60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Gett Off”—Prince and the New Power Generation

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Rob reminisces over the first rock concert he attended, where Weird Al Yankovic opened for the Monkees before turning to the iconic force that is Prince and the hypersexual “Gett Off.” Later, Rob is joined by author Daphne A. Brooks to discuss Prince’s 1991 VMAs performance, his relationship with hip-hop, the Jehovah’s Witness era, and much more (1:00:00).Preorder Rob's new book, 'Songs That Explain the '90s,' here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/rob-harvilla/songs-that-explain-the-90s/9781538759462/?lens=twelveHost: Rob Harvilla Guest: Daphne A. Brooks Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons from The Ringer, and this is a podcast called The Rewatchables. We have been doing it, really since 2017. It started with how much we love the movie Heat. We decided to structure a whole podcast with categories, most rewatchable scene, who of the movie, Apex Mountain, what age the best. But here's the thing. If you want the full archive, you can hear them only on Spotify for free, by the way. So make sure to follow the rewatchables on Spotify.

I wanted to stay long enough to hear one song. I was there to hear one specific song. The other songs were cool. The whole rest of the shit was cool, but not really. One song. That's all I wanted. Was that one song and I didn't get to hear it. We left before they played it.

Past my bedtime. And I was devastated, man. And I am haunted, truly, to this day, by the one song I never got to. to hear. It is September 1st, 1987, and I am 9.5 years old, and I am attending my first ever rock concert, which is The Monkeys, live. In person, three of them, at the fabulous Fox Theater in St. Louis, Missouri. I don't remember it being the fabulous Foss Theater. I always thought this show was at the Muni. If you're a connoisseur of live music venues, cool theater,

in St. Louis, but no, apparently they played the fabulous Fox Theater, and I do believe that. I'm not about to pick a fight with monkeys live almanac.com. You know what I'm saying? I defer. I wanted to hear I'm a believer. It's all I wanted. Is that too much to ask? This is a song precision engineered to be loved by a nine and a half year old. And I'm here at the fabulous Fox Theater this evening because of MTV. I'm a believer came out in 1960. same year as the Monkeys TV show, but 20 years later in 1986, MTV re-airs the Monkeys TV show, right? And it entrances a whole new generation of nine and a half-year-olds.

And my buddy Patrick, his dad takes me and Patrick and some other friends to see the monkeys. I am eternally grateful to Patrick's dad for taking me to this show. I need to say that. Patrick and I are Facebook friends and his dad passed away a couple of years back, And I did the whole Facebook condolences thing at the time, but I failed to fully process in that moment the spiritual debt I will always owe to Patrick's dad for taking me to see the monkeys. And I totally get why Patrick's dad made us leave before the monkeys played I'm a believer. Because according to monkeys live almanac.com,

I'm a believer was the 38th and literally last song the monkeys played that night. That's tough. Now, if I squint, if I really concentrate, I can conjure up for you a vague, fuzzy, blurry, half-incepted memory of the first song the monkeys played that night. My undiluted nine-and-a-half-year-old's delight as the theater lights go down and the whole crowd whoops and my ears ring and my eyes widen as the monkeys take the stage and kick off the first song at my first ever. rock concert. And I'm delighted, truly, because yeah, sure, I was hoping to hear this one, too. Don't be so sure. Last train to Clarksville is no, I'm a believer, but sure, can I tell you one other quick thing about the monkeys? I worked at the Village Voice in New York City from 2006 to 2011. I was the music editor. And somewhere in there, in the late Otts, Mickey Dolans from the Monkeys shows up at the office. And I don't think I was supposed to say anything about this at the time, but, you know, statute of limitations, whatever. Mickey's got this scheme to do an American remake of the old

gray whistle test, the quite famous British music TV show, a much cooler sort of American bandstand situation from the 70s and 80s. Mickey wants to bring it back now in the late aughts in America, and he's hunting for a host for the American old gray whistle test reboot. And he's wondering if the music editor of the village voice might be a good host. And he is mistaken about that because, as my mother told me just recently, I close my eyes for disconcerting lengths of time when I talk. I have what is known professionally as resting Wins face. That's also tough. But I take a lunch, right, with Mickey Dolan's and my editor and Mickey's producer. We leave the office. We go around the corner to the Great Jones Cafe in the village. I'm pretty sure pavements base player used to bartend

there. Not right now. So I order a cheeseburger and fries. And the whole time he's talking about the old gray whistle test, Mickey Dolans from the monkeys is also stealing my fries. He's like, yeah, you know, I want to, you. He's just brazenly swiping fries right off my plate while looking directly at me and popping them into his mouth. Like he owns the place, which perhaps he did. But I'm of two minds about this, right? Because on the one hand, I'm like, yo, you know, like get.

But on the other hand, Mickey Dolan's from the monkeys is stealing my fries. What an honor. So I let it go. I play it cool. And he finishes my lunch and we walk back to the office. And Mickey's walking alongside me up the street. And an attractive lady passes us walking in the other direction. And as she passes us by Mickey turns slightly, he doesn't leer or cat call or anything.

He just does a little like, hmm, then he turns to me and he says, to me, he says, there goes my next ex-wife. Yeah. Life's rich pageant. That memory, the fry swiping future ex-wife memory is quite, distinct to me even now, whereas I am for sure straining to conjure up that monkey's concert memory for you, last train to Clarksville in St. Louis in 1987, the first song for my first ever rock concert. That's quite indistinct. And also, I am already cheating in attempting to conjure up that

memory because the monkeys are my first concert, but the monkeys are not quite the first rock band, the first artists I have ever watched perform live because that honor goes to the Monkey's Opening Act. The Monkey's Opening Act that night, September 1st, 1987 at the fabulous Fox Theater in St. Louis, Missouri was Weird Al Yankovic. Dare to be Stupid era. Dare to be stupid. The song is no. I'm a believer either, but that don't mean it ain't pretty good. Weird Al Yankovic live in person in 1987, which is, as you might imagine, a formative experience for me. And indeed, Weird Al opened his set, opening for the monkeys with a song that therefore became the first song performed by anybody that I ever experienced live. And that song is indeed like a surgeon.

Like a surgeon. According to setlist.fm, a website to which I also usually defer, setliss.com confirms that Weird Al did indeed begin his set that night with Like a Surgeon. So I do recall that correctly. But it also says that Weird Al ended his brief opening set with a song that I do not remember in this or any other context. But yeah, apparently he closed with living with a hernia. I have absolutely no memory of this song whatsoever at any time. And I can't explain why it is so funny to me now to think about me at nine and a half years old attempting to process a weird al parody of James

Brown's living in America called Living with a Hernia. But I'm here to tell you that I am tremendously amused by this. In the bridge to this song, Weird Al just lists types of hernias. Get a load of the sauce. Weird Al puts on the words

Richter's hernia here. Oh my God. I have rewatched just that 10 second clip from the Living with a hernia video at least 40 times in the last 24 hours. Holy shit. No, I don't believe that nine and a half year old me grasped the subtleties of living with a hernia or the vast majority of Weird Al's other songs and jokes and references that evening.

But like a surgeon, I got that one. In fact, my one true, no bullshit, absolutely concrete memory from this whole show from 36 years ago is the beeping of the fake EKG machine during the bridge to like a surgeon. In fact, I remember that Patrick's dad, to whom I owe an internal debt, Patrick's dad later informed my mom that I was a little spooked by that part of like a surgeon because weird Al had like a whole hospital setup on stage, right? Al was in scrubs. There was a hospital bed spinning around. There was an actual fake EKG machine, et cetera.

The stage lights were either ominously dim or wildly flashing or both. I got a little scared or at least a little overwhelmed. by all that. But I also got the reference, right? Even if I don't know much about the original song or what the original song is saying, I do know what song like a surgeon is referring to. Like a Virgin by Madonna. The title track to Madonna's 1984 album Like a Virgin, and more importantly, the song Madonna performs in a wedding dress while Draped. across a giant wobbly looking multi-tiered 17-foot-tall wedding cake at the inaugural 1984 MTV Video Music Awards. The VMAs for a solid decade and a half between 1984 and let's say

1996, year I went to college. The VMAs were my Super Bowl, my Grammys, my Tonys, my Oscars, my American Music Awards, my prom, my Wimbledon, my Stanley College. my indie 500, you get it, the dream we all dream of, boys against girls in the world series of love, and leading off Madonna, she ain't lip-syncing. I'm almost positive about that. I don't mean that ugly. I mean that admiringly. I dig the chaotic jankiness of Madonna not lip-sinking like a virgin at the first ever VMAs. I dig the rickety animal house parade float wobbliness of the 17-foot-tall wedding cake as a wobbly looking MTV logo backdrop rises behind it. I dig the shakiness, the let's say amaturity of the camera work, the sparseness of the stage.

We're at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. This is a big whoop. But the stage feels so huge and so bare, so deconstructed. There is a plucky, a Charlie Brown's Christmas. Let's put on a show aspect to the first VMAs. the gridded teeth glitz and at least semi-professionalism set in. I don't mean any of that ugly. It's all tremendously charming. Madonna is tremendously charming rolling around on the bare and grimy radio city music hall stage in her wedding dress, boostier situation. Years and years and years later,

Madonna would insist that the rolling around part was improvised. She'd kicked her shoes off and she was trying to retrieve them. I do not believe that. Madonna was. was born knowing that the Radio City Music Hall stage had been built specifically so Madonna could one day roll around on it. But the bullshit myth-making is charming too. We're doing the pre-chorus. Great pre-chorus unlike a version. Phenomenal. I dig the early years of the VMAs, the humble origins, the wanton randomness. In 1985, you get your host, Eddie Murphy, powing around with Morris Day and Glenn Fry and flirting with Grace Jones and serenating Tina Turner as the credits roll with Eddie's novelty hit party all the time. Eddie's probably lip-syncing this and Tina Turner

definitely looks relieved about that. In 1986, we got Whitney Houston, Mr. Mr. Robert Palmer, the Pet Shop Boys, Tina Turner doing the singing this time, thank goodness. And also, Hey, hey, that's the guy who stole my fries. You want some fries? Order your own fries. Mickey Dolan's from the monkeys. I'm not your stepping stone. At the 1987 VMAs, we got Run DMC and Aerosmith doing Walk This Way for the first of the like two billion times.

You've seen these guys perform this song at an award show in the past 30 years. Both he is get a new song. The screaming girls might not be lip-syncing, but Stephen Tyler sure the hell is. Ooh, 1988, big VMA year for me. Another formative experience, a far less wholesome formative experience. But with all apologies to the monkeys, it's time to set aside childish things. Hit it, fellas. Lumbar hertya.

Ricked his hernia. you listen. I was a feral child and a surly teen and a wayward young adult, but I'm here to tell you that I personally never did anything that antagonized my parents half as much as guns and roses doing Welcome to the Jungle at the 1988 VMAs. I can't swear to you that I didn't get grounded as like a preemptive strike after this happened. Axel Rose actually came back the next year to close out the 1989 VMAs. Do you remember this? I have absolutely no memory of this.

Do you think Axel Rose remembers this? Obstructed! Axel Rose and Tom Petty are sharing a mic at this precise moment, like they're Bruce Springsteen and Little Stephen. And Tom Petty recoils politely from Axel Rose, from the gale-force intensity of Axel Rose. And Tom gets this huge smile,

on his face, half impressed and half amused. I love it. I've seen Tom Petty smile that smile before sharing another big stage with another spotlight hogging Gail Force superstar. He's coming. He's almost here. Go watch that whole performance sometime. Sheney O'Connor doing nothing compares to you at the 1990 VMAs. In musical terminology, vocalist terminology, what is the exact opposite of belting? What's the word for when you're doing the opposite of belting, but with somehow twice the physical force of belting. Chenade is whisper belting this whole song.

It's terrifying. It's incredible. Now, now, performers at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards held at the long since demolished universal amphitheater in Los Angeles include Van Halen, Poison, Poison, Poison, and were terrible. Metallica, Enter Sandman, Queens-Rike, Siloacidity, and Guns and Roses yet again. All of this occurs on Thursday, September 5th, 1991, 19 days before Tuesday, September 24th, 1991, which is the day Nirvana's, nevermind, comes out. Not all of you will be making the team again next year, gentlemen, enjoy this moment while you can. Guns and Roses will be back next year, of course.

Also, EMF did unbelievable, and Paula Abdul did virology. Go watch that sometime. I remember that vividly. I do. Paula Abdul's ill-fated performance of virology. Let's not get into it, but geez, Louise, the jankiness of early Madonna without the command of early Madonna. Let's not get into it. And then.

And then. and then and then our host arsenio hall introduced our next performer listen to how excited arsinio hall sounds prince and the new power generation my name is rob harvilla this is the 95th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s and this week we are discussing get off by prince and the new power generation from their 1991 album diamonds and pearls. And if you think I won't be describing Prince and the New Power Generation's performance of get off at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards in exhaustive detail, well, I'm gonna. There are between 35 and 250 people on stage for Prince and the New Power Generation's performance of get off at the

1991 MTV Video Music Awards. That's get off. Get spelled with two T's. Get's off. You know, why. I don't know why. Do you know why? Do you know why Get has two T's? It's a sex thing, right? It's got to be. These 250 people on stage are combined, wearing less clothing than one normally dressed person. I have never seen so many not very dressed people in one place in my whole life. That very much includes Prince himself. Yes. We need to address this immediately. In this era, Prince's costume designer is a woman named Stacia Lang. Here is Stacia talking to the Prince podcast in 2017, and she is discussing the day in 1991 when Prince's secretary descended the mountaintop

with the two stone tablets that conveyed Prince's commandments as to what Prince would wear to the 1991 MTV video musical. awards. She gave us the parameters that he had given to her. The outfit must be yellow. It must be lace. And it must have the butt out. And so I suspect that if you know exactly one thing about Prince in the 1990s, you know that he wore a yellow assless suit to the VMAs one year and, you know, repeatedly flaunted. It's, asslessness. Maybe you know he was performing a song called Get Off at the time. Maybe not. Maybe you know that Get in Get Off has two T's. Maybe not. But his butt's not really out. It's flesh-colored panels that trick you into thinking Prince's butt is out. The asslessness of Prince's suit is a trompley to use a fancy French term. It means deceive the eye and French. You know, there's a bunch paintings, famous old paintings, to make up for using a fancy French term I decided to pronounce

the French term in the least French way possible. But so a Minneapolis-based master fabric dyer named Marlis Jensen discussed this in a 2017 interview with the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Marlis worked for Prince for more than a decade, starting in 1985. And she says, I never met him, which was kind of odd, because many times I had to dye fabric. the color of his flesh. They used it for linings of lace garments, pockets, and things like that. End quote.

And then she says, and that yellow suit, his butt suit, did not show his butt. That was fabric. End quote. Great URL on this story, by the way. The URL is twin cities.com. Then the date.

Then backslash prince dash butt, dash cheeks, dash suit, dash actually, dash flesh, dash colored, dash cloth, dash panel.

Stupendous SEO. I found it. It worked. So the 1991 VMAs, Arsenio Hall, he's hosting for the fourth time in a row. He's ultracite when he announces Prince.

He says, this is the one. This is the reason I took the gig again. I believe that, by the way. Arsenio Hall did not take the gig again to watch Poison implode

on stage. Arsenio introduces Prince with audible delight. you hear the prince scream, then you get a look at the set, which consists of multiple columns of fire, illuminating a multi-tiered dystopian Roman orgy type fracas

populated by between 35 and 250 not very dressed people. There's one not very dressed lady who spends the whole song just fucking with one of the keyboard players, like humping him and whatnot. She's my second favorite person on stage. My favorite person on stage is Prince.

Prince enters. Prince drops to his knees, lip sinks the scream again, and gets dog piled by several members of his band with his guitar strapped to his back. The dudes all climb off him. Prince rises from his stomach to his knees. And then he does the move where you do the splits, and then you smoothly rise from the splits to a standing position while holding the guitar that used to be on your back. I don't know why I said the move where you do the splits there.

Can you do that shit? I can't do that shit. But Prince does that shit. He goes from his stomach to his knees to the splits to standing in one fluid motion just in time to play the most pornographic guitar riff you ever heard in your life. It's the combination of electric guitar and flute. The unholy union of electric guitar and flute. The beast with two backs. That's what makes it the most pornographic guitar riff.

have ever heard in your life. And also, this goes without saying, the most pornographic flute riff you ever heard in your life. Okay, back up. How much context do you require on Prince, really? How much backstory? Prince Rogers Nelson was born on June 7th, 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. No, absolutely not. It is an insult to him and also to you for me to presume that you needed introduction to him. Prince was already a god to me by 1991. So by the time I was 13, he will be a God to me forever. Because of MTV, yes, the When Doves Cry bathtub and whatnot, but also because of the like 50 God tier Prince songs, I'd already committed to memory by the time I was 13 and also the like 200 other God tier Prince songs I was not yet then familiar with in addition to all the

new God tier songs he'd release from that point forward. Quick illustration of Prince's enduring dominance over my everyday life. A year or so ago, I had an MRI is a minor thing. It's Achilles heel thing. It's fine. But I'm in the MRI machine and I got their headphones on and the doctor goes, do you want to listen to some music while we do this? And I say yes. And the doctor says, what music? And I say, Prince. No forethought, no hesitation. I knew what I wanted before I knew what I wanted. And then my MRI begins. And it gets exactly that far into let's go crazy. And I start laughing. And I cannot stop laughing. And the doctors have to turn off the music because my laughing and therefore my shaking is disrupting the MRI. The MRI proceeds in silence.

The doctors eventually determined that I ought to get a tendget procedure, which is a hilariously minor surgery in which, as my doctor explained, he power washes my tendon, which is a super weird visual, but fine. And so the doctor power washes my tendon, and nobody asks me what music I want while he does that. And so I just lie there on my stomach the whole time with princes, you got the look stuck in my head. and I did not plan this either. And as a song choice, you got the look is way too upbeat or too uptempo for the circumstances. The circumstances being that right now for sure I should not move at all, but I have to tell you that I found it tremendously soothing to just lie there getting my Achilles tendon power washed while there was this loop in my head of Sheena Easton singing, let's get to rammin. all-time funniest way to convey that specific idea, that specific proposal in pop music history.

Let's get to Raman. Unbelievable. So yeah, there's just a quick illustration of Prince's enduring dominance over my everyday life. A doctor says, you want to listen to music? I say, yes, Prince. A doctor doesn't ask me if I want to listen to music, fine.

I just lie there listening to whatever Prince song is stuck in my head. A god to me. He is. Prince. Prince's first record called For You comes out in 1978. The year I was born. Coincidence? Probably. That song's called Just As Long as We're Together. You got to work up to Let's Get to Ramin. You can't just blurt out or have Sheena Easton blurt out. Let's Get to Ramin. Let's Get to Ramin. on your first album. Pace yourself. Prince's 11th album. In his last album of the 80s, that would be Batman, the soundtrack to Tim Burton's Batman. That comes out in 1989. The trick on the song, Scandalous, is that Prince makes the word marvelous sound more scandalous than anybody else in pop music history singing the word scandalous, and he makes the word scandalous sound like world historically obscene. I wanted to buy this tape, the best,

Batman soundtrack when I was 11 and my mom was just like, no, I get it. One more Prince song from the 80s, then we only kind of released it in the 80s. So the black album. Prince's mythic black album, some of the hardest, toughest, it sounds weird when I say this word, but what do you want me to do about it? Fonkiest music Prince ever made. He puts out the black album in 1987 for like 10 minutes, but then he withdraws it. He reconsiders. He kind of panics. He pulls it from release. Prince even orders all the copies destroyed. Maybe. That part's probably bullshit, but it's a cool story. In 1990, Prince finally tossed a Rolling Stone about the Black album. And this article says, Prince says he aborted the project because of one particular dark night of the soul,

quote, when a lot of things happened all in a few hours, end quote. Prince further explains that he saw the word God. He didn't see God. He saw the word God. And now Prince says, when I talk about God, I don't mean some dude in a cape and a beard coming down to earth. To me, he's in everything if you look at it that way. End quote. And after seeing the word God, he soured on the black album. Prince says, I was very angry a lot of the time back then. And that was reflected in that album. I suddenly realized that we can die at any moment and we'd be judged by the last thing we left behind. I didn't want that angry, bitter thing to be the last thing. I learned from that album, but I don't want to go back. End quote. I'd like to direct you to a song on the black album called Dead On It. Prince didn't like rap music.

infamously, Prince warmed up to it eventually, grudgingly. He perceived, correctly, that rap music posed a threat to him, a threat to all-universe crossover,

zeitgeist-ass, pop superstars of his ilk. He saw rap music as a worthy adversary culturally, but an unworthy adversary musically. The Black album finally came out officially,

grudgingly, in 1994, though at Prince's insistence, it was only available for like three months, and it's still not officially streaming. Now, Dead On It, very arguably, is the worst song on the Black album, but what I hear, intriguingly, on Dead On It, is one of the biggest stars of the 80s starting to reckon with. Clearly, his biggest competition as we approach inexorably the dawn of the 90s. Prince will rap way better than this, objectively, eventually. We arrive now at Prince in the 90s. Do you like Prince movies? In 1990, Prince writes, direct, stars in and releases the full-length soundtrack to the film

graffiti bridge, both commercially and artistically. Graffiti Bridge is less successful than, you know, Purple Rain. But as Prince movies go, it is less, less successful than under the Cherry Moon back in 1986. Meanwhile, the graffiti bridge soundtrack is way more beloved than the movie. Tell us what you're going to do when you grow up, 12-year-old Kevin Campbell. Round and round. Incredible song.

The phenomenal and frankly magical quality of Prince songs when somebody other than Prince is singing the song Prince wrote is that you can so clearly hear the personality of this other person singing. Shout out Shocker Khan, Cindy Lauper, the Bengals, and Chenate O'Connor. Sheenade is for extremely justifiable reasons, not a Prince fan. And also, nothing compares to you is her song now. But over or beyond or maybe even through this other singer, Prince is still a palpable presence as well. his artistic, if not physical voice, his aura, his swagger. What you're listening to on round and round is 12-year-old Tevin Campbell sort of rapping, but you can also so clearly hear 32-year-old prince still working out his thoughts on all this rapping all the 12-year-old kids are into now.

quite how it turned out for Tevin Campbell, but he's doing great. He's a cool kitty. Meanwhile, the best song on graffiti bridge is called Joy in Repetition. Hear me now and believe me later. The knowledge that Prince is responsible for every sound you're hearing, other than backing vocals from the singer and songwriter Susanna Melvoin, to whom Prince was once engaged, and for whom Prince maybe wrote the song, nothing compares to you in the first place, though maybe not. Joy in repetition kicks ass, man. Joy in reputation is Prince bringing his world-famous, indomitable, unmistakable 80s energy into the 90s. commercially or artistically, Prince will not be as successful in the 90s as he was in the 80s, but nobody else will be that successful either. And joy in repetition extends his streak and adds to his incomparable collection of God-tier songs and starts the new decade off on it sounds even weirder when I say this, but too bad the good foot.

What Prince really needs, though, here at the dawn of the 90s is a new band. The 1991 Prince releases his 13th album, Diamonds and Pearls, credited to Prince and the New Power Generation. Who we got? We got Michael Bland on drums. We got Sunny T on bass. We got Tommy Barbarella on keyboards. And last but not least, we got singer and keyboardist Rosie Gaines, wailing her ass off on the song, Diamonds and Pearls. I love Prince's last harmony line right here. Prince started calling his live backing band, The New Power Generation. in 1990. They're named after a song on the graffiti bridge soundtrack. The band, also often including the vocalist Maite Garcia, who married Prince in 1996, though they divorced in the year 2000, the band will endure off and on in some form until Prince's death in 2016, and they'll

play some tribute shows thereafter. Membership in the new power generation is hilariously fluid and random in a rotating diner py rack sort of way. There are three hard-to-find 90s albums credited solely to the new power generation. Prince himself is an extra enigmatic presence on those. The whole situation is tremendously charming and just unbelievably chaotic. The usual Prince-type shit, in other words. It's awesome. On this 1991 Diamonds and Pearls record, especially,

it's crucial, I think, that Prince has a band, has a gang. has an army, has a whole new generation backing him up. I picture him always in this era on stage amid 35 to 250 other radically underdressed people. One time I'm driving with my mom. I'm a teenager. We're listening to the car radio innocently as we do. And here comes a new song by Prince and the new power generation that somehow you can just immediately tell is called cream. The moaning. You can immediately tell this song is called cream due to all the moaning, I suppose. It's a dead giveaway, the moaning. And so cream starts on the radio, in my mom's car. And this song is just absolutely unfathomably filthy, right? It's chill and rad and comically X-rated. And there is a palpable,

rigid silence betwixt me and my mother. In the car, we do not speak. We do not move as this song plays. We are both making ourselves as small as possible so as to not acknowledge how mortifyingly embarrassing it is to be listening to a Prince in the New Power Generation song called Cream together in a moving vehicle. We need to get the hell out of here. The URL Pornhub.com was automatically registered to Prince Rogers Nelson from Minneapolis, Minnesota, the first time he played the guitar riff to Cream. The situation in my mother's car certainly did not improve when the vocals to Cream kicked in.

This is later in the song. By this point, I have discreetly crawled from the front passenger seat of my mother's moving car all the way back to the trunk of the car. I believe I was in the fetal position in the trunk of my mother's car by the first chorus of Cream. This is the last number one song of Prince's lifetime.

I just realized that. Prince had five number one songs total on the Billboard Hot 100. That feels low, but at least he had five, I guess. When Doves Cry, Let's Go Crazy, Kiss, Bat Dance. Really? Bat dance? Cool. And Cream. Huh.

That makes me want to curl up in the fetal position out of sadness, actually. Hard pivot. Have you ever wondered what the did? deal was with Prince and Weird Al Yankovic. Weird Al famously, he politely asks an artist's permission before he does a parody song. So like he asks James Brown if James minds, if Al turns living in America into living with a hernia. And I'd pay probably $200 to see the look on James Brown's face at the exact moment he heard the song title, Living with a Hernia. But Prince would never give Weird Al permission.

According to Ben Griemann's 2017 book, Dig If You Will, the picture, Funk, Sex, God, and Genius in the music of Prince. Weird Al wanted to turn, Let's Go Crazy into a song about the Beverly Hillbillies. And Weird Al also wanted to do 1999, but make it the price 1999. Like do a bargain bin infomercial sort of spoof about how the product only costs 1999. Prince rejected both of those. God damn it. Also, Weird Al did an interview with Wired in 2006, and Al says, one of the oddest things to ever happen between me and Prince was the year that he and I were at the American Music Awards at the same time.

Apparently, I was going to be sitting in the same row as Prince that year, and I got a telegram, and I wasn't the only one from Prince's management company saying that I was not to establish eye contact with him during the show. I just couldn't even believe it. And Al says, so immediately I sent back a telegram saying that he shouldn't be establishing eye contact with me either, end quote. And that's why Weird Al is the best. All right, back to the fake asslessness. Princess Mike Stan is wobbling a little bit at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards as he starts singing get off. So allow me to inform you

that the Prince in the New Power Generation song Get Off, Two Tees, begins with Prince singing, how can I put this in a way so as not to offend or a nerve? And then Prince informs a lady that he hears that the lady is engaging in unsatisfactory

sexual relations and Prince is therefore suggesting to the lady that she have sex with him instead because then she'll definitely two T's, not to belabor this, but that's the conceit of getoff. All right? Talking about the new power generation. Have we talked about Tony M yet?

Let's do that. Chorus. Tony M, the new power generation vocalist and guitarist Tony Mosley is the 23 positions in a one-night stand guy. During the VMA's performance of Get Off, Tony M is rapping while very slowly sauntering through all the orgy action, just eyeing up the various radically underdressed ladies.

He's sort of scanning the ground. It's like he's trying to find his car keys, but he understandably keeps getting distracted. It's awesome. Just incredible staging. Get off at the VMA is on every conceivable level. For a few years, Tony M is the New Power Generation's designated rapper.

And he raps quite well, though often, when I'm listening to Prince in the New Power Generation, and I'm taking notes. This is subconscious, but my nickname for Tony M is just not Chuck D. Tony sounds quite a bit like Chuck D. He raps with something of the volcanic force of Chuck D.

Sky Magazine, it's British, did a feature on Prince in 1991, and Tony M says, I sat down with Prince and talked about rap. He said he didn't like it until guys like Chuck D and KRS 1 came on the scene. Then it started. to make sense to him.

End quote. And so now every time I hear Tony M. rap for half a second, I think, is that Chuck D? And then I think, oh, that's not Chuck D. Obviously, that's Tony M. Ergo, not Chuck D.

Please don't be mad at me. Tony, it's a compliment. More chorus. That's Rosie Gaines. Of course, wailing. Let a woman be a woman and a man be a man. Rosie at the VMAs is standing in her keyboard, and she's wearing a cool red cloak.

It's a great costume choice, great contrast with the wanton undressiveness. I could just watch Get Off at the VMAs for the rest of my life. My impulse at first was to frame this performance of Get Off as Prince showing the kids how it's done, right? Prince lambasting the relative sexlessness of the 90s or lamb basting in the 1990s hapless attempts at sexiness. There's a rumor going all round.

that you ain't been getting served, Prince announces to everyone in this whole decade. But that feels reductive, right? And I certainly don't want to frame Prince in 1991 as an elder statesman or our link with history or any of that shit.

Forget it. Don't let me get all laborious about this. Let Prince cook. Let Prince rap while you're at it. Better be happy that dress is still on. I've heard the rip when you sat down. The young lady goes to Prince's house and tries to order ribs. Unbelievable.

That Sky Magazine article is the best old Prince interview that I've read in forever. I get a little salty about the familiar rhythm of a Prince article or feature or magazine cover story, right? There is a formula. The writer, the interviewer goes to Paisley Park, right? Prince's compound. just outside Minneapolis. And the writer's not allowed to use a tape recorder. Sometimes the writer isn't even allowed to take notes.

And so I can't help but project my own feeble journalist anxiety onto this scene. Whatever magazine, whatever publication we're talking about, the whole article can't help but read to me as a frantic reconstruction. And in Paisley Park itself, there's always this weird combination of the outlandish and the outlandishly mundane. On the one hand, there's this brazen, surrealist Prince extravagance, right? Like purple couches and candles everywhere. You open one door and it's a room full of polar bears or something.

That's not a real example, but you get it. But then Prince will want to play basketball or serve you pancakes or something or both. Suddenly there will be some normal activity that will seem even weirder than the weird shit just because it's weird that Prince is doing it. So this Sky Magazine article, the writer sits and watches the video for Get Off, not the VMA's version, the normal MTV video for Get Off. And the Sky Magazine guy writes, two foxy girls named Diamond and Pearl, aka Robbie Elamort and Lori Werner, make their screen debuts in the video. Is Prince dating one of them? I ask, as the funk is pumped up on the boardroom VCR unit and Prince puts his head up diamond skirt.

And then somebody tells the reporter, he's very friendly with both of them. And the reporter asks, which one is Prince more friendly with? And the same somebody says, he's simultaneously friendly with both of them. End quote. This is my favorite exchange ever in a Prince interview. And then a reporter asks Prince a bunch of awkward questions that don't really go anywhere. And then finally, Prince says, Do you all want to try my trampoline?

And so then the reporter bounces on Prince's trampoline. Incredible. But so now when I hear Get Off in any context, this is a voice in my head. Somebody who works with Prince informing an English reporter, Prince is simultaneously friendly with both of them. I love it. Let's get a little of Prince channeling James Brown, shall we? You got to have a mother for me.

Now move your big ass round this way. I'm going to level with you. I'm in a weird spot. I have spent a whole month, a month solid, listening to Prince in the 90s, to the exclusion of virtually anything or anyone else. If I'm counting this right,

Prince released 12 albums in the 90s, including the Black album, but also two of these 90s albums are box sets. Emancipation from 1996 is a three-disc set, 12 tracks per disc. pretty much exactly one hour per disc. It's based on the pyramids or something. And Crystal Ball from 1998 is also a three-disc set, or really a five-disc set, because

Crystal Ball is three discs, but it also includes two other separate Prince albums, one called The Truth and one called Kama Sutra. Kama Sutra is an instrumental album credited to the NPG orchestra, and Prince recorded it specifically so it could be played at his wedding to Maite Garcia. Sure, for a month I've been listening to all of this, taking notes and shit, being professional. And it's an overwhelming amount of music, right? It's absurd. When Prince changes his name to an unpronounceable symbol and writes the word slave on his face and starts calling himself the artist formerly known as Prince or sometimes just the artist. On the one hand, there's a terribly complex explanation for

all that. And on the other hand, his label wouldn't release all that music in such a short amount of time and he got mad. That's it. That's all the explanation you really need. And Rolling Stone in 1996 when Emancipation is about to come out. Emancipation is named that because he's finally free of his record deal with Warner Brothers after 18 years. Prince says, then people say I'm a crazy fool for writing on my face. But if I can't do what I want to do, what am I? When you stop a man from dreaming, he becomes a slave. That's where I was. I don't own Prince's music. If you don't own your masters, your master owns you. End quote. Here's the weird spot I'm in. Is it weird if I don't play you any other Prince songs from the 90s? I feel like it does Prince's 90s catalog a disservice.

somehow if I just start machine-gunning 90s print songs and albums and whole micro-era's at you. Is it weird if instead I just super strongly advise you to go listen to all of it? Take a month. Take all summer. Take it slow. Luxuriate. It's incredible. It's incredibly rewarding.

It's rewarding enough that I'm not even mad that I ain't using any of those notes. One song as a preview of your own imminent personal source. super rewarding 90s Prince binge. Let's do one song. Did you know that Prince covered one of us by Joan Osborne? This is on emancipation. This is awesome because he was one of us, right? Prince has been a god to me in all my life,

but he's also just a guy with a trampoline. In 2016, I was at a baseball game with my whole family. My mom, my dad, my brother. We were celebrating my dad's birthday. in April. We were at a Cleveland Indians game in April. And the stadium organist starts playing, let's go crazy. Right? And I'm looking at my phone and he's gone. Prince is gone. I can't believe it. To this day, I can't believe it. I won't believe it. He's still a god to me. But we're at this baseball game for my dad's birthday and suddenly Prince is dead and the game doesn't

matter and the game ends and we drive home and my dad's driving and his car has no ox cable or Bluetooth or something. There's some technical reason that we can't put on our own music in my dad's car. And so instead, the whole way home, my family just wants me to play Prince videos out loud on my phone, blasting out of my tinny little phone speakers. And so my whole family now just sits in silence in a moving car listening to Prince doing, for example, a 15-minute live version of Purple Rain on my phone. And this. This is arguably the single most solemn and sacred musical experience I've ever had, the most unforgettable to me, the most dear to me.

My whole family, my dad's car, my phone, Purple Rain, we'd just sit and wrap silence and listen to him with the worst possible audio fidelity in the worst possible emotional circumstances. He's gone. He's not gone. He will never be gone. I just sat there in the car crying because he's gone and I can no longer see him, but I'm also smiling because he's not gone and I can still hear him. There are thousands of print songs,

seemingly from the 90s alone, thousands of print songs, none of them quite purple rain level, but all of them tremendously rewarding, all of them capable of providing this sort of comfort, this sort of sad car ride community, this sort of paradoxical, go listen to all of them go have fun go listen to them on repeat for the rest of your life there's joy and repetition we are thrilled to be joined once again by daphne a brooks she's a professor of african-american studies american studies women's gender and sexuality studies and music at yale her most recent book is called liner notes for the revolution the intellectual life of black feminist sound It's great to have you back, Daphne.

Nice to be here. Daphne, when I say just Prince in the 90s, like, what's the first thing you think of, the first song, album, video, era, whatever. Like, what sums up the decade, this decade of Prince for you? I mean, assless pants. The 191 VMAs, right? BMA performance of Get Off. Those assless pants were designed. by Stacia Lang.

She worked with him as costume designer between 91 and 93. The love symbol, which she adopts in in 93, right, is a middle finger to Warner Brothers. Indeed. Right. Ninety-four, slave on a face. These are all moments from early 90s versions of Prince. That's what sticks with me about the era, the song that for me encapsulates, 90s Prince

and I'm obviously skipping also anything on graffiti bridge is a is a toss-up both from diamonds and pearls the title track as well as get off

which really you know right taken together embody the two sides of Prince exactly the most below to us right the nasty botanian sex god and and also his royal tenderness Romeo serenade

suitor the suave valedier. So that's that's 90s Prince to me. Okay. I like cream is right in between get off and diamonds and pearls, right? That's right. Yeah. Right on. I can go with that.

Yeah. What do you think the 90s made of Prince? You know, like the biggest pop stars, R&B stars, biggest rappers of the 90s. Did they see him as present tense competition? Was he more of a legacy, sort of classic rock figure already? Like how did his reputation change? change over the course of the decade. Yeah, I mean, you know, other than, of course, Questlove, I have a hard time, and I'd love to

hear what you think, but I'm a hard time really kind of identifying hip-hop musicians who were engaging with Prince's music, even at the level of competition. And in a way, it was kind of like a sad, I mean, you know, help me out with this. right? To me it was a sad question because I have no idea what the artist that you suggested, Mary J. Plage, J. Z., Missy, Lauren, I have no idea what these artists thought of them. We know a lot about, of course, Yance's affection for him and what she learned from him collaborating with him at the Grammys in 2004, and Yance is really, you know, are aught's beloved icon of all icons. And of course, right, Questlove, DeAngelov, DeAngel.

on dying devotion to him, affection for his body of work, the impact it continues to have on them. And Prince clearly, and I say this as a self-consciously, Gen X person myself, Prince clearly is one of, if not the most beloved

and most important artists to shape Gen X in many ways across the color line, across the genders. But I think the way that he informed these artists work in the 90s is probably most felt, in my opinion, the ways that someone like a Jay-Z in a very mindfully savvy way and a

Lauren Hill in a much more spectacularly fraught way navigated and did battle with the racially exploited of recording industry. So Prince's battle, right, his famous warning that if you don't own your master's, you know, your master owns you as an adage that reverberates through the ways that 90s black pop star musicians began to restratage their business game, right? But I don't know. Help me out with that. I wasn't sure what to do with that one. I jumped to Questlove immediately, DeAngelo and Lauren. So later, mid to late 90s, right? Like, I'm trying to think about Get Off in 1991 who his competition is. And if, you know, the early 90s explosion of rap really engages with him. Like, I don't know, a tribe called Quest, the Wu-Tang clan. Like, I don't see a lot of connection there.

I think it's later when Neo-Soul, you know, if you subscribe to that, comes in. That's where you see a lot more of his influence. And that makes a lot more sense. It does make a lot of sense. Well, if you think about it, too, I mean, get off. I mean, so much, it makes so much sense for any youngans who, you know, are becoming acquainted with him belatedly, if you watch him induct Parliament Funkadelic into the Rock Royal Hall of Fame, you just hear that kind of deep leg.

legacy of connection to pioneering funk between Godfather of soul and George Clinton and translating that into its sensibility

that also melded of course with Hendricks and Joni Mitchell like nobody puts that shit together like Brent but all of those all of those icons right are

our great 60s and early 70s icons which is not to say that the artists in the 90s aren't doing hip-hop artists in the 90s aren't doing crate digging in a way that is about that kind of historical memory, but just Prince was about a different kind of crate digging. So by the time you get that squeal at the beginning of get off, it's like, that doesn't, that doesn't go work even with tribe, you know? It's like. Right. Yeah. I was listening to the Janelle Monet record this morning. And it seemed like Prince makes a lot more sense to me in 2023 than in 1991. 100%. 100%. Well, I think, you know, sadly, especially with him, he really, and I had this experience in the classroom with my students when he passes. So many of them, my students,

were discovering him for the first time because of the problem with streaming, right? And so they were literally learning about prints through their parents' devastation, right? And so there's kind of, there's a really sort of a weird lapse in sort of the public imaginary generationally and pop culture around Prince until it's reignited, you know, deeply and tragically by his passing. And so there's this resurgence of creativity amongst, you know, artist in the 2010s, late 2010s, now the 2020s, who are connected to his work in many ways. I remember subscribing to title just to listen to Prince. I think in part he, he like messed around with streaming services and he was hard to access.

There was the period where the records were only on one track. You know, like you could, yeah, it's like he's, he's done a lot of stuff too that sort of messed with the way that younger people would hear him. Yes.

You mentioned writing slave on his face, you know, the artist formerly known as Prince. Do you think people in real time understood what he was doing or did a lot of people sort of dismiss it or just think of it as like Prince doing eccentric prince type stuff? You know what I mean? Nobody understood.

But that's about also the historical moment, right? Nobody understood because in the 1990s leg of the post-civil rights era for my scholarly hat-on for a moment. Please. Although you don't have to be a scholar to figure us out. The public was much more inclined to repress critical conversations about anti-blackness and the long black freedom struggle. We just weren't doing it in smart ways than publicly like we have never before in this moment. So nobody had a language for this in spite of the fact that it was.

happening against the backdrop of an era in which we experienced the LA uprising, the OJ. Simpson murder trial, the vast expansion of the carciful state, right? People just thought of Prince as an eccentric, sex crazy, self-described freak. They had a harder time understanding his black, radical tradition, politics, which were always actually tied to his freakishness, right? So, yeah, no. Nobody got it. Did it take until his death again for people to, to sort of put all that together, unfortunately? Yeah. I mean, I think there's still, people are just,

there's still a challenge to kind of, to think creatively and expansively, expansively about what black freedom struggle politics can constitute, right? So it's harder for people to understand that the libidinous side of Prince is really a rejection of the ways in which, you know, black people's sexuality have been policed since, you know, the time of captivity, right?

Which you can make an argument. I certainly would that that had something to do with his radical politics. It was easier, though, for folks to be able to literally say, oh, okay, well, he wrote a song called Baltimore, you know, and supported, you know, the move to try and convict the officers who killed Freddie Gray in Maryland. So there was a kind of a reckoning with the political side of Prince, but I think that there is still. there's still some work to be done to have more interesting conversations about what resistance looks like in his repertoire. That label fight was over the volume of music that he was trying to release, right? As you move later into the 90s, he puts out two triple albums, the second one comes with two

bonus albums. Was he flooding the market on purpose or does he just love making music and he wants to put it out immediately and there's no deeper strategy to it. I mean, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, if we take out whether there's strategy or not, I mean, I think that we know that he, his life was consumed by a passion for his own genius and creativity. And it was also, you know, early on from the moment that he signs with Warner Brothers and, you know, is really quite savvy as a teenager in the kind of, you know,

deal that he strikes for himself, but he also understood what it meant to fight to live a free life as an artist. And so that flooding in the market was, but I think about his own unbridled, you know, passion for his work and his resistance to the standards and constraints that the music industry placed on all artists, but especially black artists. Yeah. And he was early on the internet, too, I always forget, right? Like he was in like whatever the 1996 equivalent of a chat room is. You know, he's interacting with his fans. He's doing online only sort of releases.

Like he's early on all that. Yeah. He's super early on all that. Yeah. You know, it's so sad to not have him around now and to, you know, to not be able to see what he could do with the technology now would be really extraordinary. It's interesting to think of you teaching and your students, like, learning about him when he dies? Like, even in what has it been already, six,

seven years, like, do you see a real difference in the way that people perceive him in his body of work and his politics, as you say? Like, has there been not a resurgent because people always love Prince, but do we look at him differently now? Well, I think we have a richer relationship to what he was able to present to the... the culture, especially with regards to intersectionality politics. So my students, you know, this is the same year that David Bowie dies and we had a big conference that I organized it at Yale a year after they're passing in 2017 to celebrate the both of them.

And, you know, our students came and they were just astonished that there had been these two musicians who did so much with gender, right? Yeah, right. And so much transgressiveness that they felt, you know, was just a phenomenon of their, of their moment. And it was, you know, I mean, that's kind of like, we can laugh at that. But it's also, it was heartening to them to sort of to be able to see that there was a longer history of this. And that their sense of belonging and connection to this longer history could boy them up. So it was very moving.

So yeah, yeah, I think he just continues to resonate and be useful and meaningful to a multiplicity of publics across these different historical moments. And that says something again about his singularity. Yeah. And transgressive in both their cases, but like super duper pop stars, right? Number one hits. Yes. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what makes it so impressive. is that he was mainstream, but he was also so incredibly confrontational and transgressive. Right. Until he wasn't mainstream. And in some ways, I was just, this is awful to me with the Bowie and Prince thing, which will be an anthology someday. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, I know. It needs to get done. We have so many people in it, including some folks who've passed on now. But I mean, you know, Bowie, it was kind of an inverted trip for him to pair up with Nell Rogers, you know, to give us his. biggest hits in the early 80s, right? But there was this kind of sit right, less dance, right? But there was also this way that they were outside of the pop mainstream,

but, you know, had the chops and the grace and the invention to be able to insert themselves, right, into the center of the pop stratosphere when they wanted to. It's wild to watch that get-off performance from 1991 knowing that I think it was 2001. He became a Jehovah's Witness. He stopped swearing. Like he didn't cut out the sexuality, but he toned it down. Like, do you miss the super dirty version? Did you miss him when he was gone?

Yeah. I couldn't do the rainbow children. Yeah. I was a hard. It was a hard time. I didn't even, I mean, you know, there was this, his great kind of return again was, you know, the musicology tour.

That's right. And, right? So that was like a previous moment in which parents were taking their kids to Prince concerts. And we didn't go. I just couldn't do, by the time he actually inducted, he was inducted into the rock hall, which was around the time of the musicology tour,

I believe, there was just a kind of, I don't know, something had been evacuated. Well, the danger. There was less danger. Right. There was less danger and less risk. And it was incredibly polished. But I had a harder time with it. I mean, my favorite late career performance is Super Bowl performance.

Of course. But also, just as great. we're going and Googling on YouTube. The press conference before the Super Bowl conference. Fucking hilarious because he comes out. He's like, he has a whole, you know, outfit behind him and he's like, can I take any questions? And then as soon as the press starts asking questions, he just kicks it out the jams. And it's so loud.

You can feel how loud it is. It's awesome. I forgot that's so awesome. And it's, it's Prince. a comedian, you know, and there were a lot of great pieces that were written about, you know, his comic side, his trickster side was just like so brilliant. And again, a part of that black radical tradition of survival, being a trickster, being a comedian, right? That's also that joke that he played was also, you know, about rejecting the protocols of the industry,

you know, even as he was playing inside of it, you know. So, yeah. I, but you're right, though, about something lost or evacuated. Like, you need get off. You need darling Nikki, of course. Like, there was something missing always from that era of Prince as great as he was. Yeah. You need that squeal, you know?

Yeah. I mean, I didn't hear that squeal again until largely unfortunate sequel to coming to America in which, you know, Eddie Murphy's been millions of dollars on, but there's a great sequence in which, you know, get off as played as a joke, but also sincerely as a love letter to him. There's a, it's both, right?

It's both, right? There's a lip-syncing sequence. And I thought, oh, this is not, nobody's going to get this. But we did. And that's what's important. That's right. It's such an awful thing to think about, but I think it's an important part of his story in the 90s is he and his wife welcomed his son in 1996, but he died within a week. I can't even read about it, you know, and I don't.

But I don't, do you think that the music he made thereafter was sort of working through that, or is he so private that he deliberately tried to avoid working through that tragedy in his music? Yeah, that's a question I can't answer. I mean, there are just so many, there's so many things about that relationship, which are, you know, concerning and troubling. troubling and concerning, it's redundant, that leave a lot of unanswered questions about how Prince was managing his emotional life

and his intimacy at that moment. But it's definitely a trying period for him personally in ways that we had not known about before. I really do love Prince songs where I know that he's playing every instrument that every sound I hear is him, right? But I do love the new power generation of it all. Like, I love that it's a band. At the VMAs, I love that there's like 500 people on stage with him. Like, do you discern a huge

difference between Prince alone and Prince, like, leading a band or an army? Well, there's never going to be a band, like a backing band like the revolution. No. So, you know, right? And the on-stage drama and behind the scenes drama and the on stage connection and behind the scenes connections and collaborations between prince and the revolution are just that's a story that needs to be told even more fully and we're so lucky we still have Wendy and Lisa around and other members of the band and they've performed together as the revolution since this passing um but i think after that after that band, I'm,

I don't know, I'm less invested in Prince with the ensemble, even though it's fun to see those folks. I mean, there are, of course, great collaborators, Rosie Gaines,

you know, comes to mind in the wake of the revolution. But, you know, to me, I think maybe because of the ways that the Battle of Warner Brothers was,

you know, staged as a one man, and David and Goliath kind of battle that I sort of, I think of him very much as a solo act, which is not fair to the always excellent. You have to be extraordinary to play with friends. You do. You do. People who are partnering with them.

So it's worth giving them their flowers, definitely. Absolutely. Daphne, it's always awesome to talk to you. This has been wonderful. Hey, this was fun. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thanks very much to our guest this week.

Stephanie A. Brooks. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. Thanks to Chloe Clark for production help. I'm supposed to mention that I have a book coming out. This is a real thing. My book, Songs That Explain the 90s, will be out on November 7th of 2020. You can find me on Twitter, just plain old H-A-R-V-I-L-L-A. For more info on that real soon. Thank you very much for listening. And now I really must insist, You go listen to every print song from the 90s, but especially you should listen to Get Off. Thanks a lot. We'll see you next week.