17 Prince Songs You Ain’t Never Heard — But Should (Part 1 of 2)

Part 2 is here.

I recently purchased a copy of Prince’s Originals album from Target. The woman ringing up my and my friend’s order — named Susan and a few years older than me — noticed the CD as she put it in the bag. She asked, “Who’s the Prince fan?” I confessed that both my friend and I were, but I had a more extended history with him. “What’s your favorite song,” she asked. I jokingly said that it was a terrible question to ask a Prince fan because it was forty years of music. I finally told her, “Probably his first bigger hit, ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover.’” I noticed a vague look glaze over Susan’s face. I wagered Susan had not heard that song or didn’t readily remember it by the title alone. After ringing a couple of more items, she said, “I love ‘When Doves Cry.’” Of course, you do, Susan. “Oh sure, that one is always a classic.” She was pretty proud of herself for naming “When Doves Cry.” It was the popular choice; a safe choice. I did my best not to roll my eyes, at least to her face. (I did in the car.) She didn’t know any better.

“What‘s your favorite song?” is always sure to weed out the posers from the pontiffs of the legacy. It’s a litmus test with Prince fans and those claiming to be Prince fans. Posers are almost always going to answer with “When Doves Cry,” “Kiss,” “1999,” “Little Red Corvette,” “Raspberry Beret,” and, depending on their age, “Darling Nikki.” “Erotic City” is a wild card, but far from a longshot. The pontiffs will name “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker,” or “Elephants and Flowers,” likely “Anna Stesia.”

So these songs might not be in the public’s eye — the top 40 listeners as it were, but Prince fans know them. Some may even balk at the list, “Oh well, of course, that song, Ernest. Duh!” I would argue the Susan-type fans have likely missed these gems. I find them to be among the essentials for anyone wanting to learn more about Prince’s music and to hear something new.

It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve been working on this list for over a year. It was initially published in an inferior form shortly after his sudden passing in 2016. With Prince’s 61st birthday passing in 2019, it felt right to refresh it and make it something viable for everyone. My goal was to incorporate diversity in types of songs, bounce between album versions, b-sides, and even unreleased bootlegs circulating while making a purposeful sweep from the first album to the last before he died. Given those broad parameters, every Prince fan out there could come up with their list, and it would be entirely different than the other. That’s the eternal beauty of Prince’s music. It covers so many genres, moods, styles, narratives, production, and nuances that it becomes virtually impossible to compose the ultimate list of Prince starter songs.

With that said, this is mine.

Prince, Sign ‘O’ the Times Tour, 1987
  1. “Shockadelica” — B-side of “If I Was Your Girlfriend” from Sign ‘O’ The Times, 1987

“Is this just a mirage U feel?”

Former guitarist for The Time, Jesse Johnson was due to release his sophomore album, Shockadelica, sometime in 1986. Both Jesse and Prince grew up listening to groups like Parliament and Funkadelic, who invented their syntax and idioms: Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, Funkentelechy, Gloryhallastoopid, Trombipulation, & Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication being a few. So it’s no surprise that Johnson found the same inspiration to create new words. Prince would later come up with idioms in songs like ”Poom Poom,” “Superfunkycalifragisexy,” and the word “Hundalasiliah.”

When Prince caught wind that Johnson didn’t have a title track to his upcoming album, Mr. Paisley Park suggested needing a song for a title so interesting and unique. It seems odd that Johnson gave no real explanation of the title within the contents of his album. He did state in interviews that it was a word he used when he was excited about a song or a woman. Without that tidbit, it’s as if the title was there just for the sake of it. That Johnson had no planned title track, Prince saw Johnson’s crime first hand. He sought to bring justice to Johnson’s seemingly blind eye. We’re not sure if Johnson thought about Prince’s advice and considered writing a title track. But before he could, Prince sent a cassette of a newly finished song to Johnson. Days after it was recorded, Prince also sent it to local radio station KMOJ. The station played on air. It was a bit of a prank on Prince’s part, but not everyone was laughing.

Jesse Johnson — Shockadelica (1986)

Jesse refused to use the song. While immensely talented, Jesse has always been the tortured soul of The Time. It stands to argue that the second track on the album, “Crazay,” (a song featuring funk legend Sly Stone) seems a more appropriate statement for not taking a great Prince song for his album. When KMOJ played the song, the word of the prank made its way around music news outlets, including MTV News. Once Johnson’s album came out weeks later, it appeared that Johnson had lifted Prince’s song title for his album. Prince punked Jesse in his home town in a very public way. While Prince saw it as all in good fun, Johnson didn’t find the joke funny. Jesse was already well aware that he would forever be under the umbrella of his buddy and former employer. He worked hard to establish himself as a solo artist fully independent of anything Prince-related. So Prince temporarily putting the song out, even on local radio, undoubtedly irritated Jesse and stole some thunder. Prince said in a statement he had no plans to release the track.

Plot twist: Prince did release the song the following year (well after the release of Johnson’s album). It backed the second single from Sign ‘O’ The Times, “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” To the home crowd, the joke had been made. Prince: 1, Jesse: 0. To the public that didn’t know about the joke, it would seem Prince recorded a song based on Jesse’s album title after the fact. But, MTV News kept the timeline straight, as did Prince’s fanbase.

The song is a steam warehouse, assembly line, funk workout that details the narrator’s story of a dangerously loose woman who seduces men with her body and makes them do things they wouldn’t normally do. He compares her to a citizen of Paradise Island, aka Themyscira.

She got U tied with a golden rope
She won’t let U play your guitar
And when U’ve cried enough
Maybe she’ll let U up

His conversation about her feels grimy but danceable, presenting an indulgence few would consume. It wouldn’t be unusual for one to feel dread by the time the song ends. The whole song reeks of a sexually-dystopian torture factory. Through the scene with her, he attempts to overcome her influence, yelling at her to “get up, you be lyin’ on my guitar, nasty bitch, get up!” It’s another example of Prince putting himself in submission to a woman in his music. Rarely is he the sexual aggressor. The song flags as a warning for listeners to heed his advice, yet he seems perfectly willing to put himself in the same position.

His warning is parallel to a biblical parable which tells a story of a certain rich man who ignored others in place of his selfish desires. When he dies, he goes to hell and is tortured. He begs for pity from Abraham, asking him to tell his family about hell so they won’t suffer his demise. Abraham says they’ve already had their warning; if they ignore it, it’s their fault. Prince’s downfall seems to be the forewarning for anyone tempted by Shockadelica.

With this woman, men (or possibly other women) lose all cognitive ability to make decisions to save themselves; she seems to intoxicate them.

Shockadelica — She got U in a trance
Cuz when this woman say dance, U dance
Shockadelica — U need a second opinion, but U just can’t leave her alone
With her U got no mind of your own

It’s also a scene we hear in “Automatic” (1999, 1982), where the women torture him showing no mercy. Whereas Prince commonly uses sex and spirituality as the same, here, sex is used as a punishment for one’s carnal desires.

Shockadelica is a feeling, the lonely cold
Sleepin’ alone will bore ya and.. and soon U grow old
In lust we will suffer, but in love we will grow
Shockadelica is a feeling nobody should know

It’s possible Prince is using the character of Shockadelica as a metaphor for loneliness. He explores many aspects of loneliness in his music (some of which I cover in my Batman 30 article). Here is no different, warning that being in a perpetual and long-term state of loneliness can drive a person to unusual acts and possibly insanity. He sets the scene of going to bed by one’s self and the emotions — or possible hallucinations — that extended solitude can bring.

The lights go out, the smell of doom
Is creepin’ into your lonely room
The bed’s on fire, your fate is sealed
And U’re so tired and the reason is Camille

Camille was a character created by Prince around this time who initially succumbs to evil, but is eventually redeemed by good. (“Shockadelica” was also due to be part of an album called Camille which all employed the same sped-up vocal technique.) Prince never resolves how to stop the woman from doing what she’s doing (or to put clothes on, because “she never wears a stitch, you can’t take her home”). The last word you hear him say is her name, with some ethereal echo behind his voice, almost as if he was sucked back into her world of seduction and manipulation, or he’s dying. She is the last thing on his mind. If the metaphor is true, then he’s dying, still in solitude. Excessive solitude and loss of self are explored in “Solo” (Come, 1993).

I’m so lost, no one can find me
And I’ve been looking 4 so long
But now I’m done

The original full-length version of “Shockadelica” was released as the “extended version,” whereas the edit is included on the 7" single and The Hits/The B-Sides. The extended versions of his songs were often the original versions. The song was quoted on The Purple Medley EP track, “Kirky J’s B-Sides Remix.”

2. “Baby” — For You, 1978

“I barely have enough money for two”

Prince’s debut record had a few lowkey trinkets, but nothing as chart breaking as his eponymous sophomore album’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover” the following year. For You was quietly noticed by critics when it was released. And while there was a buzz around this prodigy from Minneapolis, his debut felt underwhelming; yet the talent couldn’t be denied. I say underwhelming in the best way possible, as his only trajectory was up.

There are treasures on the record, and it’s worth exploring. It’s not the usual in-your-face funk acrobatics, later labeled as the Minneapolis sound that we’d come to know Prince for over time. It’s a soft and radio-friendly yacht-rock quasi-funk worthy deluge of an R&B and pop hybrid. One wonders if he would have enjoyed any semblance of known success had he continued to make the type of music on For You or Prince. Thank heavens he didn’t.

Tucked into the middle of For You, “Baby,” is a questioning song about getting his girlfriend pregnant before either of them planned on it, layered with lush vocal feats doing their flips above then-lavish production. He questions whether they can support a child since he has no money (a statement he declared later in “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” “I ain’t got no money”), but also expresses no regrets in finding out he accidentally got her pregnant. He is still firmly a teenager, thinking they were above nature and science, “I never would have thought that this would happen/2 a very careful man like me”.

Whether he was political or not (likely, he wasn’t), the song is a pro-choice stance on single motherhood, giving her the choice what to do and he’ll be supportive of her decision.

Should we go on living 2gether?
Should we get married right away?
Whatever U decide, I’ll still love U baby
And we’ll grow stronger every day

It acts as a precursor to Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” expressing the same “yeah, but” when learning she’s with a child. Madonna pleads with her father not to expel her from the family home, saying she’s keeping her baby, extolling her baby’s father’s marriage proposal and a seemingly new life ahead.

He says that he’s going to marry me
We can raise a little family
Maybe we’ll be all right
It’s a sacrifice

Prince seems to have taken a similar role promising to find a way to build a family with the mother of his child instead of ejecting himself from the situation. It’s equally pro-life and pro-choice and a much more positive spin on unwed mothers in the 70s. (Madonna’s song and its existence balked at an 80s Reagan-era conservative headset.) Prince takes his responsibility for their sexual hiccup but equally questions their future, as she does.

Baby, what are we gonna do?
I barely have enough money 4 2
Baby, what are we gonna do?
I don’t want 2 regret what I’ve done 2 U

For a teenager, it’s very forward thinking. Then again, when one is a teenager, anything seems logical and perfectly viable; it almost seems easy. There’s no doubt that it stems from the dynamics in Prince’s own family and his father leaving when he was a very young child. The familial thread would weave itself through the fabric of Prince’s music throughout his entire career.

It stands to note that Prince would upcycle the lush-factor of this song seventeen years later. “Baby”’s instrumental accent break at the 1:12 mark — and the only time it happens in the song — would be used as the main hook for “👁 Hate U,” from The Gold Experience. His glistening vocals and swirling orchestration surround the break in this song, and remains relatively unchanged on The Gold Experience, albeit replayed with newer instruments and production value. His tender falsetto offers an air of fragility and unsureness to the song’s content, conveying a one-step-a-time approach to solving their problem. “Baby” is a tender song about a tough choice young adults face every day. It makes one wonder if it weren’t written from a real experience Prince had with a girl.

PS They had a boy.

3. “Loveleft, Loveright” — B-side of New Power Generation EP from Graffiti Bridge, 1990

“Like the way my booty goes”

When asked who he likes on the radio, Prince used to say that if he wanted new music, he’d make it himself. The whole EP of New Power Generation, a track to officially coin and memorialize the name of his band and eventual record company stamp, is the genesis of that idea. The EP shows Prince’s still-burgeoning genius with taking his music and making something new from it.

While he chose a fill from “Baby” for “👁 Hate U,” the New Power Generation EP stands as one of the first examples of going beyond the usual remix or extended mix fare into a whole new orgy of aural orgasms. He would revisit the idea with the EPs for “Cream” and “Gett Off,” (both songs from 1991’s Diamonds and Pearls album), having their grab bags of reworked trinkets. He had already dipped his tootsies in the overly-extended-mix pool when he took the under-3-minute trotting “I Wish U Heaven” (Lovesexy, 1988) into a “10:something” musical extravaganza jam with three distinct music sections (a portion of which was another song called “Take This Beat”). The Batman track “Scandalous” was turned into 19+ minutes, three-section suite of guitar solos, seductive dialog, and Kim Basinger’s orgasmic moans that would give Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby” a run for its money. (By the way, Summer’s hit clocks at 16:49, and The Scandalous Sex Suite rings in at 19:15; which I guess means Prince can last longer.)

The last three tracks on New Power Generation EP are almost an EP unto themselves. “Get Off” (not to be confused with the Diamonds and Pearls track), “The Lubricated Lady” (which is more connected to “Get Off” than its own track), & “Loveleft, Loveright” run into each other to happily drag the listener through sex, braggadocio and a menage a trois. However, it’s “Loveleft, Loveright” that is the highlight of the three. With Prince noodling around on his guitar, and a chant of “Party 2night — oh yeah!” throughout, how can one not dance to this? The song’s modulation and its inclusion of a choir disguise it as a gospel song. It joyfully meshes the idea of a sexual threeway with spiritual bliss. It’s a theme Prince has explored in his career — sex and salvation cumming together as one.

Prince “New Power Generation” from Graffiti Bridge

The genius of this EP is that Prince took elements or musical ideas from “New Power Generation” and used them as the structure for new songs. It feels more experimental, whereas Gett Off EP and Cream EP feel like more fleshed out ideas; namely the former with its full onslaught of hashed-out songs, but Cream EP has shorter takes on music ideologies from its original mothersong.

“Loveleft, Loveright” puts the final glorious period on the whole shindig of freedom, sex, and joy. Prince flags his repetitive idea of a new world and freedom, not only heard in “New Power Generation” but earlier songs like “Uptown” and “Sexuality” and inserts himself (quite literally or figuratively) as a leader of a new sexual revolution. He’s starting it with a bang, or two. Or three.

The faux-gospel track is a simple street corner cat calling to random women walking by, using other women has his selling point. He figures if other women have had him, why wouldn’t the next couple of women that walk by him?

The Girls of Soul
Like the way my booty goes
They say the curves deserve another glance (Curves deserve)
Come on, pretty baby, give me a chance
2 prove my brotherhood
I’ll make it real good
I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya, I’ll do ya like U wanna should

It seems almost humorous, possibly on purpose, that Prince would try to pick up two women at once. But are the two women having it or not? We don’t know their freak number, but we know Prince’s in this song.

I can’t help it, baby (Love 2 the left of me)
It really gets me gone
2 think about the 3 of us g-goin’ on

It harkens to the “Whispering Playa Interlude” on TLC’s Fanmail album (before “No Scrubs”), where a guy is trying to approach T-Boz and Chili for a sexual encounter.

Ya’ll rollin’ together. Ya know what I’m sayin’. Well, we can just bounce to my crib, ya know what I’m sayin? (whispering) Do that menage a trois.

Being Prince, he probably landed both chicks.

Listening note: At the end of “The Lubricated Lady,” — just before “Loveleft, Loveright” begins — you can hear the tape run out, its tail flapping against the tape machine, as he asks his engineer, “everything alright back there?”

Indeed it is, Prince. Indeed it is.

4. “Violet The Organ Grinder” — B-side of Gett Off EP from Diamonds & Pearls, 1991

“I can deal with a sucker if he’s in your mouth”

Prince once again shreds “Gett Off” — the lead single from 1991′s Diamonds & Pearls — into a host of tracks, which cover instrumentals, house styled music and downright nasty grinds that would make even darling Nikki blush. He followed his guide from New Power Generation EP and put out a half-dozen tracks on the Gett Off EP. The first couple of the tracks are proper remixes, but the songs vary more with “Violet The Organ Grinder,” which feels like a cousin to “Gett Off,” albeit a cousin by marriage.

Violet, the narrator, laments being relegated as a sexual toy for women. He seems to wrestle with the tropes of love and connection while being a sex worker, an often disconnected sexual job. He falls to his default position of being an instrument for another’s pleasure rather than having some peace (or piece) of his own. He takes himself out of his doldrums by bragging and taunting the women he serviced with their gifts to him and how he used them on his own time to still pleasure himself thinking of pleasuring them. It’s cyclical self-torture. It’s a subservient stance he, again, places himself in with women. They use him, but even when they’re gone, he’s mesmerized by their memory, their smell, and their money. He seems to be stuck in a consistent loop of being a willing victim, instead of the perpetrator. Although, who is making who do what here?

I live 4 the organ that I am grinding
I’ll die, but I won’t go away

It’s a mournful pity-party, yet the hook of the song feels more infectious and alive than “Gett Off” itself; although “Gett Off” certainly has its bags of male vibrato throughout.

Prince and the New Power Generation, “Violet The Organ Grinder”

The song also contains the most clever lyrics for that period and a favorite for me.

I do believe my piano was stolen
I do believe that U want me near
Well I can deal with a sucker if he’s in your mouth
But I can’t deal with insincere

Even amid the acceptance of his allotment in life, he still yearns for something real, a connection, with his clients or with anyone who can understand him. It’s a theme explored before in The Time’s “Gigolos Get Lonely Too,” with Morris Day lamenting a similar position.

Just once I wanna make love without takin’ off my clothes
Just once I wanna make love with somebody who knows
That I got more money than U could ever see
But honey, money won’t get me up off my knees

Maybe this is Prince’s version of sexual purgatory, a place of in-between, muddling around with familiarity yet unknown things to come in one’s afterlife before landing in their last home.

The whole of the Gett Off EP is an amazing listen, ending with the coupled “Gangsta Glam” and “Clockin’ the Jizz” rounding out the set.

5. “Groovy Potential” — HITnRUN Phase Two, 2015

For those who know me and my stance on Prince music, they’ll usually find me innately happy with just about anything Prince releases. Some things grow on one faster than others, but ultimately it’s always a joy to hear Prince music, old and new. They’ll also find me to be painfully honest when Prince released something that I thought was below his purple standard of excellence. I am not a fan who wants Prince to stay in the 80s for his career. The mid-90s is one of my favorite eras with stellar projects like Exodus, Come, The Gold Experience, the BEAUTIFUL experience, Love Symbol, and Chaos and Disorder. It was in the early aughts that Prince’s aural aesthetic started to change. It flattened, became compressed. Gone were reverbed vocals or echoey drums, or wet and dirty guitar filters. Someone described it as acrylic, which seemed to sum it up perfectly. It was too perfect, transparent, clean, dry, smooth edges, nothing to rip you to shreds any more. When you listen to Prince music, you want to get knocked in the teeth, punched in the throat, slapped like a bitch. Once Prince got into his 40s, he became G-rated or PG-rated at the most. He was suddenly lyrically safe, not as daring anymore. Sure, there are lovely songs, catchy hooks, and the mostly-sing-along chorus here and there. Compared to any other era of Prince’s music, the aughts and onward became a gamble of what to bet on, what to stay on, and knowing when to fold. At most you’d get a slight blister from its smooth edges rubbing on you too long. Nothing was setting your hair on fire anymore.

Prince would pepper the internet with singles and his newer sound throughout the 2000s, sometimes going as long as four years between full-fledged records. It was a normal state of affairs for people like Michael Jackson, who could take time to rest on that Bad or Dangerous money and live a little. But for a prolific writer like Prince — who typically released one album a year — it seemed like world war III came and we missed it. Prince just stopped making music for the public. Fans would argue he had long stopped making music to be a hit; he did it because “that’s just what he did.” If he just wanted to release music for the sake of it, he’d not have charged for it, did interviews, or serviced it to radio stations.

But in 2013, on his then-active 3rdEyeTunes website, he released “Groovy Potential.” While some of the songs released in recent years were more desirable than others (including his 20Ten album which I enjoyed), it was “Groovy Potential” that gave me a glimmer of hope about Prince’s musical direction. There was something melodic and groovy about the song. It slowly comes into itself. A ten-piece horn section subtly punctuating Prince’s almost-reverbed-live vocals and his smooth adult-jazz guitar strumming chords that feel like warm caramel are all ingredients that take this mid-tempo track into an easy-going jam. Prince backs off from too many choruses or verses and often lets the song ruminate on its own. At the right times, he thunders back, making his case to be the right lover for the woman he’s trying to seduce into a relationship. You’d almost expect the song to end just short of five minutes into the track, yet he quiets the path back to its finger snaps and smooth synth chords, keeping a gentle groove underneath an otherwise quiet storm. Then in the last 30-seconds brings it back up to a funky stomp that could only be fully realized in a pair of Cuban-heeled boots.

Prince — HITnRUN phase two (2016)

The song was released on the 2016 HITnRUN Phase Two CD, his last album just months before his passing that year. The album streamed on Tidal and was available on iTunes in December 2015, but I’m listing it as 2016, the physical release date.

6. “In A Large Room With No Light” — original unreleased, but circulating; new version 2009

“if U could just pass your history class”

A much sought after track, from May 1986, that has been bootlegged in horrible quality. For years, no one what the hell to call it. Whenever it showed up on a bootleg set, it was often labeled as “Welcome to the Rat Race,” or rarely “Life Is Like Looking For A Penny In A Large Room With No Light.” Years later on one of his many sites, Prince confirmed it was “In A Large Room with No Light.” The song was originally due to be part of the Dream Factory project and credited to Prince & the Revolution. It was later removed from the configuration. The whole project was shelved.

The track has machine-gunned lyrics, with a manic drum track, and puts its jazz influences right up front. It’s easy to see why The Revolution was credited on this track. While Prince could have recorded this on his own (and perhaps did at some point), it was much more engaging as a Prince song with the support of a live band. The Revolution was arguably Prince’s best configuration of his band in the 80s. Members of Sheila E.’s band also played on the track. The song was never part of any released project, which was disappointing. The controlled freneticism in the song appeals to the most loyal of Prince listeners, and would undoubtedly rub any other music fan the same way; with an appreciation of controlled syncopation, intertwined melodic components, complex rhythms, and a melody that is quite comfortable resting on its eighth and sixteenth notes. Its lyrics speak to sadder situations of life and the mediocrity that keeps many people trapped in a cycle of despair and neglect, either of themselves or those around them.

“Lana drew a picture in school 2day
One that made her mother cry
A picture of a woman with a drink in her hand
Standing by a child with no eyes”

It laments the spoon-fed misery of snake oil salesmen and those who are ignorant enough to buy it. He would also visit an ongoing concern of war and killing innocent people.

Washington reaction based upon revenge
Babies blown 2 kingdom come
Damn the logic
Cartoon characters look better when they’re on the run

He would talk later about war “Sign ‘O’ The Times,” “Dance On,” “Moonbeam Levels,” “Uptown,” and more. One has to remember that the 80s were a period in history when the Cold War was in full effect. Russia and the United States weren’t friendly, Cuba was under communist rule, and children were still learning nuclear bomb emergency drills in school. It wasn’t some abstract thought; it was a real threat. Although he’s technically a baby boomer, born in 1958, he came up and was raised with us Generation X types. It was a unique position for artists like him, Madonna, and Michael Jackson to be in as they formed their craft, able to express their fears through music.

The song steps away from social commentary near the end to let the musicians show their talent. The song highlights the fact that Prince was more than just an R&B singer or a funk musician. There are hours and days of instrumental music Prince recorded as far back as 1985 onward. This is one of those, albeit, with lyrics, that shows off his jazz leanings and prowess.

Prince would later re-record the song in 2009, removing a verse with a cuss word in it. Ironically, the verse he removed was the one that caused early confusion the song’s title.

“Every time U wake up there’s a little motherfucker
Talkin’ big stuff in your face (Are U happy?)
U only get the kind of people that open their mouth just 2 swap feet
Welcome 2 the rat race”

A UK radio station premiered the updated version and was streamed on the Montreaux Jazz Festival site. It was noted that the song had been completed only two days before being aired. It coincided with his headlining appearance that year at the festival. It’s not been released since 2009 on any streaming platform, which is surprising as most of his available published catalog was almost immediately put on Spotify, Prime Music, iTunes, and more.

7. “Joy In Repetition” — Graffiti Bridge, 1990

“He lost himself in the articulated manner”

Dating back to 1986, “Joy In Repetition” finally saw the light of day on Graffiti Bridge, the soundtrack of the quasi-sequel to Purple Rain. Prince was riding a successful train with having released the #1 soundtrack to Batman the year prior. He found new life in movies; a medium he had long desired to be part of after the success of Purple Rain (1984), then the failure of Under The Cherry Moon (1986), later the success of Sign ‘O’ The Times (1987). The movie bombed, but the album was full of Prince treasures; many tracks dating from the mid-80s and often slightly updated. The song was completed the day before the unreleased, but legendary Dream Factory was initially compiled. The song wasn’t included in the tracklist. However, it was included in the Crystal Ball project, which was a later extension of the Dream Factory project. “👁 No” was still in its early form as “The Ball,” and “Joy In Repetition” was sequenced after “The Ball,” including the familiar crowd noise. The crowd noise heard at the beginning of “Joy In Repetition” can also be heard at the end of “👁 No” on Lovesexy, and is used to segue into “Alphabet St.” Like “17 Days”, “Joy In Repetition” seemed to be a song in search of an album. While I’m not sure if Graffiti Bridge does the song’s existence justice, it certainly gave fans an official release of the track.

Prince “Joy In Repetition” from Graffiti Bridge

“Joy In Repetition” is a speak-sing song, where the narrator talks about seeing a girl performing at a club. It was open mic-night, and she kept saying two words over and over, yearning for a connection with anyone. He is so enthralled with this female that he snags her and pulls her out the back door of the club. She’s lost in her daze of desire and continues to repeat…

These 2 words — a little bit behind the beat
I mean just enough 2 turn U on
4 every time she said the words
Another one of his doubts were gone

When they get together, there’s so much passion between them — her obsession with a mate and him intoxicated by her dual-syllabic poetry — that the only words she can speak are “Love me.” The song is noted for its laid-back bluesy approach, with a sultry guitar solo that travels throughout the latter half. The soaring “JOY!” background vocals are again reminiscent of a religious or gospel tone on a song that’s about nothing much more than seduction and sex. However, it’s not to be dismissed as just another song about Prince trying to nail a woman in a back alley. The lyrics to this song are poetry unto themselves and uses words one doesn’t usually use for a song (much like the first time I heard Terence Trent D’Arby” use unusual verbiage of “supermodel sandwich with cheese” on Vibrator).

“Up on the mic repeating 2 words over and over again
Was this woman he had never noticed before
He lost himself in the articulated manner in which she said them”

By the time Prince gets the girl alone with him, he takes a moment to catch his breath, then launches into a fantastic guitar solo that can only be thought of as the six-string representation of intercourse and orgasm.

The song drips with sensuality, and sex, and shows how much of an appealing yet lyrically complex song Prince can write when he sits down to do so. I wonder how it would have been received segueing from “The Ball,” in the 80s. It feels like this would have kept Prince solidly at the front of the pack as one of the best lyric writers alive.

8. “Baltimore” — HITnRUN Phase Two, 2016

“Enough is enough, it’s time for love”

When twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray was arrested, abused by police (his spine broken in the process), he was handcuffed and put in the back of a police van. The officers drove so aggressively as to throw Gray around in the vehicle, taking the long way to the station. He subsequently died from his injuries while in police custody. The situation didn’t go unnoticed by rioters, nor by Prince. As riots raged in Baltimore, Maryland, Prince took to his studio to express his disgust and anger at the police killing a black man, again. The song also namechecks eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, another young black man shot the year prior and left to bleed out in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri while a cop, Darrin Wilson, stood over him offering no assistance, later claiming he was “scared for his life.” A streaming version of the song was made available on 3rd Eye Girl’s Soundcloud account (Prince’s all-girl group that completed his 4-piece band) barely a week after it was recorded. It was officially released as a digital single in late May, then was the opening track for HITnRUN Phase Two in 2016.

While hearing the synopsis of the song, one would think this would be an aggressive and angry song or a dirge reserved for emotive listening parties. Prince approaches it from an upbeat standpoint, leaning into anthemic sensibilities rather than giving into his inner turmoil to express his anger and disgust. Prince lived and revealed himself and his ideologies, beliefs, and convictions (while they lasted since they changed every few years like he rotated band members) through his music. His music was his way to riot. And his opinions about police brutality are right up front on “Baltimore.” Any Prince fan knows he can act out on a record. Whether he’s charging up a crowd to party, lamenting a lost love, or falling to the wiles of a woman, Prince’s music was his emotional outlet.

In “Baltimore,” his vocal delivery feels genuine, authentic. It’s hard to believe there was any pretending on this song, of any sort; he wasn’t acting, he was serious. What we hear is what he was feeling right when he recorded it. If Prince worked out his demons in his music, then this one should be one of the top examples. The lyrics sit nicely on Prince’s lips, uniformly delivering his version of Black Lives Matter and his seemingly blind eschewing of the second amendment.

“Nobody got in nobody’s way
So I guess you could say it was a good day
At least a little better than the day in Baltimore
Does anybody hear us pray
For Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?
Peace is more than the absence of war…
Are we gonna see another bloody day?
We’re tired of the cryin’ and people dyin’
Let’s take all the guns away”

He had previously addressed the Hurricane Katrina flooding of New Orleans in “S.S.T. (Sade’s Sweetest Taboo),” and further back addressed AIDS, the arms race, space race, and the heightened drug war brought on by the Reagan administration in various songs. Prince was never one to shy away from challenging social constructs or political norms. He did it in ways that were constructed to capture the listener’s attention and hold it. He updates his 1981 anti-war song, “Partyup” and its anti-war chant:

U’re gonna have 2 fight your own damn war
Cuz we don’t wanna fight no more!

…and brings it into the twenty-first century. “If there ain’t no justice/then there ain’t no peace.”

If there ain’t no justice
Then thre ain’t no peace!

It was with “Baltimore” that Prince expressed a new sound. Prince would record his guitar solo, then give the song over to a person he had asked to write orchestrations for the guitar solo, literally to rewrite the guitar solo with an orchestra. Prince would then take the two and blend them in the final mix, often crossfading from one to the other. The strings start as the ‘solo,’ but it soon becomes a guitar solo. It’s a simplistic bloom of an idea that has the fragrance of something fresh and new. Frankly, Prince’s music needed something new in it. The man had tried and done almost everything out there it seemed. Radio certainly needed a shot of new spunk since the Top 40 charts were (and still are to some degree) littered with GarageBand-ridden songs written by high schoolers with a MacBook Air and a lot of free time. It was reported that Prince was very excited about the idea and had expressed that he found a new sound for his music. Sadly, HITnRUN Phase Two, to our knowledge, will be the only real examples.

“Baltimore” served as the theme for the ensuing Rally4Peace. When the song was released digitally, the last part of the liner notes read:

“Please know that all involved in this project never take for granted the privileges we have in this country. Let’s all continue to fight the good fight and confront inhumanity on every level until the day it is no longer.”

9. “Big City” — HITnRUN Phase Two, 2016

Alright you Polaroids, let’s go!

The last track for HITnRUN Phase Two is a fun, upbeat walk with his whole band in tow. It includes vocals Ledisi, and Liv Warfield, plus a mix of his 3rd Eye Girl group and New Power Generation, late-drummer John Blackwell, Ida Nelson, Elisa Dease, and Shelby J. It was streamed and played live on a few occasions a couple of years before it saw the light of day on HITnRUN Phase Two. Lyrically, it celebrates the love of a woman, and how he feels as if he’s in the biggest city around when they’re together. The whole world is at his fingertips in her presence.

“Where ever we are it’s a big city
Dirty little hotel room or working on a farm
If everybody is a star, to me, you’re the most pretty
I’m in the big city…
When I’m in your arms”

It’s an upbeat and triumphant take on love. One does wonder what sort of love or relationship Prince enjoyed near the end of his life. Singer Judith Hill was near him in his last year, but we never really know if they had an intimate relationship. Of course, it’s Prince. Anything is possible. But if not, perhaps it was just Prince pulling from the better part of his previous relationships. Prince often seemed as happy as he seemed sad. His gaunt experience at his final Piano and a Microphone concerts almost made fans wish he did have someone in his life to look after him and care for him; to influence him to take better care of himself.

Big City” doesn’t take itself too seriously with huge statements about its merit as a Prince song. It’s driving undercurrent, large horn section, jangly saloon-inspired piano riff and group vocals feel like a jam worthy of a few encores. Shelby J.’s vocal icing behind Prince’s lead vocal reminds one of Chaka Khan adding the same effect on Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love.” As flat as Prince’s production had become in the previous twenty years or so, “Big City” feels much more open and welcoming, bright and joyous. You can almost see Prince and his cohorts strutting down the French Quarter with a brass section and some percussionists in tow bringing his music to the masses.

“Big City” remedies presumptuous upbeat crowd songs like “Get On The Boat” (3121, 2006), his remake of Sheryl Crow’s “Everyday Is A Winding Road” (with its cringe-worthy Larry Graham chant) (Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, 1999), or the lame attempt “Express Yourself” makeover of “Feel Better, Feel Good, Feel Wonderful” (LotusFlow3r, 2009). HITnRUN Phase Two is one of his more cohesive albums of the twenty-first century, one that cares about what the listener is hearing. It glories in stark contrast to previous records that exhibited an insular echo chamber laced with dogmatic proclamations and historical revision (read: The Rainbow Children, The Slaughterhouse).

The song also employs the aforementioned new sound Prince had materialized on “Baltimore,” that of being an orchestrated guitar solo and some clever cross-fading. Who knows how Prince would have manipulated that idea into synth, bass, or even vocal sections of a song. The two songs that most highlight his new sound bookend HITnRUN Phase Two, and seem to offer some hope and insight into a new phase of Prince’s music, and an older and wiser Prince. He was crossing over into the role of sage rather than student.

Unfortunately, the joy of “Big City” is quickly squelched at its end, bringing a morbid sense of finality. HITnRUN Phase Two would be his last release while alive. He would die three months to the day after its release. Fans swarm over conspiracy theories of him planning his passing, but Prince loved life. It’s overly morbid and a romanticized filter to view a tragic and untimely death of one of the greatest artists in a generation, or three. As with most Prince factoids, it was a bit of pure serendipity. One cannot deny that, in typical Prince fashion, his last two words on tape would be the most unintentionally prophetic yet.

That’s it.

Part 2 will be available on July 5, 2019, 10 am ET. Check back to my Medium page for both parts. Leave a comment about Part 1 below.

Credit to Databank Transcription Team for the transcription of Prince’s lyrics quoted herein, and Princevault for additional information.

Ernest Sewell was born & raised in Oklahoma. After living across the U.S. in places like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, he’s settled in upstate New York for the past twenty years. He’s authored and published two books and is currently working on a new horror novel due in 2020. He shares his home with a friend, three cats, and his vinyl collection, all of whom have the same level of love from him. When he’s not causing an uproar on Prince forums or social media, he enjoys reads (a lot), trying new recipes, and prank calling people.

“Don’t take yourself too seriously. No one else does.”

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

--

--

Published in The Violet Reality

Music, love and funk brought 2U by The Violet Reality — pop culture junkies, artists, and the world’s leading authorities on Prince. Subscribe on YouTube, email for info! We are not affiliated, sponsored or endorsed by The Prince Estate.