to this.
273: 5 Women
Night Calls (1991) / The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
To the dismay of any musicians who’ve spent their whole career trying to create blues perfection like 5 Women, Prince rustles this song up in an afternoon and throws it over his shoulder for Joe Cocker to catch like it ain’t no thing. And blues isn’t even within his top 10 genres! That’s gotta hurt. Eventually, Prince realised the outtake was a keeper (although he’s walked away from better songs than this) and rerecorded and released a version himself to see out his Warner Bros contract. The smooth centre of a smooth album. If this hasn’t in your life soundtracked a late night card game then you’re missing out my friend.
274: Sticky Like Glue
20ten (2010)
From the crowded composition of Eye No we now turn to the opposite end of the scale. Sticky Like Glue is a slinky funk mover, low on ornamentation and high on economy. Like a cartoonist, Prince sketches with the minimum amount of strokes. The Linn drum pops like space dust while strands of guitar are teased in with surgical precision. The vocals – especially the rap – are befitting of a late-career freebie given away with a tabloid paper, but the lithe funk underneath could hold court on any of his early-80s classic albums. There’s a platinum instrumental inside Sticky Like Glue that is crying out to be let free.
275: Eye No / The Ball
Lovesexy (1988) / Unreleased (1986)
On its own merits Eye No is the perfect Lovesexy opener – a technicolor gateway to a world of futuristic psychedelia. It sets up all the themes of the album and lets you know straight away that this is a record unlike any you’ve heard before. But when compared to earlier incarnation The Ball, you begin to miss the predecessor’s grit and grime. Eye No starts to sound a little too sterilised; the lyrics a little too wholesome. What was a thousand-petaled corona of light crowning the very concept of funk quickly becomes Britney covering (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. The opposite is true too: The Ball can sound like a premium export from whichever planet George Clinton comes from or it can lack the direction and nuance of its successor. The fat to Eye No’s tallow. The songs are two out-of-phase waves cancelling each other out. Destructive interference. I believe this is a curse sent by Prince for anyone straying away from officially sanctioned releases. A pharaoh’s revenge for opening the vault. A plague o’ all your bootlegs. But from this point on I’m going to break the hex and phase-shift the waves. The two songs will now compliment instead of compete. Eye No will forever dance with the ghost memory of The Ball’s looser, stankier funk, and The Ball will be superposed with all the gravitas and anticipation of Lovesexy’s opening sequence (where we’re introduced to the concept of the New Power Generation for the first time and are only three songs away from our date with Anna Stasia). The waves now bolster each other. Constructive interference. To misquote Stevie: when you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer – superposition is the way.
276: If I Love You Tonight
Unreleased (1979/1987) / Contribution (1991) / Child of the Sun (1995)
Gayle Chapman, Mica Paris and Mayte have all fronted this song, yet once again it’s the Prince-sung demo that shines brightest. That’s not a slight on anybody’s performance, but the production on both the released Mica and Mayte recordings has dated poorly, while the Gayle-sung original, as with everything else Prince recorded as part of his new-wave Rebels project, is little more than a quirky curio. His 1987 remake sounds effortless though – a sign of the times of Prince at his peak – and is under-polished to perfection. I’m writing this on Midsummer’s Day, the hottest one in this country for 40 years, and the muggy weather fits this languid song perfectly. A cloud of still emotion is held aloft on gentle gusts of warm bass. The air-con is non-existent, the atmosphere is thick and oppressive, I’m a meat puddle in a heap of clothes, but with this on my headphones all is well with the universe. Never mind staying “’til the morning light” – I’m not leaving this room until the swelling Sun swallows the Earth or until the repeat button breaks. Whichever comes first.
277: Judas Smile
Internet Download (2001) / The Chocolate Invasion (2004)
Without seeing the movie it’s hard to know how much of Judas Smile’s lyrics are influenced by the plot of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, and how much are further tiles to be placed in the mosaic of Prince’s personal mythology. And to be honest I like it that way. I remember reading that the line “how dare you call the robot Mecca” refers to the Mecha robots in Spielberg’s AI, and if that’s the level of outrage, the more opaque the better. Instead of the paranoid, scattergun lyrics, I’d much rather focus on the jittery music: another funky rollout of the space invaders synths, briefly interspersed with a Carlos Santana interlude. It’s the cold shower during an otherwise steamy first half of The Chocolate Invasion; an anxiety dream interrupting a wet one. The beat reminds me of Q-Tip’s Breathe and Stop. But angrier. A Diatribe Called Quest presents The Low End Conspiracy Theory. I don’t know where the vitriol is being directed but seeing it thrash and coil like a high-pressure hose makes Judas Smile a livewire highlight of the NPGMC years.
278: Count The Days
Exodus (1995)
This Gangsta-gospel soul song veers on the right side of pastiche, as Sonny T coaxes and cusses, lulls and let loose, like a coked-up Bill Withers losing himself in the music and momentarily forgetting he’s pre-watershed. It’s hard to read the expletive-laden lyrics as anything other than Prince clockwatching on his contract with Warner Bros (and in 1995 what else would generate this level of anger in him but his record label?) but the song otherwise is calm and graceful – a sweet and fluffy pancake mix with the right amount of F-bomb currants mixed in for flavour. With different lyrics, you could walk down the aisle to it, but Count The Days will always be a coarse but lovable Cockney flower girl at heart.
279: Shut This Down
HITnRUN Phase One (2015)
Shut This Down is a Battle Royale between album-mate Ain’t About to Stop, Public Enemy’s Shut ’em Down and a roided-out My Name is Prince. It’s a klaxon soundtracking the destruction of city infrastructure as 100ft robots clash with the super-hero protagonist. Decepticons’ entrance music. Mothra’s Eye of the Tiger. Kaiju hip-hop from the Pacific breach. Bridges and roads are gonna get upturned and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
280: Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance
Musicology (2004)
Pomp and circumstance: a phrase coined by Shakespeare to mean celebratory ceremony and fuss, but there’s little of that on show here. The very opposite in fact. The music underpinning Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance is mean and sparse – a thin braid made up of hip-hop drums, the lead synth-line from Sex, and the funkiest guitar-licks this side of the Black album. And space. A whole lot of space. This bare-bones beat focuses your attention on the storyline – reminiscent of Under the Cherry Moon – of a rich cougar and a young gigolo using each other for their own shallow ends. A stiletto-sharp tale of two characters “making”, to borrow another phrase from Othello, “the beast with two backs” as a loveless transaction. Murky with the mud of materialism, there’s no glory here, save for that found in Prince’s delivery. His exquisitely acerbic vocals show that in his hands even the grimiest canvas can sparkle with invisible fire.
281: Incense and Candles
3121 (2006)
The dreaded autotune: refuge of the mediocre and the merely mortal. Music’s much-maligned MSG and the soulless jackboot stomp of capitalism’s expediency. 90% of pop now has this vocal-corrective software, papering over the cracks in singers’ shortcomings but Prince surely has no need for such a crutch? So when he debuted it on Incense and Candles fans cried foul like it was Dylan going electric. This was no patch-up fix or homogenising youth-appeal gloss though. Prince took a leaf out of the Cher playbook and wields the tool like a wizard, warbling in and out of key to stretch the algorithms to their outermost limits. At times imperceptible; at times full T-Pain. The sound of pop eating itself. Incense and Candles may don the standard-issue armour of the war for commercial exposure, but it’s worn in a style that is pure art.
282: Roadhouse Garden
Unreleased (1984) / Purple Rain Deluxe (2017)
Recorded in 1984, Roadhouse Garden attended an Around the World in a Day finishing school and graduated in finger cymbals and childlike wonder. In the lyrics Prince gives us a tour of his memory palace on a Toyland train, crashing through a model village and ad-libbing new verses of Here’s the Church (the nursery rhyme later sung on Count the Days). Until 2016 the only circulating version was its sole live performance, recorded on Prince’s birthday that year, and was conjoined with Our Destiny – a half-formed thing thankful for an ending. But Roadhouse Garden had higher aspirations than this soundboard coupling and at one point in the late nineties the song was set to be the title track of a compilation of unreleased Revolution songs. The project was sadly shelved due to a disagreement between Prince and Wendy and Lisa, so we had to wait until a few months after his death before a newly-single and studio-recorded Roadhouse Garden was seen out and about. The separation from Our Destiny didn’t last long though: in 2017 the Purple Rain Deluxe remaster reunited the two divorcees – grafting them into one track again. Two childhood lovers now forever entwined, in mass consumption as they were in bootleg obscurity.
283: Allegiance
Unreleased (1991) / Allegiance (1992)
Firstly, let’s ignore Howard Hewett’s version. In the annals of pop history Allegiance will be remembered as a bland soul track by the former Shalamar singer; an album title-track that wasn’t good enough to become a single. But as ever with these purple-penned gifts, it’s all about the original hiding in the Paisley Park vault – a demo that even with poor fidelity is leagues ahead of the recipient’s re-recording. Prince’s vocals on this unreleased gem start mid-wail like we’re jumping on a train that’s already left the station. After our hasty boarding we take a tour through the sacred realm of Sex and Salvation, and witness Prince pledge allegiance to his lover’s body which moves him in mysterious ways. It’s a popular route but the air is fresh, and Prince even fits in some on-brand gender-blurring (unless you accept the “junk” reference as solely a drug metaphor). Allegiance, as the lyrics say, is a deep blue funk but I like it. The final 30 seconds alone is anthemic enough to rally hearts and nations behind. May Howard’s version be stricken from the records and let us never speak of it again.
284: My Computer
Emancipation (1996)
In a time before online escapism became opium for the masses, Prince surfs the web for a better life… a better life… a better life… and as this era precedes the Internet pollution of YouTube comments and social media echo-chambers, it’s possible that he finds it. My Computer is a warm screen-glow of techno-optimism – the yang to Emale‘s dark, sinister yin – and allegedly features vocals from Kate Bush, although you wouldn’t know from listening. Her contribution is buried and distorted beyond recognition. I’m reminded of South Park’s TV debut where George Clooney voiceovers a dog’s “woof”. Or the Brian Wilson song where Paul McCartney is recorded chewing celery. In those instances, an A-lister punching below their weight is done for comic effect. The fact that Gwen Stefani and Sheryl Crow also get under-used on Prince’s later “collaborations” album suggests that with him we’re seeing an aversion to sharing the limelight with anybody who’s not a rapper, part of his band, or a protégé in his own image. Or maybe two centres of the universe can’t exist in one recording studio. Wasted opportunity aside, My Computer is Emancipation’s third-disc highlight and despite sampling and serenading cold technology, the vinyl-crackles and sitar-kisses exude a warmth seldom found elsewhere on this album. It’s a sunny travel commercial for an electronic utopia. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to search for a thing called Second Life.
285: Magnificent
Internet download (2004)
The criminally-overlooked Magnificent – a ‘virtual’ b-side to Musicology – is a beautiful, balanced affair, with plucked strings and electronic debris floating in elegant equipoise. Deep listening and headphones are mandatory. A closed mind is not. Come fly with me to 200 miles above the Earth, where we tap out a primitive rhythm on the door of the International Space Station. Our secret knock is immediately returned, granting us access inside to witness a zero-gravity wrestle between Jacob and an angel. An Old Testament ballet in the orbit of Gaia. The fight has been going on for millennia but is now accompanied by a carefully-orchestrated disarray of sound. Leaked coolant has gotten into the synth keyboards, causing them to splutter out digital handclaps and tom-toms, and a low bassline begins to squelch in time with the emergency warning lights. The spacecraft may be about to implode but we’re ringside at the eternal dance of the earthly and the divine, and feeling enraptured we’re not giving up our seats yet.*
*Serving suggestion only.
286: Telepathy
Telepathy (1987)
Written for Nashville singer Deborah Allen after she wrote to Prince requesting a song for her upcoming album. They had briefly previously met in the courtyard of a studio-complex they were both recording in and Prince’s sole contribution to the conversation was to answer “likewise” when Ms Allen complimented him on his outfit. But apparently that was enough for him to agree and to pop in the post this synth-skanker, sprinkled with peak-power fairydust. It deserves better treatment than a country starlet swimming in unfamiliar waters (and at one point was going to be resurrected for Mayte’s album) but luckily three minutes of the raw Prince-sung demo exists, so if you know where to look you can receive your purple fix uncut.
287: The Sun, the Moon and the Stars
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999)
A cool, coastal breeze runs through The Sun, the Moon and the Stars, ruffling white-linen shirts and summer loins; the frisson of passion under a Mediterranean night-sky. It was written in Marbella while Prince was on vacation with Mayte, and the atmosphere, like Aphrodite, feels like it could have been created out of sea-foam. Under a veranda of Clare Fischer-composed strings, Prince – tipsy on rosé – goes the route of several hip-hop artists of the era and delivers a ragga-style rap of fake patois. I’m sure this verse will rile many but find me a person who doesn’t melt at his elongated “Montreaaaaaaaal” and I’ll show you a person who’s dead inside. Manuela Testolini excluded of course. The Toronto-born, soon-to-be second wife tried to convince Prince to remove this song from the album. Maybe she didn’t appreciate the cold winters of her birth-country being used as a counterpoint to warm declarations of eternal love. Maybe because it’s one of the album’s few non-breakup songs about his former wife. Maybe she thought the rap was wack. Maybe all three. There are several tracks in the Rave constellation that could have been sacrificed for the greater cause, but the removal of The Sun, the Moon and the Stars would be like Orion without his belt, the Costa Del Sol without the sun, or like a 90s hip-hop album without the obligatory faux-Jamaican rapper.
288: S&M Groove
Internet download (2001) / The Slaughterhouse (2004)
With a tinny beat and vocals that sound literally phoned in, it’s disconcerting just how quickly you’re pulled into S&M Groove‘s tractor beam. Where does that power come from? It’s geodesic in its simplicity. I know you don’t want to succumb: it’s a Newpower Soul cast-off that sounds like something your little brother made his bedroom. Lo-fi and hi-ego. Prince even finds time to rap about faint praise he read about himself in the newspaper. But the lyrics don’t lie: “freaks gonna bob 2 this”. And by the time the wahwah pedal comes out you’re a slave to all of this sadomasochistic groove’s demands.