One Song - Prince “Let’s Go Crazy” with guest Bashir Salahuddin

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today for another episode of One Song. This time, Diallo and LUXXURY are joined by Diallo’s longtime writing partner and friend, Bashir Salahuddin. The trio go on a musical journey through Prince’s 1984 classic, Let’s Go Crazy. Follow along while LUXXURY plays Prince’s wild guitar solos, his iconic vocals, and buckle up for a highly controversial conversation when the fellas choose which song they’d drop off Purple Rain.  Artist: Prince and The Revolution Album: Purple Rain Released: 1984 Genre: Hard rock, funk rock Featured songs:  Let's Get Crazy by Evelyn "Champagne" King, Brothers Gonna Work It Out by Public Enemy, Sometimes I Miss You So Much by P.M. Dawn, Traffic Jam by "Weird Al" Yankovic, Rock Lobster by The B-52's, Ice Cream Man by Van Halen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter Luxury, aka the guy who sometimes talks about interpolation on the internet. Love that you always whispered that. And this week, we have, I've been looking forward to this for so long. We have a very special guest. He's a great friend of mine. He's my writing partner.

You've seen him do a million TV shows. He's in movies that I cannot mention right now. It's Bashir Salahuddin. How you doing, man? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me, guys. It's just fun. I'm excited to talk about music. It's excited to talk about music. We're excited to talk about Prince. Yeah. And, all right, before we get into the song, Prince, I want to ask right out of the bat, what makes Prince special to you?

There are two things about him that I've always found really incredible. One is his work as a collaborator. A lot of it you've told me about. And I've always felt like if I was ever to do a Prince movie, like that's the one I'd want to do. Just about him. Because, I mean, just think of it. about he's so successful and so talented, but like there's still more in the tank, right? There's still like, you know what? And I'm going to go produce six other albums for six other people. And I'm going to go play guitar. I'm going to do this. Six album over here. I'm going to drop some vocals on this person's record. A family has an album that we got to get out. By the way, the time is basically just me. The time is basically if, well, we're going to talk about

the time too because I want to say. Shout out to Morris Day. He's a good, good friend. He's a great collaborator of ours. Tell us why you're so excited about the topic today. Well, Prince is just such a meaningful character in my life. I mean, when you ask that the first thing that popped in my head is being in seventh grade, and Purple Rain has just come out, and I was playing, is Jenny Beaumont's birthday party? Don't ask why Croquet was the name of the game. Like, we played Croquet in San Francisco, and the first prize was Purple Rain album, final, and I won it.

And that was the beginning of a lifelong obsession. So that just popped in my head, Croquet and Prince. It's a very natural. Everyone thinks of those things, too, together, obviously. So I'm so excited because I have a lot of stuff I want to play for you guys that you may have never heard before. So many layers to Let's Go Crazy beyond it being just an incredible pop song. There's layers of rock and roll.

There's layers of heavy metal in there. There's synth pop. It's very actually, when you drill down into the song, it's actually really very low-fi in terms of its recording. Even though it was a massive global hit, the actual recording itself was very punk rock, very DIY. So in my mind, this song is culturally important for all the reasons we know for Prince to be important. But as a song, it's also kind of an avant-garde, lo-fi, heavy metal, synth-pop, rock classic.

It's also for a lot of people, his introduction to himself. I mean, it opens Purple Rain. There are folks, you know, if you definitely, if you had some, like, you know, black people who love funk and was really about it, they knew about, you know, for the first couple of Prince albums, but I think vast majority of America probably came on board of Purple Rain. like the first moment of like who was this guy. They weren't buying copies of dirty mind. Yeah. The guy standing in the bathtub. No, that's right. It was kind of like,

it was sort of like, if you were a kid especially, it wasn't music you were allowed to listen to necessarily. Controversy. Like those are some the controversial lyrics. Like you said it right there, right in the tag. We were not supposed to watch the movie Purple Rain, and I was like watching it as a kid. And I was like, what's the world? Oh, boy. Yep. I'm not supposed to be watching this

right now. That was my family too. This is the first song on Purple Rain. Let's get it started. This is one song. So a little backstory to the song, we just kind of alluded to it a moment ago, but this is the introduction to the world for a lot of people of Prince,

but Prince was pretty well known in the black community. He was an R&B singer. He had four records out actually before this. And to be fair, he had a couple of huge pop records before this too, but he hadn't quite broken through in the way he was about to break through. And part of that was in the album Purple Rain in general, in the movie and the album,

but specifically the song, there is an effort to kind of go a little deeper into the rock direction. And part of that is fueled some interesting things happen a few years earlier, just to back up to 1981. Prince is opening for the Rolling Stones, just two shows in Los Angeles. And he actually can't even finish the set because they get booed offstage by this. That's that booing that you hear on Pop Life, I think, is what I heard.

When Pop Life breaks off and you hear people booing and, like, throwing trash, that's an audio recording of that performance for the Rolling Stones. That makes sense. And this is like, that's a moment where he's like, I never want to, first of all, tour in front of anyone else again. So he never opens again. He never opens for anybody again. This is the beginning of his really locking the doors on who he's working with or opening for it.

He wants to control the live experience. The control. That's the word I was looking for. Absolutely. The beginning of this. And make sure that the fans were there are his fans and not. Yeah. Yeah, he wanted.

Rolling Stones fans. And it wasn't just, let's lock the doors. Yeah, we saw what happened at Al-Tomarton. Black people don't do well at Rolling Stones. No, if you're black and Rolling Stones invite you to tour with it. them to say no thank you, Mick Jagger. Absolutely. Yeah, no, this isn't closing the door, though, on that audience and saying, okay, it's only

going to be these guys for known. It's more like, how do I get those guys? How do I win them over? So there's a real effort to reach for the white audience. And in part, that means going rock. That means adding crunchy guitars, like literally that tactic. Is it, can I ask, I don't know what the question? Let me ask this question.

Call me out on that. Do we feel like that's him saying, I got to reach a bigger rod, it's got to reach a Or is it feel like him going deeper into all the stuff he really likes? I feel like when I hear narratives of Tina Turner when she did her first album after I, was it a private dancer? What's Love Got to do with it? And when you look at Michael Jackson and the disco shift, right, from off the wall to Thriller, the artists are saying like, hey, this is me going deeper into it. And I'm wondering with Purple Rain, is that, is it both?

Is it outreach? Or is it also Prince saying, hey, I love all this other stuff too. Or let's take it one step further. It might be Prince saying, hey, by the. the way, I'm better at rock than y'all are. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like there's an element of... I think it's a little bit of all that. I think those are great points. I don't, I don't think he compromised to sound one bit. It's more like he's adding to the... There's already synth pop songs on like Dirty Mind is a synth pop classic as it is, right? Controversies

kind of a synth pop. He's already kind of bringing in new wave, like British white band, basically. There's already an interplay in his music where he's mixing up different genres and different audiences. I'm like to hear you describe really quickly. To hear you describe it as rock, which is accurate. because we all receive it as pop. We all received all that stuff. This is just pop music. It was on top 40 radio.

It wasn't on like the rock station. It seems like over time the definition of pop always changes to what's ever truly popular because there are times in the past when pop was rock and then pop was hip hop for a little bit. And right now I would say like all that dance music that felt underground in the 2000s is, you know, basically what Dua Leap and all the pop artists are doing now that you're singing lyrics over it. One last thing I want to say about Prince doing rock. when the first British invasion happens, you get all these black artists,

and we're going to talk about Little Richard as well this episode, but you get these people who are like black musicians who are like, hey, these British people are doing what we invented, let's show them that we do it better. And I feel like when, you know, Human League and all these people are basically doing the British, this British invasion is doing their own version of disco and black music, you know, with drum machines.

And Prince is like, oh, yeah, I can do that. Yes, he can do that just like y'all. You can do it better than anyone else. It's not even that he's copying the white musicians. He's saying, like, hey, I'm going to show you where this all came from. Right. And to be fair, this is also a moment where, like, whatever, a decade into, maybe it's longer than that. A period of time where there's so, like, top 40 radio is so eclectic.

You have so much going on, white, black country rock. Everything is sort of simultaneously listening to each other. It's not striated in the way it used to be. There used to be black stations and there used to be white stations. The other thing also that's for me very incredible. It's one of those things that when you see certain artists, it's so good. You have to, like, think about them in retrospect

for all the different parts of them that were good because at the time you're just receiving it. Like, it's interesting with Prince, as you say again, it is rock. I'm just sort of struggling with that idea a little bit because I'm like, that's so wild because he was also really good at writing really great original melodies, right?

Like, it's not, it didn't sound like anything. Well, let's go crazy as one of the greatest guitar wrists. It doesn't sound like anything anybody had heard before. So it was like, I mean, I think that's the hardest thing in music. I think writing a pop melody that people who don't know you will be humming later is like, that's the golden standard. That's the hardest thing to do. That's why most of us can't make music.

Okay, so really quick, you have the stems for this song, which is something that I've never had the chance to hear. What are you going to play for us first? Well, we're going to start with the drums. And just to quickly sort of complete that, I love that conversation. And one thing I just want to say about, as we're going deep into the song, you start to hear things that I hadn't noticed either until I was doing my archaeological dig. We're going to be hearing some of these sounds so explicitly.

You're like, oh, he really did put those crunchy guitars in the mix. And whether or not you sort of feel it because there's so much happening, the subtlety of production in that process is how he balances things out so you don't necessarily know you're listening to a heavy metal song, but there's a heavy metal song in there. So you don't believe me, just watch, because we are going to get in. to them. Okay, Trinidad James. All right, so I do have the stems for Let's Go Crazy so we can hear all the different parts.

The first thing I want to start with, though, is the drums. So what's interesting and somewhat innovative about this is that we're going to start with a drum machine. Prince is really famous for being, as we were just discussing, a master programmer of specifically the LN1 drum machine. He needed it. Visit BetMDMDM casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGEM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. He made it as, like the LN1 is the iconic Prince drum machine that he tamed and created sounds. Because you have to understand, you buy this device, and it's got a preset kick, preset snare, got a high hat, and everyone who buys it, it sounds the same, until you start getting in there and tweaking it.

And at the time, people weren't really doing that. And by the way, you have to address, and this is a thing that's timeless in music, you got to address the haters because you know some old musicians are like, man, he's pushing buttons. Yes, he's pushing buttons. That's my thing. And we're hearing it going, oh, this is genius. Remember that point?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Play us some drums. But we don't have that context anymore. It's funny to hear it in the build, too, because you have to remember. We're going to be building from the ground up. So it starts simple, but that's for a reason. So here is, literally the Lind drum beat from Let's Go Crazy.

Almost can be from like 10 different print songs. That is absolute. It is from 110. Yeah, it feels like that sounds like. It's the same drum machine. And that same knocks up. But even the cadence feels like, I'm delirious.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. So he's not getting crazy with the patterns necessarily, but he is messing around with the sounds. And that kind of infamous knocking beat, I'll play that isolated because this to me, like when you hear this,

it exists in the drum machine, but to get it to sound like that, in other words, it's one of your sound options, but to get it to sound like Prince, you got to do stuff. You got to pitch it down, you got to run it through a flanger, you got to compress it,

and in order to do that in 1982, you got to be some kind of mad professor, basically. You know, Dial and I had the luxury, of going to college with one. We have to mention his name three times of the show. And I do appreciate that. We had the luxury of going to college at Ryan Leslie,

and I think one of the things that I, you know, aside from not studying, I was always so impressed because we got a chance to watch him make a few songs and I would say with Prince, I've always heard I don't know, you probably know better, that he kind of grew up with his own little garage situation where he was experimenting and playing with sounds

and really learning all this stuff. Yeah, like a basement thing. And then house, whatever you call it. Kids, parents, buy your kids a bunch of equipment and stuff. Yeah. And that comes in handy later when he's on tour with Rick James. We'll get into that story in a minute. The beefiest tour in history, by the way.

But here, I just want to play for you that iconic Prince sound, because you and I have talked about it before. When you hear this isolated thing, that's Prince programming the drums, because he puts that specific sound. He pitches it down. He runs it through a flanger. That's right. I can hear it now. And here it is in the mix again, just so you hear what that sounds like. That's a Prince beat when he throws that little clap that, crap, crack, whatever you want to call.

You know, somebody once said that, like, the way that Prince made those drums sound so good, I've always said it killed off. generation of black drummers because, you know, I mean, like you've got Indugu Chancler who plays, I hope I'm pronouncing his last name right, who plays Billy Jean, like to iconic perfection. Who's the guy, was it Benny Benjamin who was in the Funk brothers? Like, you know, you had this, all these black guys who had been playing the drums. Clydes double field. Yes, oh, exactly. James Brown. Of course. And all of a sudden, you know, because I'm a kid of the 80s, all of a sudden, because of the 80s, because of the sudden, because of the timing and because of the technology and just the

appreciation I feel like our generation had for like the 808. Like we kind of prefer, I personally preferred this sound. You know, nowadays, like, I love the imperfections that I hear and you and I are both drummers, but I love the imperfection that you hear from a live drummer, but like, man, like,

Bashir was just saying there had to be people over here at the record plant or like Sunset Studios. Cut that off. Hey, man, cut off that miss. But you know what's interesting to you? They were mad at AI before writers were mad at AI. I think it does both. I think it kills off.

some careers, but it also forces others to evolve. I'm thinking of that famous drumbeat. Because I did a deep dive on this one night when I was, you know, not parenting. And the drumbeat from 7777-7-7-7-0. So I thought that it's Morris, but I thought it was a live drummer.

It was original, that drumbeat, according to the internet, according to the guy who played it, was actually pre-programmed into the machine by the guy who made the machine as like a crazy beat that nobody could ever do. Really? Okay. I believe you. I believe you. Listen, the comments will say everything. I'll watch the video on YouTube. Apparently, he programmed that in, but then the guy who plays for Morris is his name, jelly.

Jelly bean? Right. He learned that. And they were like, you playing it? So he was playing it live. So I think for some drummers, the drum machine made them step their game up. Let me tell you, I just found out today while prepping for this episode that the drums on want to be starting something are just a drum machine.

So sometimes when I thought it was a live drummer, it wasn't. You know, it's kind of funny. We're talking about this either or thing with regards to drum machines versus live drummers. Because in this song, and let's go crazy, what he's doing, which is pretty innovative, is he's mixing that Lynn that we were just listening to with Bobby Z playing live drums. And check this out. I'll play it for you in a moment. But what you're about to hear is Bobby Z, the drummer for the revolution, playing live drums.

But it's a combination of, you know, drums, drums that you're used to and triggering another Lynn drum. So when he hits a snare, it's actually the sound of this. It's crazy how complicated this is in 1983, no less. And this is the result. The olden times. The olden times. The olden days. The British had just invaded the focals.

It was horrible. Here's the live drums, and then I'll play them for you in the mix with the lid, and that's what you hear on the final. But here are just the isolated. And this is recorded, by the way, one last crazy step at a rehearsal. This is so unprofessional. Like, this is super punk DIY. So as you can hear, they're playing it live in the studio.

It's also got like the Lind drum playing, which they're playing two. Yeah. And in the mix here's all of the drums on Let's Go Crazy together. I've obviously blessed with the levels a little bit. You know, he would be hearing that, though. It just reminds me that the one thing that music and writing kind of have in common is sometimes you come up with an interesting idea and you don't know where it goes. And I definitely think when you hear, you know, Purple Rain, you're hearing probably 10 years, right?

15 years of things that he's like, oh, that's, he came up with that six years ago and he didn't. I can tell anybody. One day I'm going to figure out where that goes, right? Now it's like it all comes together. And if you're lucky, how was it when they were like 22 or something, 24? 25, I think. Yeah, but that's, yeah, that seems like about the, it's funny because I know that now there's so many parts of great art that didn't all come at the same time.

Right, no, right. You just kind of carry it with you until the right moment. I want to talk about the revolution. Let's talk about the revolution. Can you explain who the revolution was and why did Prince form a ban? I mean, like I remember his first album for you, I think, is the title. There's no real... It just says Prince.

But by Pearl Rain, it's Prince of the Revolution. Why did Prince form a band? And how did they change the sound? So there's a lot of, like, information about this out there. We don't really know what Prince was thinking was at the time. But I will say that knowing that he was a huge fan of Sly and the Family Stone. Yes. And a huge fan of Fleetwood Mac.

I think that... Both multi-gender groups. Yeah, as he was piecing... Both multi-culture. Well, not Fleetwood Mac. But Sly is, you know, especially for a generation, it's that group that was multicultural. And the fact that they had people

sort of unorthodox instruments for the stereotype of those instruments had a lot to do with Prince of the Revolution. And I get the sense that growing up, like looking back, I wasn't there at the time, but it feels a little bit like they were the coolest band of 1971. I just get the sense that what they were doing musically

because it was so influential. It was exciting for those who were there to see. And it was bringing together elements of rock and funk and pop. So it's a lot of the DNA that Prince later takes. And by the way, I've been to Paisley, Park and there's a giant mural on the wall of all of his heroes and he's got Slime the Family Stone is up there and he's got Johnny

Mitchell up there and Carlos Santana some of these were surprises even to me but Fleetwood Mac is up there too. Does Shaka make the wall? Oh good question I got to look that one. I wouldn't be surprised because clearly because he wrote yeah they're not contemporary she's a little for him I mean like he absolutely loved it there are certain people who always came back to

I still love Shaka me too but even as you were talking I was like it's so crazy that both sly both prints take all these elements have all these influences, and yet it's still unutterably black, right? It still has this one last layer of filtering through, and it's almost a vibe of like, the streets are going to like this. Because you know for both of those guys, like that, the streets had to like it.

It was important for them to have that credibility. And then also, that type of artist's development does not happen anymore. Yeah. You don't get purple rain unless you go through for you, dirty mind. Nowadays, if those first two aren't hits, and then the irony is that those first two then define your sound now, so you better not try and change it and evolve it to get to perform. And those first two albums, like, they're the least listened to, at least in my collection.

It's such a, artists haven't really sacked against them nowadays. I will say that you can't evolve. Every now and then an artist is allowed to grow just because they have enough out there. I feel like Taman Powell is somebody who has absolutely started one place and he's got, like eight or nine. He's in the Barbie movie. He added more black fans, I'll tell you that. The song Rihanna said, but I mean, I think a lot of black folk got on board during that one. I like her version, but I love the original.

Yeah, it's great. So we were talking before about, like, how there's a lot of surprises inside the song. One of them to me, when I first heard it was I thought I maybe had turned up something too loud because it didn't sound right, but it's actually the bass guitar really does sound like this, and you're going to be very surprised. Now, just between you and me, I would call that, like, disgusting in a good way. That is a distorted, dirty bass right? That's Brown Mark, right? That is Brown Mark on bass.

Yeah, Brown Mark on bass. You must know, there must have been some, again, looking at, because we never think about the content. There must have been some older engineers. What is this? I clean that base up for you two seconds. What are you doing? You know, and it's like, no, I want it like that. Yeah, no, you're nailing it, though, with that question about the engineer.

Because a big part of the print story sort of begins on this record. He starts to work with this woman named Susan Rogers, who for the next few years becomes his absolute confidant, this woman who actually wasn't herself an engineer. She was trained in actually getting, like, the engineering aspects of a studio together, but not being an engineer. And he really met him. Is that because he wanted to kind of quietly be the engineer?

Well, he wanted someone he could trust, and so he met her a few times and just got a vibe about her. And one day called her out of the blue and said, come over. Like he's not giving a lot of instructions. Just come over. And when she arrived, she learned that her job that day was to help Prince record a song. She didn't expect that at all. It wasn't her forte. It wasn't something she'd done before.

But because he had seen something in Susan Rogers that he trusted, and that was the beginning of a long working relationship that includes the Purple Rain album around the world in the day, like all the way through, I think Purple Rain, uh, parade, excuse me. And a big part of that is the trust, exactly what you're talking about. She wasn't somebody who was going to judge what he was doing. He wanted to have the freedom to feel like he could experiment by himself and make mistakes and not be embarrassed or be called out, like you said. Yeah. I want to hear the guitar because I don't think that in the pantheon, you always hear, especially guys who are rock guys of a certain age,

I feel like Prince doesn't come up in their conversations enough as one of the best guitarists of all time. And when I think about the guitar, I especially think about, that guitar solo at the end. I don't even know how pop radio and black radio, like, how long is the guitar solo? It's a long guitar solo. I want to hear the guitar solo. I want you to tell me about it after we hear it. Okay, we're going to get into all that stuff. And if you like that distorted crunchiness, you're going to love the guitars because there's even more going on here. And specifically with Susan Rogers, this was the beginning of his working relationship with Prince was recording the guitars you're about to hear. Here's the second of three guitar tracks. So now let me play

all of that for you together in the mix. This is all the guitars and the bass together on Princess Let's Go Crazy. Or is it a Metallica song? One thing I love about delving into this is that as we go from section to section, it is such a balancing act. Because so far, we were just balancing the drums, the Lynn drum and the live drum. And now we've just heard a really pretty heavy set of guitars. But the next section we're going to get to after we can talk about this, but after we get to, is the sense and things start to get balanced out. And that's the crazy vision that Prince had that all of these things in the mix, there wouldn't be anything that was too much of one. Before we play the Sin, I really want to hear the guitar solo at the end of the song.

Oh, yeah, we have to play that. Hendrixia. See, I didn't even heard that. I mean, come on, man. I don't play the guitar. I don't ever really hear anything that makes me want to play the guitar, but I hear that, I wish I could play the guitar. It's so tasty. It also feels like a message, too.

Like, again, you know, we're isolating it. But in the context of American pop music, you know, there's people try to diminish you, right? So the people say, like, well, he's just a pop artist. And yeah, he used some elements. Chris is going, no, like, you, I can actually shred like Jimmy Hendry. I just blew Motley crew out of the water. Got rid of all those people. Now what are you going to say?

You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's almost like when Drake sings sometimes. It's like, yeah, I can write raps, but I can also sing. So I can be on the pop chart and the hip hop chart at the same time. now what are you going to say? I mean, I just think that that's... When I think about guitar solos, I know I'm supposed to say in certain words,

I always think about that guitar solo. Okay, so the next part I want to play is all the keyboards. There's a lot of synths going on in the song, and I was talking before about the balance. This is the balancing act. For all those crunchy guitars, we have a lot of surprisingly dinky,

I'm going to use the word. That's not a very technical word, but it always strikes me as dinky, some of the synths in here. I think you'll agree once you hear them. Bring on the dink. Bring on the dink. We can do this first.

You know what's interesting, it's almost, it's almost baseball. You're right. It's almost like a baseball. Coming up to bat in 1983, Dale Murphy. I know who that is.

That's for the Braves. That's Lisa, right? From Wendy and Lisa playing that. Lisa Coleman on keyboards. Yeah. Some of them might be prints, actually.

So some prints, some leaves. I always assume that it's, yeah. I won't diminish these musicians. I just, know how, like, genius artists are. Yeah. They will smooth, do that shit

themselves in the studio, but then when you see him on stage, everybody's sharing the duties, but it's nice to hear that he did have his musicians, but I know sometimes I'm like, I'll just, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to do it. I have to give a shout out to this incredible book where I got a lot of my facts from. There's this guy called Dwayne Toadall, and he has this book where he has, it's a

400-page book documenting every day in Prince's life from 1983 to 1984. And there's a second edition I just bought, which is 85 to 86. But in this book, He's documenting, and he's gone back into the, he's talked to Susan Rogers, so I just mentioned. He's gone into the archives. He's looked at all the tapes.

There's a degree to which from that archival research, we can kind of know a little bit about what happened. But there's still some mysteries. We do know that the live stuff that I showed you before, the drums and the bass and the guitar. That was all recorded by the band in a rehearsal space. But we also know then he went into the studio with Susan to do some overdubs. So to your point, we don't know what got kept and what got replaced. It's not about, again, it's not about dissing the musicians. works with, it's just about understanding the perfectionism of a really great artist and knowing that

deep down, I mean, they just want to like, you know. I've got a perfect example coming up because if you remember, by the way, I should point out that the version of the song that's recorded, when you listen to the recording on Spotify, it's four minutes long, with everyone who's seen the movie knows that it's long, there's a seven-minute song. Yeah. And the recording itself is actually seven minutes. They just cut it down for radio. There's that whole thing that Prince does at the keyboard. So that's what I wanted to talk about. In the movie, you'll see Prince jump in on the keyboard playing this frankly hilarious piano solo, which I fricking love. I'm going to play it for you for a second. Here's a little bit of this crazy frantic solo in the middle.

It's like a ragtime. Yeah, I was just going to say the sounds like Scott Joplin. So this is actually not... Can I hear that with the instrumentation over it? Oh yeah. You mean just the whole song? Yeah yeah, yeah. But that part of the song, because you can hear it in the mix. Now I'll play that in the mix. It's a little less amazing to mix. But it's not a little crazy. Like, this is the Wario version. Yeah.

The bizarre Superman version. Yeah, he understands the complimentary nature of those sounds, right? Like, it does not sound to me capponic at all. No, it's not. It sounds like, no, that goes together. That totally works. It's like a pallet cleanser in the middle of a song. But to your point, that's actually Matt Fink playing that keyboard solo.

But in the movie, Prince liked it so much, he's like, I'm going to make sure the world thinks it's me. we should talk about Minneapolis here because I am a prince-disciple. I think the man is an absolute genius, but I think there are so many solid, solid people working with him. Yeah. You know, like, because if you look at their resumes, like the most obvious examples are Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who work with flight time and time. Morris Day, you know, like, you know, Dr. Fink goes on to work with a lot of really successful bands afterwards. And there's some, there's some freaking brilliance there too. I think

to me, and we'll get into later about like, you know, what's your favorite Prince album? But I will say right here of his band's New Power Generation, some of the other ones, the things that came before, I think it takes nothing way from Prince to say that the Revolution had some freaking

heavy hitters. I've heard people describe the Revolution as the Mount Rushmore of Prince's. Yes, if you have to rank his bands or whatever, like It's Wendy, Lisa. Purple Rain, we'll get into Pearl Rain on another episode, but like the Wendy and Lisa Purple Rain is well documented. I think Minneapolis cannot be overstated.

But it's interesting you bring up Minneapolis, because I also feel like there's another thing, which is the other thing about Prince I find really interesting. And he shares with a lot of black folks, including somebody who went on tour with. I don't know what it is, but for some reason, places that you don't usually identify with black folks tend to put out some of the blackest. I'm thinking about the Gatman in Tulsa. I'm thinking about Rick James and Buffalo, princes in Minneapolis. These are not places Sir makes a lot

In Seattle But even think about I was even thinking about Like a Timbaland in Virginia Like Virginia It's a very black place But we did a whole episode About all the black people

Came out of Virginia But you don't think of it When I was coming You were Virginia was not on these short list Of cities That you would list as places The Great Black

Yeah Virginia's got Timbo And Farrell The point is all you black people Who are in like Peoria In Nebraska If you're in Nebraska And you feel all alone

If you're in Wyoming That's somebody ours there If you're in South Dakota And you're black you need to be making music. Because I think you got something special. I love with this conversation. There's so much to touch on.

But when we come back, Prince's vocals in the raw are not easy to come by. But after the break, you will hear his isolated voices. We go deeper into Let's Go Crazy. We'll be right back. Okay, so this last piece is the vocals. And I'm so excited about this because I want to hear Prince's raw untreated vocals.

Yeah. I mean, and there's a reason why we're spending so much time on the stems for this song, because this is one of the most delicious songs to go through. I know we could do three episodes on just this song, but we don't have the time because Kevin Hart do one episode. Thanks, buddy.

What about Prince's vocals? So as D'all has said up, there is so much to get into in the vocals. I'm really excited to play it for you. Let's start with the iconic intro, which you're used to hearing with the organ, but here it is Prince isolated for you. Dearly, beloved,

we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life, it means forever, and that's a mighty long time. But I'm here to tell you, there's something else. The afterworld. Can we get into the scene? Yeah. If you don't like the world you're living in, take a look around you. At least you got friends.

You see, I call my own lady. Phone friendly word. She just picked up a phone, dropped it on the floor. I mean, I don't know who wants to go first, but my God, go ahead. So this is one of those things where you hear a song forever and never actually listen to the real ears. Is he saying he called up his girl and then she dropped the phone and so I was in there smashing? No, I think she started masturbating.

She got so into what he was talking about. That was my interpretation. Yeah, it was another guy. I think that she picked up the phone, dropped on the floor because she was having sex. That's what I read. I thought Prince just turned her on. Guys, if anybody was around Prince, when. He was recording that line.

Is it masturbation or is somebody getting bound? Let us know. I think he sounds amazing. Can I hear one part in particular? Can I hear at the very end of the guitar solo? I'm pretty sure he says, Take Me Away, but I want to hear that part untreated just because that always sounded so guttural.

You know what? I take requests on this show, so let's do that. Take me away! That will wake you up in the morning. One of the two things as I was listening, I wanted to say, number one, is how distorting. it is. That is not a perfectly... He's on the microphone like that. That is not a professionally

engineered vocal in any sense of the word, nor were the guitars we heard, nor were the drums. This is a very low-fi, cheap production, but that is so freaking cool and punk rock a film. But it's intentional. It's intentional. You have to have the context of what was everybody else doing.

I think the thing about artists I love is that they're always looking around going, everything around me sucks. And let me show you why. That's the motivation. So he's hearing all this clean-ass music, all this and he's going, I can make a pop song. It has muddy vocals, distortion, you know, that you have keyboards that in the middle of it,

there's like a ragtime, Charlie, you know, those has got jopping vibe going on. And yet it's still like number one pop record on the planet. Right? And we're going to get into that because I want to talk about this song's place in music at the time and ask some questions about what we see again.

Before we move on from vocals, can we hear, I think you said that there's some female vocals underneath Prince. Let me play that for you. First, the other by the way, the other point I just wanted to quickly make was as we were listening to that, I had this kind of feeling of being intrusive. Like, as we were listening to Prince, like, I felt his vulnerability because I kind of pictured him alone in this studio. He's made everyone leave, you know?

He's closed the door. Susan Rogers, this new engineer who he's just decided to trust, is also not looking at him because that's a big thing. He made sure no one was looking at him. And I really felt that, as we heard his isolated vocal, this sort of frightened artist, not frightened, but like, you know, vulnerable artists is the right word. Do we know what take this was? Do we know how many, like, I know on some of these songs we've done,

we know what take. Like, smells like Teen Spirit, it was like take four. But it also feels like that being in the recording. Like, do we know which take this is? I feel like great artists also, again, we're talking about this is six albums. So he's had five albums of the goofy engineers looking to him and him like being like, that's distracting. We work with people like that where it's like.

Certain things, you know. Yeah, whoever makes Prince's a second album. Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? Like, it's he's creating a condition. in order to create something truly special. And that's so important that he grew up enough to be able to say, no, everybody get out,

Susan looked that way, and then that's going to lead me where I need to go versus, as we all have to do, constantly making these compromises. Sure, she can come in, yeah, we're going to make the song. Okay, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's... And you know what you're making me think of? Because this is a constant thing I've even had in my own life,

is you're kind of, when you're an artist, you're kind of more coming from the perspective of I want to make a song. Yes. And you're working with people who are like, I know how the machines work. And there's a dialect. between them, and I personally felt it

with instrument playing too. I always had this sort of dynamic growing up with like Eddie Van Halen and these no monster guitar players, this idea that technical proficiency matters and that sonic perfection matters, and that doing it the right way matters, is a really oppressive force in the creative culture. Part of why George Martin

is given so much credit for the Beatles is because he protected them from the engineers in the white coats at Abbey Roads who were saying, turn it down, it's too loud. George Martin was the guy who said, but it sounds... This isn't how the Holley's would do it. But it sounds good, and this new what we're doing is new and different. That's why you've never heard it before.

Or Timbaland being like, I hate every sound in my studio. I'm going to walk around junkyards for a month and just hit shit until I hear some new sounds. And it's like only an artist can, you know. Again, one of the other things I love about this show is that- You guys had to do a Timberland episode. Oh, we did a Missy Elliott version. So like an episode. Innovative.

But I think that, you know, just to close out this conversation, I think, again, one of the things I really love about doing the show is that you realize that no matter how big a song is, no matter how famous a singer is, at the end of the day, he had to go into that studio and lay down a vocal. And that's where all creativity starts,

is that at some point it's nothing, and then it's something. And it's not just prints on the track. Female vocals, I actually heard some bleed in his headphones while he was singing. I feel like Winnie and Lisa are probably on the song. There's some really fun moments with them and doing some harmonies.

Let's hear that real quick. Let's listen to them. Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh, no, let's go. Go crazy. Go crazy. Let's go. Let's go.

I hear how much fun they're having to. By the way, that sounds like Blitzkrieg pop. I love that they were bringing so many different guys. Let's go. And I love that they just brought like, they weren't like, you know, Ramones. Yeah. They're not like these like Diana Ross perfection singers. Not at all.

But they're just like the right vibe. And it's just the right. It's one of those things I think about what I think about like Kanye West. telling Jamie Foxx how to sing on slow jams, right? And Jamie tells the story about he's doing all this stuff. And he's like, no, you kind of just want to keep it really simple here because this is what hip hop is. And I just loved it with this version, Prince and Wendy and Lee.

You know some again, some old ones, and it was like, I can get you Carol, Carol King. I know Carol King, she'll come in, she'll do the vocal. He's like, no, this is, I want this. Yeah, they want the imperfection. And it brings in- This is the sound I'm doing. We've heard literally the lo-fi recording. We've heard the big, crunchy guitars,

and we hear the imperfect vocals. And part of it, aesthetically is he's like, He's, by the way, listening, by the way, we've just had punk rock come in, and we've just had New Wave and Post Punk. He's obviously listening to that. He's a big fan of the B-52s. We had those dinky little synths before. Those could have been B-52s since.

We've got Fred Schneider on vocals. It's the same, like, low-let's go crazy. Let's get nuts. You know Fred being in the shower, tearing that song up to this baby. He should have had me on the song. Let's go. So we've heard many different parts of this song, all the different parts and how it equaled.

to something that was greater than those points. But now I want to take a big step back and just talk about Prince the artist and his legacy. I mean, he has so many records, so much music. Right off the back, I just kind of want to ask you, Bishir, what's your favorite Prince album? Hmm, that is a good question. It probably has to be, it's probably Purple Rain.

Now, tonight on the way home, I'll be like, oh, no, it was sight of the times. I'm so impressed it. Again, I think the hardest thing in music is writing a pop, I think that's, it is both the quickest way to be successful, but it's also so out of reaching. There are some people who, after a time in their career, they can't do it anymore. They try, they just can't. So, anytime somebody has an album, Prince has this, Michael has this, I think back then they demanded it more, where 95% of the album could be your single.

That's rare. You don't have that nowadays. Like, nowadays, it's two tracks you love. Yeah. And the rest you kind of feel like there's always, there are no. There's always some. single doubt on purple rain. I've been saying for a long time, by the way, I think the answer to the question

for me is Purple Rain. And me too. And yours is simple. So now I kind of want to ask an incendiary question. So off of Bashir's point, we like to play this game called Perfect album, but you got to lose one. Okay. And it's so painful. Freaking painful. But let's go down the line.

So the songs on Purple Rain are Let's go crazy. Take me with you. The Beautiful Ones, Computer Blue, Darling Nicky, Wind Doves Cry. I would die for you. Baby I'm a star Purple Rain. We haven't named

the dud yet, we go into this conversation not saying that any of these songs are bad, but we are being forced to lose one. Bashir, what is your choice? It's going to have to be darling, Nikki, because I remember, well, first of all, D'allel, there's no good answers.

They're all... I didn't say that, that was luxury. Lulgery, there's no good answers. Y'all sounds like, y'all been doing the show so long. I just heard, what? I was like, that's Dial, doubt me. He just met me. I mean, we've never been in the same room before.

No, I would just say, it's got to be darling Nicky because that is that's the one that I remember was like you couldn't listen to it because your parents were like you better not listen that song but I would also say that as beautiful and perfect as it is I don't think I listen to that as much as the other stuff that's interesting that's luxury what's yours can I just counter that with one I want to try to win you back to my side because just listen just listen it's amazing song by the way we're not arguing if it's incredible it's incredible I'm sure you know the song inside and up but just listen the drums at the end just listen to the drums at the end

Then it also goes to that reverse part. Yeah. Since we're being extra-critical with dialogue, it takes a long time to get to that part. Right? That ain't, they don't start with that. Fair enough. I hear you.

Was that your answer? It has to be because it's sort of like, you can't pick anything else. What about your response? Yeah. Well, you know, we're almost out of time. So let's move on to. the next section.

We've talked... Wait, what's your answer? Now that you guys are on record, let's close this one out. Now that you're on record hating Prince. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. On a serious note,

for Prince's legacy, the thing that I really love about Prince, and I want to talk about this. He's really not going to answer this question. Oh, no, no, I'll answer to a second. I'm going to get there. I'll be right back. I'm going to get there.

For me, the thing that I love about Prince so much, much is and I was thinking about this even if little richard is you know the inventor of rock and roll if you have to single it down to one person i truly do believe that there's so much we take for granted about rock and roll and rhythm and blues that we directly link to one guy which is insane when when you dig the king of rock and roll as he used to say hell yeah um you know he's by the way he would say there is no prince without the king yes and prince notably stayed away from throwing him his name and his list of influences

which is interesting. It probably had a personality. I think there was some personality stuff happening there. But I will say this. The thing I love about Prince is that, A, I don't think we'll ever see another person like him again. I also just really appreciate as a person who appreciates so many different types of music that I can

listen to rock prints. I can listen to slow jam R&B Prince, like the one who did Damn You, which is basically just a real slow R&B song. Black Album Prince. There's so many Black Album Prince. I can listen. I I actually do really appreciate Diamond and Pearl's prints. Can you do the bad dance? I would never do the bad dance, but I like the bad dance a lot,

and I think that Sean of the Dead was wrong. I think that's actually a very good album. I'm just going to say about Prince is that he opened up the format, like the fact that let's go crazy is 192 BPM. 96 if you want to have it and get into the DJ technicalness of that. It's extremely fast. And the fact that he could do all these different types, and everybody accepted it as like, oh, yeah, that's Prince.

He's basically, you know, an R&B slash pop artist. Like, that means so much to me. And I always wonder, will we see another person who can skate across all these other genres effectively and in the same way? I feel like nowadays, people in their own unique way are more constricted. Well, here's the thing, right? So back in the day, as with our field of television, you had to fight. There was three channels. So there was basically, you know, a bloodbath to get on those three channels.

Now there are infinite channels. between streaming traditional and the internet. I think we have a fast channel. The point I'm making is this, is that, again, I'm a broken record on this, but you've got to consider context. Prince is looking at Michael Jackson. In his brain, knowing how good he is, there's only one human being on this planet. Maybe better to me.

He probably can't even say the word, right? But Michael's out there. And so that, I think, is a tremendous amount of pressure on him. And I think that's where you get some of this beautiful stuff. It's like diamonds because there was. pressure on that cold. You know the bad story, right? The story about bad. They have many stories together, but I haven't heard this one. No, no, the bad story. Michael contacts the people, Prince's people saying, I want, I want to do it. I want to do it. I want to do it. He offered

an olive branch. He gave me the olive branch. He's like, I got a song. I wanted to be a duet. Song is called bad. Prince gets the lyric sheet. He's like, first line is, first line is, your butt is mine. Prince is like, I ain't interested. You're not saying that to me and I ain't saying that to you. So it's not happening. He's funny. He told that. There's also a story about how Prince, I saw this on YouTube the other day. I think he was originally supposed to be in the We Are of the World thing, right? Oh, really? He's not in that.

Yeah, he's not in it. He's noticeably absent. It's, it's, where am I standing? It's Michael there? It's, again, it's not about, look, unfortunately, we like to think everybody's friends, but the truth of the matter is great art comes from people being like, I'm competing with that guy. So in Prince's mind, there's one person he's constantly competing with, and he's like, I can beat that dude.

And then I think that's what Lynn leads us to all this greatness. I'm here for it. Well, this and a half of our stories are about, like, his size and about being surprised how short he was as he skirts across the room with his high heels and all this. He obviously, it's so obvious it's barely worth saying, but he had sort of a complex about his height. And it clearly went into a lot of the competition. He's apparently one of the best basketball players that ever lived. You believe all the anecdotes about him. Well, he's also, he was on his basketball team, and he was really good.

And instrumentally speaking, he isn't just one of the greatest songwriters and singers. He's also one of the greatest stealth, one of the greatest guitar players that's ever lived. He's up there with Hendricks and whoever. else, like, for like, as we just heard, that guitar solo, this is a sick guitar player. He's doing all of this and the songwriting and the composing, and every day he writes a song, his whole rest of his life.

But the power, but the ability to write a pop hit, there are so many musicians who, Diall and I, or I, you know, when I was living in New York, I would have to go see him, and they'd be, oh, you got to go see this guy, you got to go see that girl. And the musicianship was outstanding. The ability to write a pop song was not there. It's, it is

unusual to have all of that stuff. Absolutely. I'll probably say, darling. not because I don't think it's a classic and by the way I didn't know I didn't even know what masturbating meant when he's I just knew it sounded like a crazy now it sounded like a crazy word doesn't let's go crazy in

my parents cringed every time that doesn't let's go crazy in would please come please come am I wrong about that is that take me away I thought he's come he's come he's coming he's coming it's very it's very Christlike the Lord is coming okay as I was just said Diana Ross song

I'm coming out you can come inside me at the end of it? Do you come inside me? No, that's Manny Ripperton. Okay, so that's Manny Ruperton, right? So I was thinking to myself like, how the hell did I go to the radio? That was on a regular ass R.B. Radio.

Recurring theme on the show. The end of the song was saying, you can come inside me ten times. Do you remember relaxed by Frankie? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, apparently, do you want to come? And they told people that was not about.

It wasn't about, he said, well, Rolling Stones, start me up. You make a dead man come. It's right there. They're saying it on the radio right now. somewhere in the world. So all the radio execs, hey, we don't know what that means. We don't know what that means. It could be anything.

All right. After long wait, I just want to say how much Prince meant to me, but yes, if I had to choose one song on Purple Rain, it would be Darling Lincoln, but I'm not going to throw that away. We don't have to throw that away, but it's Darling Nicky. We have two votes for Darling Nicky. I'm really shocked. Which one is yours? Well,

it's a difficult choice. We all know. I'm beating around the bush just as much as you are, maybe slightly less than you. You're beating around the bush was many Many minutes long. Many minutes of beating around the bush. If I had to drop one, it would be Take Me With You, which, to be fair, was the last song added to the soundtrack. You're crazy. And it kind of feels that way. It kind of feels shoved in there.

No. It is one of the better scenes in the movie from a breast perspective. We probably won't use that on the show. But I'm just going to say it to so it's on record somewhere. From a breast perspective, it's one of the best parts of the show. Before the internet, in middle school. That is what we have. Little guys go, hey, have you seen Purple Rain?

Okay, let's the scene. In the middle. The lake. And that's how we spread, you know, we couldn't send images, guys. We were just, he had to know somebody. Literally the best part about that song. You had to know somebody had a VHS. You had to know somebody had Purple Rain.

Arguably the only good part about that song to me is evoking that image in my mind of Apollonia and Lake Winantanka. And then he goes, oh, that's not Lake Winantanca or whatever it's called. Oh, it's not like Minnetonka? Yeah, Minnetonka. Thank you. But that is my answer. I'm sticking with and I'm proud of it. Welcome back to one song.

Okay, there are so many funny stories about Prince out there. so much lore. Luxury, do you have a personal print story? Well, I don't have a personal print story because I've never met the man. I wish I had, but I mean popped to mind as we were discussing the whole, like, Prince being a master at, like, programming machines. Like, that's a part of him not everybody knows about it. So there's a funny

story that I heard attached to that because he was touring with Rick James and the Stone City band and the Prince and they were... This tour is crazy. This tour is crazy. It's like, can you imagine getting to see both of those bands? I've never heard anybody actually say they were at this tour. Somebody had to be in a tour. I'm sure they were so on a lot.

And apparently every night they were competing. Every night they're competing. And like, it's a very fierce competition to get the most applause, to get the most audience reaction. So at the end of the tour, apparently Prince's synths that he'd been using the whole time go missing. They're just gone. And Prince is, you know, like, what the fuck happened to my synth? So months go by and he gets a note. One day they arrive, just like a box arrives with like his keyboards.

And again, the value of Prince's keyboards is that they contain Prince's sounds. Yeah. So he's... He's... He's... dialed in his very specific princey sounds from like, you know, 1999 or controversy, I guess would have been the album at the time.

Oh, I think I don't where the story's going. So, by the way, it says on... There's a note that says, thanks, motherfucker. And it turns out that Rick James had used the keyboards to program and play on the song Super Freak. So when you hear that sound, this distinctive synth sound on Super Freak,

it is actually Prince's preceptes. That's Prince playing, technically? It's almost as though Prince, it's like an interpolation. Right. Or perhaps. But it's like he dialed it into sound like that. He dialed it into sound like that.

That's wild. Bashir, you have a... I do have a really quick Prince story. There was a late... You know, so one of the things about Prince that I always appreciated was that if you live in the L.A. area, like, he would just show up places. Yes. So you'd be like out at like Seoul or something.

By the way, who was playing piano sounds really good? Oh, my God. But even before that, this is way before that, there was a party in L.A. called Kiss and Cry. It's now our good friend Craig does it. Back in the day, it was a cool-ass underground party downtown. Yeah. And I'll never forget one night.

It's like a room, maybe it's a little bit bigger than this. And it was packed full of people. It was so cool. It was so like, you know, underground. I'll never forget one night I was in there. And I was looking this way, talking to my friend, all of a sudden, everybody here did like this. And when I looked this way, it was like he was a ghost.

Walked in. And as he walked, every single person. made space. No, they got quiet. And as soon as he passed, they were like, which to our listeners, for sure it's going crazy, right? But they did it quiet, you know? Yeah, you can't make any noise. And it's one of those moments

you go like, oh, that's what a star is. Oh, let me tell you. You learn what a real star is. I mean, when I first moved out here, I think he still had a place open called the Glam slam. It was towards downtown. Oh, wow. And he was never there. But I have a story that's kind of similar to that. So one time I walked into a place on Kawanga called the Room. I think y'all know it. And I walked in and I was waiting to see like the typical

it's a real dive hole in the baller type place, but they always used to play good music. I don't know if they still do. But I walked into the room and I feel like this sounds a little bit like someone else's Christmas story, but there was a girl sitting at the bar dressed all in yellow and I was like, oh, she's kind of cute. And she had a big bodyguard with her. Then I looked

the second time I was like, oh shit, that's Prince. I was like, damn, Prince is mad cute. Very small individual. Now, here's my real Prince story though. This one still eats me up to this day. I went to the Roosevelt Hotel with my friend Azizi who Bashir knows and we went there because we heard Prince was going to perform by

the pool. Nice. And then we heard he was going to be in the ballroom. So everybody left the pool and went to the ballroom and I was there. I had work in the morning. I was there until probably 215 in the morning. I told Zia's like I can't stand anymore. I'm going to be asleep at work. I'm leaving. Woke up the next day to text messages. And this is like in the early days of the iPhone. So like when people send videos,

I was like, them shit's is grainy. But he was like, Prince just got him on stage, message from like 315. Yeah. 3.30. He's doing all Michael Jackson covers. He just did, don't stop to you get enough and want to be started something with his band. I was like, damn, you Prince. That's why you have such bad fomo nowadays.

Yeah. I do. I missed out on when Dad Punk. I went to every Cochella. I went to every Cochella. I saw my Coachella too. Until 2006. and then the first time I didn't go,

they were like, oh, we know Dad Punk is coming. I'm like, I'm a little soft on that new album. They brought out the pyramid. And to this day, music colleges like you point to that performance as the year and the performance specific that broke dance music-wide in America. I have serious fomo.

I've been feeling something's going to happen pretty soon. Just keep it up. I just got to keep going to every show and stay out until 4 in the morning every night. I'm sure my kids will appreciate that. That's why I saw Prince of Coachella. And I remember, that's when I realized I was getting older because me and we have

VIP tickets and everything and he was great. What year is this? I'm going to roughly say it was 11 to 12 years ago. We did a creep. He did that radiohead creep cover? I was going to say that me and my friend who you know Felicia, we were there. And we were both like, do we want to watch more prints or do we want to beat this traffic?

And we were both like, I kind of want to beat the traffic home. And what I heard him the way home was, I was like, no, he's not playing creep. That's impossible. There's no way he's playing. My other favorite radio head. A huge radio head And I was like, oh, I should have stayed. All right.

So the last thing I want to talk about, the revolution, the band had a pretty sad. And even though they get together for reunions, you know, I think it was Dr. Fink, was sick. And so they had a reunion maybe about 10 years ago to help him. And he's still with us. Some would say Prince fired them all in kind of humiliating ways. I actually don't know that backstory. I don't think we have enough time to get in today.

But I did want to ask you, Bashir, have you ever been fired? Yeah, plenty of times. All right, that's a fair enough answer. I got fired. I got fired. No, no, what's the fire story? It's old news now. I got fired.

I was a PA on a show, and I got fired. And then I had no food in my house. I was broke, and I still have my key card. So I was like, I'm going to go in the weekend and clean that place out. No, for food, to be clear. You weren't robbing. No, I was broke. And it was like stuff.

They were going to throw it. I bought the food. I know they're going to throw it away. They threw it away. So I went in there and got two grocery bags full of like pop tarts. Those granola things. Granola thing. Sweet Valley.

I was like, I'm going to live like a king. And then on the way out, one of the writers in the show was working on the weekend. He was like, hey. He was like, hey. I was like, hey. All right. I was like, yep. Shout out to that man.

He's still working. He's never told anybody on me. We're colleagues now. I'm in the WGA, baby. but oh man that was embarrassing luxury you ever been fired uh i mean i've never been fired i've actually gotten three people fired though like in a very like errant like precocious way i had three bad bosses three dudes above me who were not pulling their weight and uh i was like in my early 20s and i like went to the boss above that boss and i was like this guy's like making me look bad like he's

not doing this like i think back to that i was like freaking you were smithing crazy he was making my life hard these people these people were making they weren't they weren't black they were they we're not black. Okay, good. I raised my hand, and I was like, one of them was another Jew just like me. Here's the good news. Now the clippers are a better team, so thank you. Thank you for that. You're welcome. I got fired for falling asleep in the law school library when I was in college. So that's what actually started off my music career. What were you working? I was supposed to be working, and I fell asleep in the library.

And I didn't dock myself those hours that somebody told my boss that I had been sleeping. Long story short is that was when I lost my official term time job, to DJing and I've never looked back. So there you go. I've got better. We hope you've enjoyed Let's Go Crazy by Prince. And luxury, will you help me in this thing?

I have been producer, DJ and songwriter luxury. Find me on the internet at luxury LuxXXU RY on Instagram and at LUXXXRY XX on TikTok. Yeah, and I'm actor, writer, director, sometimes DJ Diallo

Riddle. You'll find me at Diallo on Instagram. and at the Aalero. How many else are there? They're two else. They're two else. And Bashir. I'm on LinkedIn.

That's the best one. I love it. Thank you so much for coming through. Bashir. I knew this was going to be an epic episode. Thank you for coming by, man. This is one song. We'll see you next time.

The show is the second produced by Kevin Hart, Ty Randolph, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, and Eric Wilde. We'll see you next time.