← The Right Time with Bomani Jones
The Right Time with Bomani Jones
Why Prince Still Feels Untouchable: Purple Rain, 1999 & More | 04.14
00:54:24
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- [00:00]
A
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B
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Right Time a Wave original. My name is Bomani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe like Rate us, review us. Give us 5 stars. You only give us 4 stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. I I don't even know if I should call it Time Machine Tuesday because it's also going to be Time Machine Thursday because we got a bit of a series going on this week, April 21, which is actually next week is 10 years to the day from when Prince died. And so we are doing the two episode series on Prince. We got DJ Wally Sparks coming in on Thursday where we're probably going to talk a little bit more technically about the music. But I figured if I was going to do an episode where I was talking about Prince, I should probably get the Prince influence into my life onto the show. Talk about this. So we got my brother Patrice Lumumba Jones over here. What's going on, brother?
- [01:30]
C
Man, you got it, you got it. What's up? What's up, man?
- [01:32]
B
I actually, I find it very interesting now that this pod and this show has been on for a very long time because now if you and I are out somewhere and I tell somebody, hey, meet my brother, they are very much more excited about that part than me. Like me, they knew I look like you. They have completely. They have filled in a hole in a character that they have been mapping out.
- [01:52]
C
Yeah, it gotta trips me out. They'll be like flagrant three.
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B
We're all here, baby, we're all here. But I thought about doing this because I remember the day Prince died. I always tell the story about what it was for me because I was in Paris. I had gone over there to interview Ta Nehisi Coates for Playboy and I had seen online, I guess it was like early to mid afternoon in Paris, I think, because I recall it was like six hours ahead of where we were in the States. And so I had seen on TMZ that they had sent ambulance EMTs, all this to Paisley Park. And they said there was a person who was dead at Paisley Park. Like, they're giving all the details, but we don't know. So I called, we will say, a friend I knew who worked at TMZ at the time. And I'm like, hey, man, I have no interest in reporting. I just need to know if Prince died. Cause I got some people I need to tell so they can leave work, right? And he came back. And I think the way he phrased it, not his fault, but I really wasn't trying to hear this shit. Was like, the purple one is no more. I just need an answer, dog. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, like, just. Just. Just give me a yes, right? So I hit her. And I'm like, hey, go home and go home right now. Like, this is what it's gonna be. And so I was in Paris, and then I was there for Playboy, and I hit Playboy. Like, you want me to write about this? I'll get on it. And I banged out this quick little thing that I look back now, and I could do better. But at the time, it felt like the most banging shit I'd ever written. And it felt like I had been preparing my whole life to write a pretzel bit in 90 minutes. Right? So I banged that out, sent it off, and then it got to nighttime, and me and you FaceTime each other because you were in London.
- [03:48]
C
Yeah.
- [03:48]
B
And it was like the wildest idea that we are both over here, transatlantic. But wait a minute. Prince died, dude.
- [03:57]
C
It was devastating. I was gutted. And, you know, and everybody I work with is kind of in my same generation.
- [04:04]
B
Right.
- [04:05]
C
You know, so it was one of those things. Like, this was different than, like, Michael Jackson dying. Because for whatever reason, Michael Jackson dying was more. Felt more like a global phenomenon. Like, it wasn't so personal. It was like this thing had happened that affected all these people. But this felt way more personal and directed, like, at me. Like, I wasn't even that appreciative of everybody else's grief. I just couldn't believe it. Yeah. That was a wild day.
- [04:37]
B
Yeah. I think.
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C
I think that I sang on the Internet.
- [04:41]
B
Oh, wow.
- [04:41]
C
I did not I say starfish and coffee on Facebook or Instagram one because I was like, this doesn't require any talent. But I just had to get. I Just had to get it out, man.
- [04:52]
B
Buddy, I'm glad I didn't see it, because I don't know what the hell I would have been able to do at that moment.
- [04:56]
C
My voice was quivered and everything.
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B
Well, as I was about to say. Because one thing the Joneses are not. We are not tomb carriers.
- [05:03]
C
No. I'm probably the best of all of y'. All. I suck.
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B
Nah, I think Tayari probably has us beat on this.
- [05:09]
C
Like she got a little mom's thing. Perpetually flat.
- [05:14]
B
Ooh, tone deafness. Yeah, Mama sometimes make you feel like, yo, I don't wanna listen to this song on the radio anymore.
- [05:21]
C
But the best is dad. Cause he sings every song to the same melody he does. Like everything is old Danny Boy, but it's just whatever lyrics.
- [05:30]
B
I told you, my favorite dad singing story of all time is in the year of our Lord 1990, too. We riding. And this is around the time that the radio has started getting raunchy. Yeah, right. And Silk Freak Me had come on, and I had already heard him get a little, you know, get a little preachy about this particular song, which was all over the place at the time. And I don't know what happened, but out of nowhere, I'm half asleep in the car and I hear my no singing Daddy, let me make you soaking wet. I'm like, what?
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C
Whoa.
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B
Hey.
- [06:06]
C
Yeah. I think dad was preaching because he felt like he had to. Because kind of, if we think about it with Prince, dad was Prince fan.
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B
See, you have the contemporaneous run with that that I don't really have because you're 13 years older than me. And I think that is an interesting thing in our. In the Prince journey is that that's Dad's trump card.
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C
Dude, to this day, anything you say to my father that in any way intimates that, like, he's old or not with it or that you're cooler than him. His retort is, I turned you on to Prince. And as crazy as that sound, that is a completely legitimate shut it down argument. I turn you on to Prince. What else can you say about me to say I'm not cool because I turn you on? I put you on.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Like, how dare you? And it's got anything.
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B
But. See, for me, it is interesting in retrospect because I caught dad in my, like, adolescence, formative era, that is, when he had the six disc changer. That's. That's a combination of words that require enunciation.
- [07:18]
C
You probably haven't used it in a while either.
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B
Yeah, I was like, whoa. The six disc changer that we refer to as the, the female vocal carousel. You'd be like, oh, but that's Williams. The comfort zone. Ah. Rachelle, for real. Like, these are the things that are rotating through. So, like, the idea of Prince being like a dad thing is not quite what I would expect.
- [07:40]
C
Yeah, yeah. If you look through the LPs in the basement, you see how we got here. Right. Because he's got all the Sly Stone. Yeah. Like, that's something. But he didn't like James Brown.
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B
He didn't like James Brown. But I think that we have concluded that he did not like James Brown because he did not like James Brown.
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C
Yeah. It wasn't.
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B
The music was not the issue.
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C
Yeah.
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B
The issue was James Brown campaign for Nixon.
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C
Yes. Right. That trumps everything, which I'm not mad. I, I, that's one of the things I respect most about that. I don't care what it is and how or how fine she is. She got the wrong politics.
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B
You're out of here with this one.
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C
Yeah. Yeah.
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B
In fact, the only people back Joe stands for are people for political reasons.
- [08:28]
C
Yes. Yep. Man. So, but if you. The thing. So when I heard that you wanted me to talk about this or talk to you about this, I stopped and thought, okay, what's the first, first Prince song I ever heard? And that was I Want to be your Lover. It is hard for me to tell you how big a jam that was for black folks. Right. Because, you know, growing up in Atlanta, that's all we were. Everything. Like everything. And it was black folks and everything was R and B. If a black person sang it, I don't care what it was. It was on the jet R and B chart. I wanna be youe Lover was the jam of all jams. The only song I've ever heard that took over like that after that was Take youe Time by the SOS band.
- [09:18]
B
Interesting, right? Oh, baby, we can do it. Take your time. Do it.
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C
Oh, dude. Yeah.
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B
Gotcha.
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C
That song was the whole year. And then after that, the only one I could think of. And this is funny, is in the club. Yeah. In the club rock for like a year and a half.
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B
Yeah.
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C
You know, and so once you did. And that was on Prince's second album.
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B
Yeah.
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C
I didn't know there was the first album. I think I had heard Soft and Wet sometime and like. Yeah, that's, you know, that's cool. But that then took you back to go on and listen to the previous album. But I want to be a Lover was So huge that you would listen to anything this dude put out after that. And so that's what put everybody up on Prince. That's the album that dad had. That's the one that was on the eight track, the bootleg eight track, by the way. And I can still hear where the music cuts out. When the track changes in the middle of the song, it goes to the next song. Like, I still know where those spots are. But that. That changed everything because now all of a sudden, you. You. You got this dude, you hear this song on the radio, it's jamming. You want to listen to it, and then you put the album on. And it's not like that. Like, there's a couple of songs that are like that, but there's, like, Bambies on there. There's all this other music. And that's the crazy thing about Prince. Does he just make you listen to anything he put out? Like, you would give anything a shot if Prince made it.
- [10:41]
B
Yeah. Like, I didn't realize until you were telling me about that that I want to be your lover was that big, because I had thought that it was kind of like you and I talk about when Jordan hit that shot in 82, that in the building of the larger legend, we have gone back and elevated that moment a little bit higher than it was in real time.
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C
Yeah.
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B
And again, you were there for the real time, so you would know that in a different way. But I didn't realize that that was like. That that was actually the jam.
- [11:07]
C
Yeah, it. Yeah, it was incredible. And then. And then from that. So I am. I. I graduated from high school in 1985. That album came out in 1979. So my entire. In high school. It's important to point out high school in Atlanta started in the eighth grade. So my last year of elementary school, then my first year of high school, which was eighth grade, all the way until 1985, if you think about it. So we've got dirty mind, controversy, 1999, and purple rain. During that time in my life, that is the soundtrack to my formative years in a way that no other artist was.
- [11:51]
B
I can't imagine. Like, you talk about dad being into Prince in that way. I can't imagine what it is for people when Dirty Mind comes out, because Dirty Mind, I think Dirty Mind's a. It's. I. I wound up. I was talking to Vinnie and some of his friends, and they were like, so what are the four Prince albums that you just say are unequivocal classics? And I say It's Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain and Sign of the Times. Like, I think those are the four, and Dirty Mind is the one they were shaky on. And I really dig new wave stuff. So, like, Dirty Mind is going to land with me. But I. I could understand why someone listening to Dirty Mind, which is like, his Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska. Right. Like, it is a demo tape that was turned into an album I could get. How it might not sound like it's the most revolutionary thing in the world right now, but I cannot imagine the first time you hear that wild shit that he's talking about on there, too.
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C
And you got to think about the fact that this was in the. Prince was putting out albums with no skips, right? Yeah. So anytime a new Prince came out, you would put it on and you start it. And. And if you think about those albums, with the exception, I think of Purple Rain, the title track was the first track on every album. And they all had these big buildups, like, all the way, you know, like, Dirty Minds got that. And then all the way up to, you know, obviously Purple Rain with the Dearly Beloved. But. But even 1999, don't worry, I Won't. Like it all had this welcome to this experience. And then it goes through all that weird, crazy S and M, whatever that was. Yeah, dude. He took you on a journey in a way that you were just in from the very beginning. Like, whatever you about to put down, I'm gonna pick it up.
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B
That's the record where he's on the COVID in his draws, though. Like, that's the. That's the thing where I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. Like, we think of the 80s as being a time of androgyny, sort of. Yes. But this was 1980. Right. Like, this is not in the progression of it. And nobody was doing it quite like this. Like, this is. This is the era of him opening for the Rolling Stones and they throwing shit at him and called him name. This is where in Uptown you got to have the line, you know, she says, are you gay? That took me by surprise. I ain't know what to do. So I looked in her eyes and said, no, are you? Like, these other cats weren't necessarily having to answer for it.
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C
Right.
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B
He's the one who had to answer for it. And then I'm going to put out a record where I'm talking about having sex with my sister. I have. I got a song about how this chick was on her way to get married and instead I gave her head. And then, boom, she married me. What you think about that? But also like these for real love songs, like crazy disco type shit. And when you were mine, I'd like, like. And there's nothing, nothing has ever happened like this before.
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C
I don't know what was up with these Detroit motherfuckers, but I'm going to tell you in Atlanta, it was all good. Whatever he did, you were like this. Now, it didn't mean you wanted.
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B
Now these guys are my age important, okay?
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C
Yeah, yeah. But my, when I was there, man, that whatever he did was just dope. Like, it like the jams jam so hard that they just set you up to buy into whatever else was coming. I didn't know anybody that had any. Like, I'm not really feeling like all of us were just completely into whatever Prince was doing.
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B
And again, that's interesting. Like, I think we were talking to Trey about this one time where Trey was talking about one of his gangster uncles is somebody in Compton. And like, man can't get enough of Prince.
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C
Yeah,
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B
I guess also the 80s were a slightly different. The idea of what masculinity was, was rap came and messed that whole situation up, Right?
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C
Yeah.
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B
And drew some clearer lines. But the idea that Prince is pulling up and the gangsters are like, hey,
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C
so I mean, think about what Earth, wind and fire was wearing and think about what Grandmaster Flash and Furious 5.
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B
But it was not a G string.
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C
No, it wasn't. But he said it was a different time, correct? It was a different time in that way.
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B
Yeah, yeah. Like. Like Prince. Prince was the one I made. Somebody's had to be like, hey, man, we got to take a 20 on this one, big dog. Like, I ain't about. I'm not going to dress like this. Like, think about this. All the girls in the Prince camp was dressed in wild scandalous and he was wearing the same thing.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Although I will say by the time it was time to like really blow up. He put some pants on.
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C
Yeah. And the other thing, what that you never saw Prince in was like. So I saw this thing. Harry. Harry Styles hosted Saturday Night Live and they went through all his outfits and he was wearing like straight up dresses and skirts and stuff. Prince wasn't wearing no skirts.
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B
Right.
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C
You know what I mean? Like, he was on some more androgynous than anything else. The fishnets. But again, we were just like, this is what he's on. But he's bringing the funk. So.
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B
Yeah. Well, I would also say androgynous, but there are. So if we look at the Freddie Mercury evolution and There are different runs of it, right? There are runs or Freddie Murphy looks androgynous, but then there's the thick mustache, hairy chest, which is not androgyny at all. Like you might say that it was a little, shall we say, delicate. It uses some adjectives that we don't use in polite company anymore. But that era of Prince, that is a man, right? Like he was absolutely giving you the image. It's when you get to the like 85 and all. And once he shaves his face and it ain't curly, it's more straight perm and everything else. Now we're talking about like an androgynous stretch. But in the end, him and all them dudes in the revolution, those still look like in time. Those still look like dudes who might try to fight you.
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C
Yeah, yeah. I mean, game blouses.
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B
Yes. The best thing about that skit is how fear furious Charlie Murphy is to this day about everything involving them.
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C
Yeah. Have you ever seen those clips of Prince when he's a little boy and he gets interviewed for some of this news story and he just looked like one of them kids that we would have hung out with. He's just like a normal little dude. And man, I don't know how he got from there to there, but I'm glad he did.
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B
Hey, it got from there to there. Five, three. Need a gimmick. Playing these instruments ain't enough. Like I got a baby and okay.
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C
Yep. No, man, that dude, I just, I just, I just can't think of anybody that was as just whose music was one, as multifaceted within a particular project. But then from project to project to project, like the evolution and change of the music, like it just kept changing and you were just on board for all of it.
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B
Yeah, Like I'm talking about no misses in there, so I'm talking about side of the times in a little bit. Right. But I wanted to ask you about 1999, like when that dropped, because I remember I was talking. Haven't talked to this guy in 20 something years. A man, Eric Arnold in Oakland. And we used to email. We used to write for some of the same people. He's a very well known hip hop right out to bay. And we used to talk about stuff on email and I was talking about how I had signed of the times over 1999. And his argument back was, you can't understand what a phenomenon 1999 was. Like you can't understand people carrying the album around in their bags. Girls have it in their purses. All this stuff everywhere that they went. Like, it was such a big deal and it was so huge. But it also came out the same year as Thriller, so I can't imagine how furious Prince was about. Because, I mean, it's a double album. It's only nine tracks, but it is a double album worth of stuff. But it does sound like it. It ran the streets.
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C
Yeah. Yeah. And I want, to some extent, I feel like it was a little counter Thriller.
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B
Like, by the way, it came out one month before.
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C
Okay.
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B
Wow.
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C
Yeah. I didn't even remember that. But I do remember that. Yeah. The Michael. Not that I didn't like Michael Jackson. Right. But, like, I am an off the Wall person. I think off the Wall is a better album than Thriller, I feel like. And it also feels like off the Wall was aimed at us more than Thriller was.
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B
Right.
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C
So that's. That's part of that too. So among the people that I was with, I felt like 1999 got what it. Everything, all its flowers in that. In that moment now looking back on it and, you know, and Thriller becomes this worldwide phenomenon and we look back on it like it's this signpost in music history that 1999 isn't. But I think that's about sales.
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B
Yes.
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C
Numbers that it did.
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B
1999. First four tracks are 1999. Little red Corvette, Delirious. And I believe DMSR comes next.
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C
Yeah, I think that sounds about right. I did write them down somewhere here.
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B
Oh, no. Let's pretend we're married is 4 and DMSR is 5.
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C
Dude, let's pretend we're married is crazy.
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B
It is insane. It is a wild idea in concept also, to just come off the rip saying these things.
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C
Yes. I'm not saying it's just to be nasty.
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B
Yes. Can you. Can you relate, dude?
- [21:24]
C
And this is pre hip hop. This is pre gangster. This is. There's no cussing anywhere on the radio that I'm consuming.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And look, little red Corvette is wild and it's beautiful and it's vulnerable and it is absurd. And it is maybe the last time he lets someone else do the guitar solo. It is all of these things. He's just like, yeah, dog. Right here, dude.
- [21:54]
C
Lady cab Driver.
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B
Lady cab driver is all there.
- [21:57]
C
The end of Lady Cabman. Like, this dude was doing stuff and just nobody was doing it. Like, it was scandalous. Like, you get a Prince album and you get some jazz and then you get some.
- [22:07]
B
Oh.
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C
Like, you know, and as a child, it was like it had that element of sneaking down in the basement and listening to Richard Pryor records. It had some of that. And Mac Jones put us up on it.
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B
That's how yo, Mac Jones put you up on it. And Barbara Jones enjoys.
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C
Yeah, that's how good the music was.
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B
Right?
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C
That's how good the music was. And the other underrated thing I think about Prince, when people look back on it, was these iconic slow jams, which if you are the age that I was during that time, that was really important because that was when you go to house parties and the last hour and a half of the house parties is just slow jams. And everybody's trying to get in there and get they smooch on and, you know, and what you needed was that song that the girl is gonna say, yes, I wanna dance. Not necessarily cause of you, because I can't sit here and not dance. When the song come, when Do Me Baby comes on, I can't be sitting over here talking to my girls. And so that was your best shot.
- [23:11]
B
Like I'm trying to think like the slow jam run up to that point. I am. My dexterity with 4U is not great.
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C
Still Waiting is on for you. For you.
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B
No, no, no. Still Waiting is on the same.
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C
Oh, for. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [23:26]
B
Still waiting. Still Waiting is on the second one. Got a Broken Heart again on. On Dirty Mind.
- [23:35]
C
Yes.
- [23:36]
B
Right. I love that song. It's Going to be Lonely is Also
- [23:41]
C
going to be Lonely is incredible. It's got. It's like the harmonies at the end, that whole last half of it, or at least the last third of it. Yeah, I've never heard anything like that.
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B
Right?
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C
Never. Still to this day, like nobody's even tried to hit that controversy.
- [23:57]
B
Got doomy baby. 1999's got international lover, which is. Oh, we're just letting you do whatever you want now, huh?
- [24:04]
C
Yeah.
- [24:04]
B
Okay. It's a plane. Gotcha. Yeah, that's what you say the purple Rain got. See now this is a good chance to put a pin in this. Coming up next, we gonna talk about the phenomenon of purple rain and more on the right time.
- [24:20]
D
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- [24:48]
B
Equal housing lender, K Pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boy's Breakfast Meal and Hunt Trick's Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day. It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor. No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side and participate in McDonald's while supplies last. All right, we are back with Patrice Luba Jones. Purple Rain comes out. This is another one for me where I cannot imagine the magnitude of the moment of Purple Rain.
- [25:30]
C
This motherfucker made a movie. So. So the year before that, we were in Nigeria. I was. We were in Nigeria for an entire year. And you come back to Purple Rain. Oh, that's great. Yeah. And we would go like. It was like multiple weekends in a row for me, you, and your friends now. I'm a rising senior in high school now. And we would just go to see Purple Rain like, over and over and over again. What you doing Saturday? I'm going out to Old National. We go watch Purple Rain again. It was. Yeah, we couldn't. And it's the. It. The only movies worse than Purple Rain are Graffiti Bridge and Other than in the World. In the World. But the music is that great. Like, it's a concert film with these weird. Basically, the plot stuff is like, weird interludes. If you. The way you kind of felt about it, like, okay, like, nobody was like, I want to be like the kid.
- [26:33]
B
I want you to think about, plot wise, the message that the movie is giving. Right. Which becomes an actual metaphor for life after the things we learned from the Ezra Edelman documentary that the world will never see. So the plot of this movie is we got this little dude who makes these songs that in the movie, nobody understands or likes, but in real life will revolutionize the world. Okay, whatever. But he's making these songs and. And the world ain't really liking him, but he gets himself a girlfriend whom he beats the shit out of. And then at the end, he's about to beat her ass one more time. And then she says, go ahead and do it. And then he stops. And then he goes to the club the next night and he plays some bangers. And now it's like nothing Ever happened.
- [27:22]
C
Yeah.
- [27:22]
B
That's all he had to do was play a couple of bangers and we let everything slide. That movie is a cancellation waiting to happen in 2026. And it's bad.
- [27:34]
C
So here's what I'm gonna tell you about that. And I've seen Purple Rain a million times. That that storyline feels vaguely familiar. That's how much I didn't give a. What they were. What was happening in the movie. You were just like living between the concert scenes, the performance scenes. That was what the whole thing was like. Rocky by Rocky Horror Picture Showers. Yeah.
- [27:59]
B
That movie also has one of America's great actors, Clarence Williams iii.
- [28:04]
C
It does.
- [28:04]
B
And it kind. And it kind of. I. I can't imagine how he felt doing scenes with these people who've never acted ever. Never been in a movie.
- [28:16]
C
Yeah.
- [28:16]
B
And.
- [28:17]
C
And, and clearly he only had one gear.
- [28:19]
B
Yes.
- [28:20]
C
Right. He's like this. Whatever it is, is Hamlet. Cause he went hard
- [28:28]
B
that first that beginning where he's just there with a bow tie on for no reason. Whose idea was this? His only advice for the boy. Never give. That's the only game he put his son on. Yeah.
- [28:46]
C
Yeah.
- [28:47]
B
Never, never get married.
- [28:48]
C
Dude, have you ever. Have you ever watched Graffiti Bridge?
- [28:52]
B
I have watched parts of it, but I know you told me you watched it the other day.
- [28:56]
C
It's. It's incredibly bad. It doesn't make any sense. And it's a sequel.
- [29:04]
B
It is.
- [29:04]
C
To Purple Ray, which I hadn't realized. And guess what? People still don't dig his music.
- [29:08]
B
No.
- [29:09]
C
How did you make it this far if nobody digs your music?
- [29:14]
B
Every time I don't get this. Under the cherry Moon. My whole thing with other Cherry moon. The only thing other than re. The thing that I will just always remember is it's time for the climactic chase scene and they start playing another level. Hole in your head. It's not. And he directed that. He directed Graffiti Bridge. And he directed that one because he just felt like he could do anything. And at that point nobody could tell him no. And it's all because Propyne sold a gajillion copies. And you and I have multiple times been in here and we have watched that live in Syracuse 1985. And that is Apex Prints. Right. Like. Like this is. There's no moment that he possibly could have been any bigger, any more important, felt any more urgent. Everything else. And we watched that two hour show and it's just like what was ever fucking with this? No, ever.
- [30:06]
C
Whatever will moving forward. Like I can't Imagine. So the funny thing about that is, up until Purple Rain for me, I paid no attention to Prince's guitar.
- [30:19]
B
Yeah. Which is obviously, it's not really showcased in the music prior to that.
- [30:23]
C
No. And the other thing you gotta remember about black folks is if you play the guitar and you want some cred for that, it better be the bass. You know what I mean? Like, if you could play the bass.
- [30:34]
B
All right.
- [30:35]
C
But like, jinga, jinga, jinga. I don't even. We didn't care about that. So Purple Rain kind of opened your eyes to that. And then when you see a concert. Sorry. Like that Syracuse concert, you're like, oh, he's amazing. Like, he take. He's not performing for you. He's literally taking you somewhere. You are under his control and he's gonna drop you off when he's done with you. And I never. I don't think I've ever seen anybody solo any instrument or play any instrument in a way that just is. It's like a comedian. You know how comedians get you here? They take you on this story and they build intrigue and then you think you got it and they take a twist. And like all that. When you talk about music, doing that feels metaphorical.
- [31:25]
B
Yeah.
- [31:26]
C
But he's literally doing that, playing the guitar with an expression on his face like he's just like balancing his checkbook.
- [31:35]
B
Right. Like the, the, the. The self titled album. Right. The self titled album's got why you want to treat me so bad. It's got Bambi. Like, it's got some guitar work, but really he doesn't really lock in on that in the early portions of his career and then had the nerve to be offended that people were not giving him adequate credit for his guitar brilliance that he wasn't really sharing with us. And to me, the Purple Rain is a guitar album. Right. When you really go through track for track, just about every one of them, not all, but just about every one, he shows out on guitar in one form or fashion. When does Cry, which is the most revolutionary single that anybody has ever put out, he comes off the rip with something literally no one else who's ever been born has ever been able to play.
- [32:22]
C
Yeah. Nobody can pull it off. But the other thing too about the guitar is if you really want to get it, you need a solo that's longer than what you can put on a single. Yeah, right. That's the thing is when you see these performances, Prince is playing these six, seven minute guitar solos.
- [32:39]
B
Yeah.
- [32:39]
C
And there's something about the length of it that allows him to take you on the kind of journey that I think he's really good at facilitating.
- [32:48]
B
Yeah, but like I'm still getting back on you. Like you come back to America and Purple Rain has hit the streets and now it is everywhere. And he is everywhere too.
- [33:01]
C
Everybody's trying. I mean, and there's these arguments.
- [33:04]
B
Oh, no.
- [33:04]
C
And the B sides. Yeah, right. That was the other thing that no one else did. Like he's got these, these songs that are hits that aren't even on the album. They're just album adjacent.
- [33:15]
B
Yep. I just got. I got so many jams.
- [33:18]
C
Yeah, Yeah. Y' all want some more music, you know, why, why waste two songs, you know, from Purple Rain to have a B side when I could just pull something out else out the closet. Be a.
- [33:29]
B
Well, also, I'mma let my. I'mma let my little homies ride on y'. All.
- [33:34]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [33:35]
B
Give heat to other people.
- [33:37]
C
No, it. So yeah, Purple Rain was. It was everywhere. And. And unlike usually like there's a hit song and you just hear the hit song, people were rocking like every song on Purple Rain. Like it didn't have that. We didn't coalesce around Purple Rain or I would die for you. It was just the whole thing, you know, like even, you know, when you think about, you know, Michael Jackson and Thriller and even off the Wall, it was like all these singles, you know, like you're like, oh, it's got like five hit singles, six hit songs on it. But this shit was like, yeah, I got three or four radio ready hits. But you're going to rock with this whole album. You just not going to hear it on the radio because it's. Is really not appropriate. Darling Nikki.
- [34:27]
B
That's what got the parental advisory label invented.
- [34:30]
C
Really?
- [34:31]
B
Darling Nikki.
- [34:33]
C
I did not know that.
- [34:34]
B
Diple Gore hurt Darling Nikki and what.
- [34:39]
C
Yeah, there was some ambiguity as to how the magazine was being used.
- [34:49]
B
But it's wild. Cause he couldn't stay on Purple Ray long enough. He was like, all right, cool, time to go do something else. And you get to like that 85 to really. I call it 88, 89. Run like through love. Sexy. Yeah, it's still jamming, but it ain't the same. Except Sign of the times side of the times is that was the one for me. As I got older and decided to make my own exploration. Because the big thing that happened for me was because, you know, you out the house and I'm five years old, like y' all are gone. I'm kind Of On My own here. But what Columbia house. Either I can't remember if I got it or Daddy got it, but one of us got. When the hits in the B sides compilation came out.
- [35:28]
C
Yeah.
- [35:28]
B
And I got on that, and I was like, oh, okay. And then I went and got Signed of the Times. And Sign of the Times was like, oh, hey, man, someone's kind of sort of showing off.
- [35:42]
C
Yeah. And it was just sonically different. I always come back to that as just the diversity of the music. Just. It was. It was exciting because you didn't know what you were gonna get.
- [35:55]
B
Yeah.
- [35:56]
C
And the single, or whatever the first song was, didn't tell you what you were gonna get.
- [36:00]
B
No, no.
- [36:01]
C
You know, which is why you would give every album. And as we kind of got deeper in it and there was, you know, emancipation and stuff like that, where they'd be like one or two. But you. Excuse me. You started. Used to start. You started trying to will it to be, like, something iconic as the stuff that you were familiar with in the past. He had just moved on. Like, I think everything he made was still just as jamming to him.
- [36:23]
B
Yeah.
- [36:24]
C
You know, and he just kind of lost us to some extent. And I don't know if he cared that much.
- [36:28]
B
Yeah. Well, he did come to care, but I want to. I will put a pin in that point. Right, okay. Because the thing I want to point out about Sign of the Times, that I think is an interesting facet of the Prince catalog, for reasons I don't quite have the answer to, I've been listening to Paul Simon's Graceland a lot lately. And Paul Simit and Prince have the same thing in common, which is they create the most interesting conversations amongst the characters in their songs.
- [36:58]
C
Okay.
- [36:58]
B
Right. The. I said. And she said. Right in the back and forth. Like Battle of Dorothy Parker. Right.
- [37:04]
C
I was just thinking about that.
- [37:05]
B
Let me get a fruit cocktail. I ain't that hungry. Dorothy. Laugh. Like I said, sounds like a real man to me. Mind if I turn on the radio? What are we doing here? Where is this going? Why is this so jamming?
- [37:17]
C
Yep. Well, that beat.
- [37:20]
B
Yeah. But also, it's got. I could never take the place of your man I asked if she wanted to dance she said all she wanted was a good man Whoa. I said she wanted to dance Talking about.
- [37:33]
C
No. Yeah. No. He had an appreciation for the absurd.
- [37:38]
B
Yeah. But these pictures would be so vivid. Like, you can go back and think from album to album. There's another one that pops up there where you're like, oh, yeah. This is the conversation that these people are having. How do these people exist in real life? Like uptown is the same thing.
- [37:53]
C
But even if it's not a conversation, start fishing. Coffee.
- [37:56]
B
Yeah.
- [37:56]
C
Right. When you start talking about these vivid descriptions that put you in a. In a space.
- [38:00]
B
Yeah, right.
- [38:02]
C
He took you back to elementary school.
- [38:04]
B
Yeah.
- [38:06]
C
Girl with crazy shit in her lunchbox.
- [38:08]
B
Yep. And it gives you her talking. Right. Like how these, like how these people sound, how they interact is like how does everybody. It's the same thing with the Simon songs. It's like everybody knows the perfect thing to say in these conversations that you are able to dream up. Yeah, everybody's. Everybody's got the line. What, what, what was. What was it for the world with. Because it's funny. I have this Prince playlist on Spotify that if you ask me, I'll send you the link to. It's excellent. It is the Warner Brothers era because when I did it, there were limitations on what of the catalog was available. But the other thing was there are no songs on Love Sexy from it. In Spite of my Love for When two are in love and I wish you Heaven, which may be my favorite back to back situation in the catalog. But at that time it only had Love Sexy as Prince intended. Which is to say there were no partitions between the tracks. It was all one long track. And the reason was he felt that it didn't work if you broke it up. And it is better if you listen to it in one sitting. But that had to be the most annoying shit in the world.
- [39:19]
C
Yeah. Because my song on that was Anastasia.
- [39:22]
B
Yeah.
- [39:23]
C
And I don't think it was at the beginning. It was like maybe the second.
- [39:26]
B
That was like four or five. It's like right in the middle of the first song.
- [39:29]
C
Yeah, it's in the middle. And that was my joint and I would listen to it a lot and I did. And so I had it on cd. So you didn't know what the time signature was that you needed to get to, but you couldn't. You couldn't. It's not like you could punch it in. Yes, I fast forward to it.
- [39:46]
B
He was officially in whatever I want to do mode. He butt naked on like laying in a blanket on an all white album cover. And then there is no partition on the tracks. And if I'm not mistaken, like no space in between the tracks. So even if you had APSS on your tape player. No, it wasn't going to let you get the car.
- [40:07]
C
Nope, nope. You just had to sit there. You don't listen to this, homie.
- [40:11]
B
Yeah, Well, I had somebody tell me, though, that who it was really tricky for was the people that worked at the record store because they would want to play the record. And it was some things going on at points that you might not necessarily want to be able to share with everybody.
- [40:25]
C
Public consumption. Yeah.
- [40:26]
B
Yes, yes. But what you're talking about, he didn't care. What is interesting, though, is once you get around graffiti bridge and after that, the early 90s are both he and Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston try to come back home. Yeah, right. Like, they. Prince had these huge pop ambitions. The. For lack of a better term, blacker it sounded, the more likely he was to give it to the time. There was the run where he had convinced people in the media that his mother was white because he knew they would never view him as a. The genius he believed he was if they thought. Thought that he was just regular black. This is why Alexander o' Neal hates him, by the way. Is. Oh. Oh, yeah. But. But I get it, right? Like, yeah, it looks like you are being selective in your application of your own blackness, which is not something that has ever played well with the people. But when you get to, like, gritty graffiti, bridge has got, like, joy and repetition. These are the temple. Like, you know, okay, I guess Mavis Staple and George Clinton on the record. Okay, we coming back home. Diamonds and Pearls. He decided he was just going to make an R B record. I will note, these are the records that are a little bit less interesting than the other records, but nobody likes it when it feel like people don't want to fuck with you no more.
- [41:36]
C
Yeah.
- [41:37]
B
And everybody comes back home.
- [41:40]
C
Yeah, you're right about that. Yeah. Like that emancipation album, which is, I think where Bet you by Golly Wild was.
- [41:45]
B
Yeah, yeah, that. That was the first album of the second album he did is the symbol.
- [41:50]
C
Yeah. Yep. That's an interesting time. But, like, by then, I think that. I'm not saying Prince had. I don't think his flame had burned out, but in terms of, like, the interest in. What he meant to me partially is I'm getting older. But part of it was also like, he just had that run that was just so it couldn't keep going. Like, Stevie Wonder can't go. Couldn't go forever.
- [42:13]
B
Right.
- [42:13]
C
You know, but that five, six album run, hard to beat, man.
- [42:20]
B
Well, it's like, what happens if you can do whatever you want and the game follows you wherever you go? And that's kind of what happened in the 80s. I think it's fair to make the argument, especially because of how big Janet Jackson was with that Minneapolis sound, that in terms of, sonically, Prince proved to be more influential than Michael Jackson did on the music that came. And then once you start getting to that super raunchy ass era of R and B, that is definitely a more direct Prince callback than it is a Michael Jackson callback. But you've been getting there just by doing you. And then everybody goes, but now they doing something else.
- [42:56]
C
Yeah.
- [42:57]
B
And you doing you. And now you sound out of step. You're like, how am I out of step? I am the step. But you just a little bit off. It's a little bit different. You're not where they are. And people of the magnitude of Prince and Michael Jackson, they want to stay big. Like in David Ritz wrote a bio of Aretha Franklin where he talked about that. Where, you know, when you think about, like, who's zooming who era, Aretha Franklin and all this, it seems preposterous. But he's like, she talked about it in there. Ray Charles said the same thing, man, we don't do this for fun. We want hits, and this is where the hits are. All right, well, I guess we go. We gonna try to make some hits.
- [43:36]
C
Yeah. But I do think, I wonder to what extent the issues with the industry itself.
- [43:42]
B
Yeah.
- [43:43]
C
Impacted his ability to get his stuff out there and, you know, to really get a push behind some stuff. Because when you went after he died, you went back and started listening to his joints. Like, have you ever heard Calhoun Square?
- [43:55]
B
Yeah, it's good.
- [43:57]
C
I love that song. But I had never heard of it. I'd never heard of it. Huh.
- [44:03]
B
That's on the crystal ball, right?
- [44:04]
C
Perhaps I just kind of encountered it in the. In the Apple music era, you know, like, what is this song?
- [44:11]
B
So here's the thing. His issue with the label is interesting because what the label was saying was, dude, we can't put out a new album every three months just because you could crank out a new album every three months. Like, he stepped on himself so much by putting around the world in a day out so fast after Purple Rain. The world was not finished with Purple Rain. He never had anything nearly as big as Purple Rain because he couldn't just take a breath then get out there. Like, Michael Jackson didn't come back after Thriller for five years.
- [44:45]
C
Right.
- [44:45]
B
He was not built like that because, you know, Mike was playing a different game, but he just. He had so much heat and that he needed to give the world the heat. And people Needed time to digest the heat. And he was like, I've digested the heat.
- [45:00]
C
Yeah. And as the other thing was, he's such a great performer, but he didn't lean into the performance in terms of, like, well, I got this joint out, now I need to go tour and I need to go, like. Like, as good as he was at it, I got the feeling that he would rather make music than perform music, which is crazy because he was such a great performer, but. Yeah, but he was in the studio constantly.
- [45:23]
B
He was. He was.
- [45:24]
C
And I think I read somewhere that he had a producer on call, so if you three in the morning with an idea, this woman would come in and, you know. Yep.
- [45:33]
B
Stevie was like that with people, too.
- [45:35]
C
Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like dudes that, like, make beats 24 7.
- [45:38]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it's like. It's print. So I guess I don't want to be. I don't want to miss it. Yeah, right. There's no telling what might. Like, we didn't even talk about the fact that, like, nothing compares to you. Comes out in the midst of this run, and he never does it. And then they put out the demo after he dies that he does in the basement. It's fucking incredible.
- [45:56]
C
Yeah.
- [45:56]
B
He's just like, I'll just give this to somebody else. Doesn't really fit what I got going on over here right now.
- [46:04]
C
And he'll give it to. I mean, I think there's some reasons why he would give some of these women music, but, you know, she the Easton.
- [46:17]
B
All right.
- [46:18]
C
I mean, like, you think if Prince gives you a song that's gold, right? That's, like the. Like, the most cherished thing you could imagine someone bequeathing upon you. And he's like, see the Easter. Take this jam.
- [46:30]
B
I mean, he gave. He gave Manic Monday to the bank. To the Bengals.
- [46:33]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [46:34]
B
As in the Bengals. That would be. That would be a different Joe Cinco. Manic Monday, Another song with one of those incredible conversations in it. He tells me in his bedroom voice, come on, honey, let's go make some noise.
- [46:50]
C
Yeah, well, and then the weirdest thing. So she. The Eastern was this, like, the good girl.
- [46:56]
B
Yeah.
- [46:57]
C
He gave her sugar walls.
- [46:59]
B
He did.
- [47:00]
C
Ooh, come spend the night inside my sugar. What? Like, excuse me, Excuse me. I think I missed something. What exactly are you referring to?
- [47:18]
B
There's got to be some cutting room floor stuff just to be like. Hey, hey, hey, bro, we not doing this, man. You gone too far this time, my brother. You gone too far.
- [47:28]
C
I Wonder what people were saying to her.
- [47:32]
B
You gotta hear this.
- [47:33]
C
What is he, like, Scottish or Irish or something like this?
- [47:36]
B
I think Irish. Oh, no, I think she's Danish.
- [47:40]
C
Oh, yeah. That's a little Scottish.
- [47:42]
B
You were right. Scottish.
- [47:44]
C
Yeah. So you went to America. They're like, you just got turned out.
- [47:50]
B
Not just turned out by anybody.
- [47:52]
C
This dude got you. Yeah. That was his mo.
- [47:55]
B
This is exactly what they'd be afraid of.
- [47:58]
C
Yes. She went off to make it big in the music business.
- [48:06]
B
She found her city corruptor.
- [48:11]
C
5 5. Freaky Dicky singing all kind of wild. I wish I could do a Scottish, bro. Because I. I got some. I got some jokes I need to get off. But they only work if you can do the voice.
- [48:26]
B
Yeah, man, I gotta. My accent game is very, very limited. And it's unfortunate because I can't get any of that part of the world. Like that. That. That great. The British zone. I can't get it.
- [48:37]
C
But just. I'm better with British. I'm not gonna do it here because this is for the public. But, yeah. Just imagine what groundskeeper Willie would say if that was his daughter.
- [48:51]
B
Or maybe she hoped they never heard that song. She just kept playing them. You got the look over and over again.
- [48:59]
C
Yeah. No, dude. This dude changed the world, man. And it was. It'll never. I will. I will be forever different for having experienced that run from 79 to 84. Just because of what that meant in my life at that time to all the people around me especially. Cause then I was a fairly serious trumpet player at that point, too. So music played a different role in my life other than just being jams. It was inspirational, whether it was something I could play or not. It just. Just the creativity of it was. You just knew what was. It gave you an idea of kind of what was possible and that some of the. Maybe some of the constraints that you thought were there really weren't real.
- [49:48]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And that. That is kind of the point of the catalog is that, like, that is the ethos of it. Of the odd. I realize that through Prince, and I see the through line through a lot of people that I like the most. It is the audacity of it all. Like, the willingness to be like, nah, this is. I'm doing this right here.
- [50:05]
C
Yeah.
- [50:06]
B
What you think?
- [50:09]
C
And just the confidence that that takes. Right. Like, audacity is one thing, but if you have the. You. The talent to back it up is what makes it work.
- [50:19]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I would say one last thing on this for people. If you get that Syracuse Concert I can't talk about enough. You can find it online, there's clips on YouTube, whatever. And I don't think I've had the opportunity to point this out, but this is the most amazing, magical thing Prince has ever done. So it's a transition in between songs and the set, the way the stage is set up, he's way up, like going up some steps and up some shit over there off to one side. Right. So like he's all the way over there doing something and I think he got lost in the sauce a little bit, but he needed to get back over to the microphone because it was time to sing Do Me Baby in those high heels. He jumps off something that's gotta be eight feet in the air. And lands on his feet.
- [51:04]
C
Yes.
- [51:04]
B
With no stumble. And then cockily strolls over to the microphone in high heels.
- [51:10]
C
Hey, man. Dude was athletic.
- [51:13]
B
Yeah. No, that is the thing about like a great musician that is often lost is that this is in a lot of ways an athletic feat. Like the ability to play instruments is in part it's hand eye coordination in some ways. Like, there is an athleticism to it. Like I remember I was telling you once, it's the one instrument that somebody can one up Prince on is the bass. Because he has guitar playing, piano playing fingers. And so there's that. When you listen to like Revolution stuff where Mark Brown plays the bass, you hear it, it's much heavier because he has. He has heavier hands. But the idea that Prince could take his hands and turn them into all these different things, including on the drum machine.
- [51:53]
C
Yep.
- [51:54]
B
They just made one, man. They just made one. But, hey, this is my brother, Patrice Lumumba Jones. You got anything you want to plug?
- [52:03]
C
Not really.
- [52:04]
B
Okay.
- [52:05]
C
I wasn't ready for that one. No. What I will say is my company in Light media dropped a series of videos that are designed to inject historical content texts into history, into DEI training. And I think it's really important that we understand history to be able to kind of get a grasp of what's going on in the world today and understand that there are. That there are systemic forces here that we don't get just caught up in. This idea of the personalities that are affecting the world and the way they are is that there are systems that need to be addressed and we're trying to do that through history. So if you check out incontextnow.com you can see the work that we've done.
- [52:50]
B
There it is. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this four days a week, but this week we're doing it two days. Ryan Brumley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line. 323-59-67767. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. And we'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.