The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Why Prince Still Feels Untouchable: Purple Rain, 1999 & More | 04.14

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Bomani Jones is joined by Patrice Jones for the first of a special two-part Prince series on The Right Time. They break down what made Prince different, why 1999 and Purple Rain hit so hard, how his sound changed music, and what his run meant in real time for the people living through it. They also get into Prince’s guitar brilliance, the wild range of his catalog, and why his influence still feels unmatched. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. I don't even know if I should call it Time Machine Tuesday

because there's also going to be Time Machine Thursday because we got a bit of a series going on this week. April 21st, which is actually next week, is 10 years to the day from when Prince died. And so we are doing the two-episode series on Prince. We got DJ Wally Sparks coming in on Thursday, where we're probably going to talk a little bit more technically

about the music. But I figured if I was going to do an episode where I was talking about Prince, I should probably get the Prince influence into my life onto the show to talk about this. So we got my brother, Patrice Lemma Jones, over here. What's going on, brother? Man, you got it. You got it.

What's up? What's up? Man, I actually, I find it very interesting now that this pod and this show has been on for a very long time because now if you and I are out somewhere and I tell somebody, hey, meet my brother, they are very much more excited about that part than me. Like me, they knew what I looked like you. They have completely filled in a hole in a character

that they have been bapping out. Yeah, it got to truss me out. They'll be like, flagrant three. We're all here, baby. We're all here. But I thought about doing this because I remember the day Prince died, I always tell the story about what it was for me because I was in Paris.

I had gone over there to interview Tana Hasi Coates for Playboy. And I had seen online, I guess it was like early to mid afternoon in Paris. I think because as I recall it was like six hours ahead of where we were in the States. And so I had seen on TMZ that they had sent ambulance, EMTs, all this to Paisley Park. And they said there was a person who was dead at Paisley Park. Like they're giving all the details, but we don't know. So I called, we will say, a friend I knew who worked at TMZ at the time.

And I'm like, hey, man, I have no interest in reporting. I just need to know if Prince died because I got some people I need to tell so they can lead work. Right. and he came back and I think the way he phrased it not his fault but I really wasn't trying to hear this shit was like the purple one is no more I actually the answer dog

you know what I'm saying? Like like just just give me a yes right so I hit her and I'm like hey go home and go home right now like this is this this is what it's going to be and so I was in Paris and then I was there for Playboy and I hit Playboy like you want me to write about this

I'll get on it and I banged out this quick little thing that I look back now and I could do better. But at the time, it felt like the most banging shit I'd ever written. And it felt like I'd been preparing my whole life to write a Prince O'Biddy 90 minutes, right? So I banged that out, sent it off. And then it got to nighttime and me and you FaceTime each other because you were in London. Yeah.

And it was like the wildest idea that we are both over here, transatlantic. But wait a minute. Prince died? Dude, it was devastating. I was gutted. And, you know, and everybody I worked. work with is kind of in my same generation. Right.

You know, so it was one of those things. Like, this was different than like Michael Jackson Dine because for whatever reason, Michael Jackson Dine was more, felt more like a global phenomenon. Like it wasn't so personal. It was like this thing had happened that affected all these people. But this felt way more personal and directed like at me. Like I wasn't even that appreciative of everybody else's grief. I just couldn't believe it.

Yeah, that was a wild day. Yeah, I think, I sang on the internet. Oh, wow, I did not know this. I sang Star Fishing Coffee on Facebook or Instagram one. Because I was like, this doesn't require any talent. But I just had to get it out, man. Buddy, I'm glad I didn't see it because I don't know what the hell I would have been able to do in that moment. My voice was quivered and everything.

Well, that's I was about to say, because one thing the Joneses are not, we are not too, tune carriers. No. I'm probably the best of all of y'all. I suck. Now, I think Tiari probably has us beat on this, like. She got a little mom's thing, perpetually flat. Oh, tone deafness.

Yeah, Mama sometimes make you feel like, oh, I don't want to listen to this song on the radio anymore. But the best is dad, because he sings every song to the same melody. He does. Like, everything is old Danny boy, but it's just whatever lyrics. I told you, my favorite dad. singing story of all time is in the year of our Lord, 1992. We ride, and this is around the time that the radio started getting raunchy.

Yeah. Right? And Silk Freakney had come on. And I had already heard him get a little, you know, getting a little preachy about this particular song, which was all over the place at the time. And I don't know what happened, but out of nowhere, I'm half asleep in the car, and I hear by no singing daddy, let me make you soaking wet. I'm like, what?

Hey. Yeah, I think dad was preaching because he felt like he had to because kind of, if we think about it, with Prince. Dad was Prince fan. See, you have the contemporaneous run with that that I don't really have because you're 13 years older than me. And I think that is an interesting thing in our, in the Prince's journey, is that that's Dad's Trump card.

Dude, to this day, anything you say, and my father that in any way intimates that like he's old or not with it or that you're cooler than him, his retort is, I turned you on to Prince. And as crazy as that sound, that is a completely legitimate shut it down argument. I turn you on to Prince. What else can you say about me to say, I'm not cool? Because I turn you on. I put you on.

Yeah. Like, how dare you? Say anything. But see, for me, it is interesting in retrospect because I caught dad in my, like, adolescence formative era. That is when he had the six disc changer. That's a combination of words that require an unciation.

You probably haven't used it in a while, even. Yeah, I was like, whoa, the six disc changer that we referred to as the female vocal carousel. Like, it'd be like, oh, but that's Williams, the comfort zone. Oh, Michelle, for real. Like, these are things that are rotated through. So, like, the idea of Prince being, like, a dad thing is not quite what I would expect. Yeah, yeah.

If you look through the LPs in the basement, you see how we got here. Right? Because he's got all the Slice Stone. Yeah. Like, that's something. But he didn't like James Brown. He didn't like James Brown, but I think that we have concluded that he did not like James Brown.

because he did not like James Brown. Yeah. It wasn't, if the music was not the issue. Yeah. The issue was James Brown campaigned for Nixon. Yes. You're right.

And that trumps everything. Which I'm not mad. That's one of the things that I respect most about that. I don't care what it is. And how, how fine she is. She got the wrong politics. You're out of here with this one.

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, the only people, Mac Joe stands for are people for political reasons. Yes. Yep. Man, so, but if you, the thing, so when I heard that you wanted me to talk about this or I talked to you about this,

I stopped and thought, okay, what's the first first print song I ever heard? And that was I want to be your lover. It is hard for me to tell you how big a jam that was for black folks, right? Because, you know, growing up in Atlanta, that's all we were, everything, like, everything, and it was black folks,

and everything was R&B. If a black person sang it, I don't care what it was, it was on the JetR&B chart. I want to be your lover was the jam of all jams. The only song I've ever heard that took over like that after that

was Take Your Time by the SOS band. Interesting. Right. A baby, we can do it. Take your time. Do it. Oh, too. Yeah.

Gotcha. That song was the whole year. And then after that, the only one I can think of, and this is funny, is in the club. Yeah. In the club rocked for like a year and a half. Yeah. You know, and so once you did, and that was on Prince's second album.

Yeah. I didn't know that was the first album. I think I had heard soft and west sometime and like, yeah, that's, you know, that's cool. But that then took you back to go on to listen to the previous album. But I Want to Be A Lover was so huge that you would listen to anything this dude put out after that. And so that's what put everybody up on print. That's the album that Dad had. That's the one that was on the eight track.

The bootleg eight track, by the way, and I can still hear where the music cuts out when the track changes in the middle of the song. It goes to the next song. Like, I still know where those spots are. But that changed everything. Because now of a sudden you got this dude. You hear this song on the radio.

It's jamming. You want to listen to it. And then you put the album on. And it's not like that. Like there's a couple of songs that are like that, but there's like Bambis on there. That's all the other music. And that's the crazy thing about Prince.

Does he just make you listen to anything he put out? Like you would give anything a shot if Prince made it. Yeah. Like I didn't realize until you were telling me about that, that I want to be your lover was that big. Because I had thought that it was kind of like you and I talk about would Jordan hit that shot in 82. Yeah.

That in the building of the larger legend, we have gone back and elevated that moment. a little bit higher than it was in real time. Yeah. And again, you were there for the real time, so you would know that in a different way. But I didn't realize that that was like, that that was actually the jail.

Yeah. It was incredible. And then, and then from that, so I am, I graduated from high school in 1985. That album came out in 1979. So my entire, and high school, it's important to point out, high school in Atlanta started in the eighth grade. So my last year of elementary school,

then my first year of high school, which was eighth grade, all the way until, you know, 1985, if you think about it. So we've got dirty mind, controversy, 1999, and Purple Rain during that time in my life. That is the soundtrack to my formative years in a way that no other artist was. I can't imagine. Like, you talk about dad being into Prince in that way. I can't imagine what it is for people when Dirty Mind comes out.

Because Dirty Mind, I think Dirty Mind's a, it's, I wound up, I was talking to Vinny and some of his friends, and they were like, so what are the four Prince albums that you just say are unequivocal classics? And I say it's Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, and Sign of the Times. Like, I think those are the four. And Dirty Mine is the one they were shaky on. And I really dig new wave stuff. So, like, Dirty Mind is going to land with me. But I could understand why someone

listened to Dirty Mind, which is like his Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska, right? Like it is a demo tape that was turned into an album. I could get how it might not sound like it's the most revolutionary thing in the world right now, but I cannot imagine the first time you hear that wild shit that he's talking about on there.

Dude. And you got to think about the fact that this was in the prince was putting out albums with no skips, right? Yeah. So anytime a new prince came out, you would put it on and you start it. And if you think about those albums, with the exception, I think,

of Purple Rain, the title track was the first track on every album. And they all had these big buildups. Like all the way, you know, like dirty minds got that, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then all the way up to, you know, obviously Purple Rain with

the dearly beloved, but even 1999, don't worry, I won't. Like, it all had this like welcome to this experience. And then it goes through all that weird, crazy S&M, whatever, whatever that was. Yeah, dude, he took you on a journey in a way that you were just in from the very beginning. Like, whatever you were about to put down, I'm going to pick it up. But that's the record where he's on to cover in his draws, though.

Yeah. Like, that's the thing where I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. Like, we think of the 80s as being a time of androgyny. Sort of yes. but this was 1980, right? Like this is not in the progression of it and nobody was doing it quite like this. Like this is the error of him

opening for the Rolling Stones and they throwing shit at him and called him name. This is where in Uptown, you got to have the line, you know, she says, are you gay? That should be by surprise. I ain't know what to do. So I looked down her eyes and said, no, are you?

Like these other cats weren't necessarily having to answer for it. Right. He's the one who had to answer for it. And then I'm going to put out a record where I'm talking about having sex with my sister. I got a song about how this chick was on her way to get married. And instead, I gave her head.

And then boom, she married me, what you think about that. But also, like, these for real love songs, like crazy disco type shit. And when you were mine, I'd like, like, and there's nothing, nothing has ever happened like this before. I don't know what was up with these Detroit motherfuckers, but I'm gonna tell you, in Atlanta, it was all good. Whatever he did, you were like, this, now,

it didn't mean you wanted to dress like him. That he's just my age. Important, yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, but my, when I was there, man, that, whatever he did was just dope. Like, the jams jammed so hard that they just set you up to buy into whatever else was coming. I didn't know anybody that had any, like, I'm not really feeling. And all of us were just completely into whatever Prince would.

And again, that's interesting. Like, I think we were talking to Trey about this one time, where Trey was talking about what of his gangster uncles and somebody in Compton and like, man, can't get enough of Prince. Yeah. I guess also the 80s were a slightly different thing. The idea of what masculinity was, was rap came and messed that whole situation up, right? Yeah.

And drew some clearer lines. But the idea that Prince is pulling up and the gangsters are like, like, hey. So, I mean, think about what Earthwind and Fire was wearing. Yeah. Think about what Grandmaster Flash and Furious Five was wearing. Yes, but it was not a G-string. No, it wasn't, but I was just saying it was a different time.

Correct. It was a different time in that way. Yeah, yeah. Like Prince was the one. Somebody's had to be like, hey, man, we got to take a 20 on this one, big dog. Like, I'm not going to dress like this. Like, think about this. All the girls in the Prince camp was dressing wild scandalous, and he was wearing the same thing.

Yeah. Although I will say by the time it was time to like really blow up, he put some pants off. Yeah. And the other thing that you never saw Prince in was like, so I saw this thing, Harry, Harry Styles hosted Saturday Night Live and they went through all his outfits. So he was wearing like straight up dresses and skirts and stuff. Mm-hmm. Prince wasn't wearing no skirts.

Right. You know what I mean? Like he was on some more. androgynous than anything else. The fishnets, but again, we were just like, this is what he's on,

but he's bringing the funk, so. Yeah. Well, I would also say androgynous, but there are, so if we look at the Freddie Mercury evolution and there are different runs of it, right? There are runs of Freddie Murphy

looks androgynous, but then there's the thick mustache, hairy chest, which is not androgy at all. Like, you might say that it was a little, how we say, delicate, It uses some adjectives that we don't use in polite company anymore. But that era of Prince, that is a man, right?

Like he was absolutely giving you the image. It's when you get to the like 85 and all, and once he shaves his face and it ain't curly, it's more straight perm and everything else. Now we're talking about like an and drosinous stretch. But in the end, him and all them dudes in the revolution, those still look like in time, those still look like dudes who might try to fight you.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, game blouses. Yes. The best thing about that skin is how furious Charlie Murphy is to this day about everything involving them. Yeah. Have you ever seen those clips of Prince

when he's a little boy and he gets interviewed for some of this news story? Yeah. And like he just looked like one of the kids that we would have hung out with. You know, he's just like a normal little dude and man, I don't know how he got from there to there, but I'm glad he did.

Hey, you know, Jay got from there to there, 5-3, need a gimmick playing these instruments ain't enough. Like, I got a band. Okay. Yep. No, man, that dude, I just can't think of anybody that was as, just whose music was, one, as multifaceted within a particular project. But then from project to project to project,

like the evolution and change of the music, like it just kept changing and you were just on board for, all of it. Yeah. Like, there was no misses in there. So I'm talking about Sign of the Times in a little bit, right? But I wanted to ask you about 1999, like when that dropped, because I remember I was talking, having talked to this guy in 20-something years, a man, Eric Arnold in Oakland.

And we used to email, we used to write some of the same people. He's a very well-known hip-hop right out to bay. And we used to talk about stuff on email. And I was talking about how I had Sign of the Times over 1999. And his argument back was, you can't. understand what a phenomenon 1999 was. Like you can't understand people carrying the album around

in their bags, girls having in their purses, all this stuff everywhere that they went. Like it was such a big deal. And it was so huge, but it also came out the same year. It's Thriller. So I can't imagine how furious Prince was about, because I mean, it's a double album. It's only nine tracks, but it is a double album worth of stuff. But it does sound like

it ran the streets. Yeah. Yeah. And I want it to some extent, I feel like it was a little counter thriller. Like, you came out one month before. Okay. Wow. Yeah, I didn't even remember that. But I do remember that, yeah, the Michael, and not that I didn't like Michael Jackson, right? But like, I am an off the wall person. I think off the wall is a better album than thriller. I feel like, and it also feels like off the wall was aimed at us more than thrillers was.

Yes. So that's part of that too. Among the people that I was with, I felt like 1999 got with it, everything, all its flowers in that moment. Now, looking back on it, and Thriller becomes this worldwide phenomenon. And we look back on it, like it's this signpost in music history that 1999 isn't. But I think that's about sales. Yes.

You know, it's the numbers that it did. Dude, 1999's first four tracks are 1999, Little Red Corvette, Delirious, and I believe DMSR comes next. Yeah, I think that sounds about right. I did write them down somewhere here. Oh, no, let's pretend we're married is four, and DMSR is five.

Dude, let's pretend we're married is crazy. It is insane. It is a wild idea in concept also Just come off the rip saying these things Yes I'm not saying it's just to be nasty Yes What can you can you relate

Dude and This is pre hip hop This is pre-gankster There's no cussing anywhere on the radio That I'm consuming Yeah Yeah Yeah

And look Little Red Corvette is Little Red Corvette is wild and it's beautiful and it's vulnerable and it is absurd and it is maybe the last time he lets someone else do the guitar solo. It is all of these things. He's just like, yeah, dog, right here. Dude, lady cab driver. Lady cab driver is all there. The end of lady cab.

I mean, like, this dude was doing stuff and just nobody was doing it. Like, it was scandalous. Like, you get a Prince album and you get some jazz. You get some, oh. Like, you know, and as a child, it was like, it had that element of sneaking down in the basement and listening to Richard Pryor records. It had some of that. And Mac Jones put us up on it. That's how, you know, Mac Jones put you up on it and Barbara Jones enjoys.

Yeah. That's how good the music was. Right. That's how good the music was. And the other underrated thing, I think, about Prince when people look back on it, was these iconic slowdowns. jams, which if you are the age that I was during that time, that was really important because that was when you go to house parties and the last hour and a half of the house parties is just slow jams and everybody's trying to get in there and get their smooch on. And what you needed was

that song that the girl is going to say, yes, I want to dance, not necessarily because of you, because I can't sit here and not dance when the song comes. When do me baby comes on, I can't be sitting over here talking to my girls. And so that was your best shot. Like I'm trying to think, like the slow jam run up to that point. I am, my dexterity with for you is not great. Still waiting is on for you. For you did not have it.

No, no, still waiting on the second. Oh, oh, for, yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, still waiting. Still waiting is on the second one. Got a broken heart again. Yeah. On dirty mind. Yes.

Right. I love that song. It's going to be lonely. It's also... It's going to be lonely. It's incredible. It's like the harmonies at the end, that whole last half of it,

or at least the last third of it. Yeah. I've never heard anything like that. Right. Still to this day, like nobody's even tried to hit that. Controversy got Dumi, baby. 1999's got an international lover,

which is, oh, we're just letting you do whatever you want now, huh? Yeah, I do. Okay, it's a plane. Gosh, yeah. That's what you say. The Purple Rain got this evening. Now, this is a good chance

to put a pin in this. Coming up next, we're going to talk about the phenomenon of Purple Rain and more on the right time. All right, we are back with Patrice Lemoble Jones. Purple Rain comes out. This is another one for me

where I cannot imagine the magnitude of the moment of Purple Rain. This motherfucker made a movie. So, So the year before that, we were in Nigeria. I was, we were in Nigeria for an entire year and you come back to Purple Rain. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

And we would go like, it was like multiple weekends in a row for me, you and your friends. Now now I'm a rising senior in high school now. And we would just go to see Purple Rain like over and over and over again. What you're doing Saturday? I'm going out to old national. We go watch Purple Rain again. it was yeah we couldn't and it's the only movies

worse than Purple Rain are graffiti in the world in the world in the world but the music is that great like it's a concert film with these weird

basically the plot stuff is like weird interludes the way you kind of felt about it like you okay like nobody was like I want to be like the kid I want you to think about plot-wise the message that the movie is giving, right? Which becomes an actual metaphor for life after the things we learn from the Ezra-Ezzar

Edelman documentary that the world will never see. So the plot of this movie is we got this little dude who makes these songs. And in the movie, nobody understands or likes, but in real life will revolutionize the world. Okay, whatever. But he's making these songs and the world ain't really liking them. but he gets himself a girlfriend, whom he beats the shit out of. And then at the end, he's about to beat ass one more time. And then she says, go ahead and do it.

And then he stops. And then he goes to the club the next night and he plays some bangers. And now it's like nothing ever happened. Yeah. That's all he had to do was play a couple of bangers. And we let everything slide. That movie is a cancellation waiting to happen in 2026. And it's bad.

So here's what I'm going to tell you about that. And I've seen Purple Raider a million times. That storyline feels vaguely familiar. That's how much I didn't give a shit what they were telling. What was happening in the movie. You were just like living between the concert scenes, the performance scenes. That was what the whole thing was. It's like Rocky Horror Picture Showers.

Yeah. That movie also has one of America's great actors. Clarence Williams the third. It does. And it kind of, I can't imagine how he felt doing scenes with these people who've never acted ever, never been in a movie. Yeah. And clearly he only had one gear.

Yes. Right? He's like, this, whatever it is, is Hamlet. Because he went hard. That first, that beginning, where he's just there with a bow tie off for no. reason whose idea was this his only advice for the boy

never get. That's the only game he put his son off. Never get married. Do you ever have you ever watched Grafini Bridge? I have watched parts of it, but I know you told me you watched it the other day. It's incredibly bad.

It doesn't make any sense. And it's a sequel. It is. To Purple Rite, which I hadn't realized. This one, still don't dig his music. No. I'm like, how did you make it this far if nobody digs your music?

Man, every time, I don't get this. Under the Cherry Moon, the whole thing with Under the Sherry Moon, the only thing, other than Reckoste, the thing that I will just always remember is it's time for the climactic chase scene and it starts playing another love of hole in your head. It's not, and he directed that. He directed graffiti bridge and he directed that one because he just felt like he could do anything.

And at that point, Nobody could tell him no. And it's all because Peresan sold a gazillion copies. And you and I have multiple times been in here, and we have watched that live in Syracuse, 1985. And that is apex prints, right? Like, this is, there's no moment that he possibly could have been any bigger, any more important, felt any more urgent, everything else.

And we watched that two hours show. And it's just like, what was ever fucking with this? No. Ever. whatever will moving forward. Like, I can't imagine. So the funny thing about that is, up until Purple Rain, for me,

I paid no attention to Prince's guitar. Yeah. Which honestly, it's not really showcased in the music prior to that. No. And the other thing you got to remember about black folks is if you play the guitar and you want some credit for that,

it better be the bass. You know what I mean? Like, if you could play the bass, all right. But like, jinga, jinga, jinga. I don't even... We didn't care about that. So, so Purple Rain kind of open your eyes to that.

And then when you see a concert, sorry, like that Syracuse concert, you're like, oh, he's amazing. Like, he's not performing for you. He's literally taking you somewhere. You are under his control, and he's going to drop you off when he's done with you. And I don't think I've ever seen anybody solo any instrument

or play any instrument in a way that just, it's like a comedian. You know how comedians get you here, they take you on this story and they build intrigue and then you think you got it and they take a twist. And like all that when you talk about music doing that feels metaphorical. Yeah. But he's literally doing that, playing the guitar with an expression on his face,

like he's just like balancing his face. checkbook. Like the self-titled album, right? The self-titled album's got, why you want to treat me so bad? It's got Bambi. Like, it's got some guitar work. But really, he doesn't really lock in on that

in the early portions of his career. And then had the nerve to be offended that people would not give him adequate credit for his guitar brilliance that he wasn't really sharing with us. And to me, the Purple Rain is a get. album, right? When you really go through track for track, just about every one of them, not all, but just about every one, he shows out on guitar in one form of fashion. When Dobs Cry,

which is the most revolutionary single to anybody has ever put out, he comes off the rip with something literally no one else who's ever been born has ever been able to play. Yeah, nobody can pull it off. But the other thing, too, about the guitar is, if you really want to get it, you need a solo that's longer than what you can put on a single. Yeah. Right? That's the thing is when you see these performances, Prince is playing these six, seven minute guitar solos.

Yeah. And there's something about the length of it that allows him to take you on the kind of journey that I think he's really good at facilitating. Yeah, but like I'm still getting back on you. Like you come back to America and Purple Rain has hit the streets, and now it is everywhere. It's everywhere. Everybody's trying.

I mean, and there's these arguments. Oh, no, and the B-sides. Yeah. Right, that was the other thing that no one else did. Like, he's got these songs that are hits that aren't even on the album. They're just album-adjacent. Yep. I got so many jams.

Yeah. Yeah, y'all want some more music? You know, why waste two songs, you know, from Purple Rain to have a B-side when I could just pull something else out the closet to be a B-side? Well, also, I'm going to let my, I'm going to let, by little homies ride on y'all. Oh, yeah. Give heat to other people.

No. So, yeah, Purple Rain was, it was everywhere. And unlike usually, like, there's a hit song and you just hear the hit song, people were rocking like every song on Purple Rain. Like, it didn't have that, we didn't coalesce around Purple Rain or I would die for you. It was just the whole thing.

You know, like even, you. You know, when you think about, you know, Michael Jackson and thriller and even off the wall, it was like all these singles, you know, like you're like, oh, it's got like five hit singles, six hit songs on it. But this shit was like, yeah, I got three or four radio ready hit, but you're going to rock with this whole album. You're just not going to hear it on the radio because it's really not appropriate, darling Nikki.

That's what got the parental advisory label invented. Really? Darlingie. I did not know that. I thought that was a hip-hop. Dipagore hurt darling Nikki and... What? Yeah, there was some ambiguity

as to how the magazine was being used. But it's wild because he couldn't stay on Purple Ray long enough. He was like, all right, I have to go do something else. And you get to like, that 85 to really, I call it 88, 89 run, like through Love Sexy.

Yeah. still jamming, but it ain't the same, except sign of the times. Sign of the times is that was the one for me as I got older and decided to make my own exploration. Because the big thing that happened for me was, because, you know, you have had the house and I'm five years old. Like, y'all are gone. I'm kind of on my own here. But what Columbia House either, I can't remember if I got it and daddy got it, but one of us got when the hits in the B-Sides compilation came out. Yeah.

And I got on that and I was like, oh, okay. and then I went and got Sign of the Times. And Side of the Times was like, oh, hey, man. Someone's kind of sort of showing off. Yeah. And it was just sonically different. I always come back to that. It's just the diversity of the music.

Just, it was exciting because you didn't know what you were going to get. Yeah. And the single or whatever the first song was didn't tell you what you were going to get. No. No. Which is why you would give every album. And as we kind of got deeper in it and there was, you know, emancipation and stuff like that, would they be like one or two?

But you started, excuse me, you started, you started trying to will it to be like something iconic as the stuff that you were familiar with in the past. He had just moved on. Like, I think everything he made was still just as jamming to him. Yeah. You know, and he just kind of lost us to some extent. And I don't know if he cared that much. Yeah.

Well, he did come to care, but I want to put a pin in that point, right? Okay. Because the thing I want to put out about the Times that I think is an interesting facet of the Prince catalog. For reasons I don't quite have the answer to. I've been listening to Paul Simon's Graceland a lot lately. And Paul Simon and Prince have the same thing in common, which is they create the most interesting conversations amongst the characters in their songs.

Okay. Right. Right. The I said and she said, right, in the back and forth. Like, battle of Dorothy Parker, right? I was just thinking about that. Let me get a fruit cocktail. I ain't that hungry.

Dorothy laugh. It sounds like a real man to me. If I turn on the radio, what are we doing here? Where is this going? Why is this so jamming? Yep. Well, that beat. Yeah, but also it's got, I can never take the place of your man.

I asked if she wanted to dance. She said all she wanted was a good man. Whoa, I'd say, if you wanted to dance. He's talking about? No. Yeah, no, he had an appreciation for the absurd. Yeah. But these pictures would be so vivid.

Like, you can go back and think from album to album, there's another one that pops up there where you're like, oh, yeah, this is the conversation that these people are having. How do these people exist in real life? Like, Uptown. It's the same thing. But even if it's not a conversation, start fishing coffee. Yeah.

Right? When you start talking about these vivid descriptions that puts you in a space. Yeah. Right? He took you back to elementary school. Yeah. And a weird girl with crazy shit in her lunchbox.

Yep. And it gives you her talking, right? Like how these people sound, how they interact. It's like, how does everybody, it's the same thing with the Simon songs. It's like, everybody knows the perfect thing to say in these conversations that you are able to dream up. Yeah. Everybody's got the line.

What was it for the world with, because it's funny, I have this Prince playlist on Spotify that if you ask me, I'll send you the link to. It's excellent. It is the Warner Brothers era because when I did it, there were limitations on what of the catalog was available. But the other thing was there are no songs on Love Sexy from it in spite of my love for when two are in love and I wish you heaven, which may be my favorite back-to-back situation in the catalog. But at that, time it only had Love Sexy as Prince intended, which is to say there were no partitions between the tracks. It was all one long track. And the reason was you felt that it didn't work if you broke it up. And it is better if you listen to it in one sitting. But that had to be the most annoying shit in the world. Yeah. Because my song on that was Anastasia. Yeah. And I don't think it was at the beginning. It was like maybe the second song or something. It was like four or five. It's like right in the middle. Yeah, it's in the middle. But now it was my joint.

And I would listen to it a lot. And I did and so I had it on CD. So you didn't know what the time signature was that you needed to get to. Yeah. But there was but you couldn't, it's not like you could punch it in. Yes. That was all fast forward to it. He was officially in

whatever I want to do mode. He butt-necked on like laying in a blanket on an all-white album cover and then there is no partition on the tracks. And if I'm not mistaken, like no space in between the tracks. So even if you had APSS on your tape player, no, it wasn't going to let you get the, cah. Nope, nope. You just had to sit there and you don't listen to this, homie. Yeah. Well, I had somebody tell me, though, that who was

really tricky for was the people that worked at the record because they would want to play the record and it was some things going all at points that you might not necessarily want to be able to share with everybody. The public consumption. Yes, yes. But where you're talking about, talking about he didn't care. What is interesting, though, is once you get around Graffiti Bridge and after that, the early 90s are both he and Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston trying to come back home. Yeah. Right?

Like, Prince had these huge pop ambitions. The, for lack of a better term, blacker it sounded, the more likely it was to give it to the time. There was the run where he had convinced people in the media that his mother was white because he knew they would never view him as a, the genius he believed he was if they thought that he was just regular black. This is why Alexander O'Neill hates him, by the way, is... Oh. Oh, yeah.

But I get it, right? Like, it looks like you are being selective in your application of your own blackness, which is not something that has ever played well with the people. But when you get to, like, graffiti, graffiti bridge has got, like, joy in repetition. These are the Temple. Like, you know, okay, it's Mava stable and George Clinton on the record. Okay, we're coming back home. Diamonds and Pearls, he decided he was going to make an R&B record.

I will note. These are the records that are a little bit less interesting than the other records. But nobody likes it when it feels like people don't want to fuck with you no more. Yeah. And everybody comes back home. Yeah, you're right about that.

Yeah, like that Emancipation album, which is I think where Betcha by Ghali Wilde was. Yeah, yeah. That was the first album. The second album he did is the symbol. Yeah, yeah. That was an interesting time. But by then, I think that, I'm not saying printed,

I don't think his flame had burned out, but in terms of like the interest in what he meant to me, partially he's I'm getting older, but part of it was also like, he just had that run that was just so, it couldn't keep going. Like, Stevie Wonder can't go forever.

Right. You know, um, but that, that five, five, six album run, hard to, hard to beat, man. Well, it's like what happens if you can do whatever you want and the game follows you, wherever you go. And that's kind of what happened in the 80s. Like I think it's fair to make the argument, especially because of how big Janet Jackson was with that Minneapolis sound,

that in terms of sonically, Prince proved to be more influential than Michael Jackson did on the music that came. And then once you start getting to that super raunchy-a-ed era of R&B, that's definitely a more direct Prince callback than it is a Michael Jackson callback. But you've been getting there just by doing you and then everybody goes, but now they're doing something else. Yeah. And you doing you, and now you sound out of step. You're like, how am I out of step? I am the step. But you just, you know, a little bit off. It's a little bit different. You're not where they are. And people of the magnitude of Prince and Michael Jackson, they want to stay big. Like, in, David Ritz wrote a bio of Aretha Franklin where he talked about

that, where, you know, when you think about, like, who's Zoom and who era Aretha Franklin and all this, it seems preposterous. But he's like, she talked about it in there. And Ray Charles said the same thing, man, we don't do this for fun. We want hits. And this is where the hits are. All right. Well, I guess we go, we're going to try to make some hits. Yeah.

But I do think, I wonder to what extent the issues with the industry itself. Yeah. Impacted his ability to get his stuff out there and, you know, to really get a push behind some stuff. Because when you went after he died and you went back and started listening to his joints, like, have you ever heard Cal Humph? Square? Yeah, it's good. I love that song, but I had never heard of it. I had never heard of it. Huh? That's on the crystal ball, right? Perhaps. I just kind of encountered it in the Apple Music era.

You know, like, what is this song? So here's the thing. His issue with the label is interesting because what the label was saying was, dude, we can't put out a new album every three months just because you could crank out a new album every three months. Like, he stepped on himself so much by putting around the world in a day out so fast after Purple Rain. The world was not finished with Purple Rain. He never had anything nearly as big as Purple Rain because he couldn't just take a breath, then get out there.

Like, Michael Jackson didn't come back after Thriller for five years. Right. He was not built like that because, you know, Mike was playing a different game, but he just, he had so much heat and that he needed to give the world. the heat and people needed time to digest the heat. And he was like, I've digested the heat. Yeah. And the other thing was he's such a great performer,

but he didn't lean into the performance in terms of like, well, I got this joint out. Now I need to go tour and I need to go like, like as good as he was at it, I got the feeling that he would rather make music than perform music, which is crazy because he was such a great performer. But he was in the studio constant. He was. He was.

I think I read somewhere that he had a producer on call. So if you went up at 3 in the morning with the idea, this woman would come in and, you know. Yep. Yep. Stevie was like that with people too. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like the news that like make beats 24-7. Yeah, yeah. And it's like it's print, so I guess I don't want to be, I don't want to miss it.

Yeah. Right? Like, there's no telling what might, like, we didn't even talk about the fact that like nothing compares to you comes out in the midst of this run and he never does it. And then they put out the demo after. he dies that he does in the basement it's fucking incredible. Yeah.

But he's just like, I'll just give this to somebody else. It doesn't really fit what I got going on over here right now. Yeah. And he'll give it that. I mean, I think there's some reasons why he would give some of these women music.

But, you know, Shee to Easton. All right. I mean, like, you think if Prince gives you a song, that's gold, right? Like that's like the most cherished thing you could imagine someone bequeathing upon you. And he's like, see, he's to take this jam. I mean, he gave Maddoch Monday to the Bengals.

Yeah. As in the Bengals, that would be a different group. Joe Cinco. But yeah, no. Maddoch Monday, another song with one of those incredible conversations in it. He tells me in his bedroom voice. Come on, honey. Let's go make some noise.

Yeah. Well, and then the weirdest thing. So Sheena Eastern was this like the good girl. Yeah. He gave her sugar walls. He did. Oh. Cups for the night.

It's bad by sugar. What? Excuse me. I think I missed something. What exactly are you referring to? There's got to be some cutter roof floor stuff. Hey, hey, hey, bro. We're not doing this, man.

You go out too far this time, my brother. You're going too far. I wonder what people were saying to her. You got to hear this. What is he like Scottish or Irish or something? I think he's, I think Irish. Oh, no, I think he's Danish. Oh, yeah, that's a little.

Scottish, you're right, Scottish. Yeah. So you went to America, they're like, you just got turned out. That just turned out by anybody. This dude got you, yeah, and that wasn't MO. This is exactly what they'd be afraid of. Yes. She went off to make it big in the music business.

She filed her city corruptor. Five, five, freaky-dicky. Got her singing all kind of wild shit. I wish I could do a Scott is broke, because I got some jokes I need to get off but they only work if you can do the voice. Yeah, man, I got a, my accent game is very, very limited, and it's unfortunate because I can't get any of that part of the world.

Like that great, the British zone, I can't get it. But just, I'm better with British. I'm not going to do it here because this is for the public. But, yeah, I just imagine what groundskeeper Willie would say if that was his daughter. Or maybe she hoped they never heard that song. She just kept playing them, you got to look over and over again. Woo.

Yeah, no, dude. It just still changed the world, man. And it was, it'll never, I will, I will be forever different for having experience that run from 79 to 84. Just because of what that meant in my life at that time to all the people around me, especially because then I, you know, I was a fairly serious trumpet player at that point, too. So music played a different role in my life other than just being jams. It was, you know, it was inspirational. Yeah.

Whether it was something I could play or not, it just, you know, just the creativity of it was, you just knew what was, it gave you an idea of kind of what was possible and that some of the, maybe some of the constraints that you thought were there really weren't real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is kind of the point of the catalog is that. Like, that is the ethos of it.

of the odd I realize that through prints and I see the through line through a lot of people that I like the most it is the audacity yeah of it all like the willingness to be like no this is I'm doing this right here yeah what you think and just the confidence that that takes right like audacity is one thing but if you have the you the talent to back it up is what makes it work yeah yeah I would say one last thing on this for people If you get that Syracuse concert, I can't talk about enough. You can find it online. There's clips on YouTube, whatever. And I don't think I've had the opportunity to point this out. But this is the most amazing, magical thing

Prince has ever done. So it's a transition in between songs and the stage is set up. He's way up, like going up, some steps and up some shit over there off to one side, right? So he's like, he's all the way over there doing something. And I think he got lost in the sauce a little bit,

but he needed to get back over to the microphone because it was time to sing, do me, baby. In those high heels, he jumps off something that's got to be eight feet in the air and lands on his feet with no stumble and then cockily strolls over to the microphone in high heels. Yay, man. Dude with athletic. Yeah, no, that is the thing about like a great musician that is often lost is that this is in a lot of ways an athletic feat.

Like the ability to play instruments is. in part, it's hand-eye coordination in some ways. Like, there's an athleticism to it. Like, I remember I was telling you once, it's the one instrument that somebody can want up Prince on is the bass because he has guitar playing, piano playing fingers. And so there's that, when

you listen to like Revolution stuff where Mark Brown plays the base, you hear it, it's much heavier because he has heavier hands. But the idea that Prince could take his hands and turn them into all these different things, including on the drum machine,

Yep. They just made one man. They just made one. But hey, this is my brother, Patrice, Lamumba Jones. You got anything you want to plug? Not really. Okay. I wasn't ready for that one.

No, what I will say is my company in light media dropped a series of videos that are designed to inject historical context into history, into DEI training, and, you know, and And I think it's really important that we understand history to be able to kind of get a grasp of what's going on in the world today and understand that there are systemic forces here that we don't get just caught up in this idea of the personalities that are affecting the world and the way they are, is that there are systems that need to be addressed. And we're trying to do that through history. So if you check out In ContextNow.com, you can see the work that we've done. There it is. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. do this four days a week, but this week we're doing it two days.

Ryan Brunley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line 3-2-3-9-6-7-67-7. Remember, follow the right time, subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater and we'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.