1991, Part 2: We Got A New Style For The Next Eight Years
All images (c) NPG Records
They Say That You Ain’t You Know What in Baby Who Knows How Long
The early 90’s are a transitional period both for Prince and for the recording industry as a whole. Everything was on the cusp of major change, and even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to know if anyone could predict what was in store for the pop establishment as the 1990’s got underway.
Prince had a storm of liabilities gathering around him. His last million-selling album was Batman. It could be argued the album only sold so well because anything with a bat symbol slapped on it sold at least a million copies that year. Also, he was about to turn thirty-three years old – not exactly the age for the biggest hitmakers of the time. One had to wonder if he was over the hill. His attempts to adjust to contemporary sounds had failed miserably. And, as 1991 began, all of Prince’s most recent projects had consisted mostly of material he had recorded before 1989. There was genuine cause to wonder whether he could keep his career going either creatively or commercially at any kind of high level.
Prince was staring down the barrel of irrelevance and he knew it. Graffiti Bridge was a total failure. Under the Cherry Moon may have been a flop as a film, but Parade had been a commercial and critical success. Graffiti Bridge as both a film and album had simply crashed and burned.
In the face of all this, it should come as no surprise to find Warner Bros. was getting harder to deal with. Or perhaps Prince was becoming more unreasonable, depending on your point of view. Prince’s relationship with his record label had been maintained largely on his ability to produce enough hits to justify any trouble he might cause the executives in Burbank from time to time. His record deal that would be coming up for another extension soon, and he was now sitting on a string of recent failures. He needed a hit album as badly as he ever had in his life.
I’ve Been Holding Back This Feeling For Far Too Long
Change was definitely in the air at Paisley Park. What had been underway since December 1989 was the sort of hard left turn that defined all of Prince’s wisest career moves. Diamonds and Pearls is not my favorite album but I cannot argue it is a strong step in the right direction. That first step was to stop wandering around in the vault and get into the studio with a new band, a new approach, and a new enthusiasm for his work.
Prince’s band had gone through a few changes since The Revolution had disbanded, but it had never had an identity of its own until now. From now to the end of his life, he would perform and record with a band called the New Power Generation (NPG). As time went on, the NPG was a lot like Air Force One, in the sense that it was more a catch-all name for any band that backed Prince (with one exception very late in his life), but there were several cohesive bands that used the name, and this was the first.
The lineup was, from left to right above:
Sonny Thompson, aka Sonny T.: Bass / vox
Damon Dickson aka Damon D. vox / percussion
Rosie Gaines: Keys / vox
Michael Bland, aka Michael B.: Drums
Kirk Johnson aka Kirky J: vox / raps / percussion
Tony Mosley, aka Tony M: vox / lead raps
Levi Seacer, Jr: Guitar / vox
Tommy Elm, aka Tommy Barbarella: Keys / vox / sampler
This band was put together as early as December 1989 when the song “Diamonds and Pearls” was recorded. Before the script for Graffiti Bridge had even been completed, the next album was well into production, and it was going to be very different from the project that was currently on the front burner. The album that would follow Graffiti Bridge would not only be recorded in a more close collaboration with the new band, it would be all-new material. Nothing from the vault whatsoever.
Prince had finally found his approach to more contemporary sounds, and it involved a two-pronged approach: first, he had to abandon his old material, and second, he found an opening that didn’t exist before as Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis had made their interpretation of the Minneapolis Sound into a style called New Jack Swing. Finally, a chart topping R&B sound he knew how to develop. His efforts to blend New Jack sounds with his own style, especially with the single “Cream” were far more successful than his clumsy attempts to shoehorn hip-hop into his music.
Just Add Rappings
Speaking of those clumsy attempts, there is one blot on this album, and that is Tony M. Tony Mosley was another example (victim?) of Prince deciding he needed someone to do a particular thing, and then grabbing the first person nearby who could do that thing, trusting they could do it at the high level he required.
Tony M. had been in Prince’s orbit since at least when Purple Rain was being shot. Tony, Damon Dickson and Kirk Johnson were a trio of dancers in the club seen in the film a couple of times. Some time after recording The Black Album Prince decided that if he had to have raps on his records, perhaps it would be best if it were someone other than Prince doing the rapping.
Prince knew Tony fronted a rap trio in Minneapolis. They were hired. Now the NPG had rappers, with lead raps from Tony M. For the record, I don’t blame Tony. It’s not his fault. It’s like if someone called me on the phone and offered me the part of Batman in the next Batman movie. I’d take it. I’m absolutely wrong for the part in every way, but you don’t say “no” to that. It’s on the director, producers and casting staff for offering it to me. Same thing with Tony M. If Prince calls you and says “do you want to be in my band?” you say “yes” and then ask what he wants you to do in the band, and when he tells you, you assume he is aware you don’t even know what a sousaphone is.
It’s not so much that Tony’s a bad rapper as that he is a mediocre one, and he is obviously swinging well above his weight here. The idea of simply adding a rapper to his band is suspect enough, but Prince ruined any chance this had of working by assuming any rapper would do.
Everybody Grab A Body
In January 1991 Diamonds and Pearls was beginning to take shape and an interesting thing happened that gives evidence of the changes in Prince’s thinking. He sent a song to Minneapolis Public Radio WLOL called “Glam Slam ‘91.” It contains some elements of the vocal arrangements from the original 1988 song “Glam Slam” and some bits from “Love Machine” but it also has lots of new lyrics. Stuff like:
“Everybody grab a body, pump it like U want somebody”
And:
“Lay your pretty body against the parkin' meter Flip your dress down like I was strippin' a Peter Paul's Almond Joy Let me show U, baby, I'm a talented boy”
By June, Prince had decided there were better uses for the new parts of the song, so he cut them out, discarded the recycled old material and set about making a new song from the leftover new material. On his birthday, June 7, he sent out a single-sided 12-inch record to 1500 DJs with a hand-drawn label that indicated the record contained a song called “Gett Off.”
It was intended mostly as a curiosity and as a way to gauge response to the new sound and the new band. The song was a massive hit in every market to which it was sent. Those 1500 records are some of the most sought-after collectibles among Prince fans. I do have a digital bootleg of that nine-minute version of “Gett Off.” It’s one of the few bootlegs I will admit to owning. It is, in fact, well worth its notoriety, but beyond that, it tells you something about the lesson Prince learned from this little episode. Prince’s best bet for success was to discard the old ideas and trust in the things coming out of his creative mind in that moment. Those are the important impulses. It’s a lesson he learned well, and never really let go of ever again, even in those moments when he indulged his fans in their desires for vault material later on.
Nothing gets a record company on your side like having a hit summer jam. “Gett Off” was rushed to a mass-market release and it had the same success those first 1500 copies indicated. This got Warner Bros. enthused about the new album, and their willingness to promote Prince’s new project suddenly exploded overnight. Prince knew it was best to take advantage of this good will. He bumped a track called “Horny Pony” off the album to make room for “Gett Off.” To be fair to Warner Bros., “Gett Off” is far superior to “Horny Pony,” but I’ll talk about that later on.
Tracklist
Thunder
This is more of a statement of purpose for the rest of the album than an interesting song in its own right. For an album with so much band input, it’s interesting that this strong album opener is just Prince alone in the studio. Nevertheless, it does the job it is intended to do. It sounds different from the music that has come before it, yet retains the character of Prince’s work. This song also opened the show every night of the tour, which I’m sure was on Prince’s mind when recording the song.
Daddy Pop
An unusual track. Like several songs on the album, it was recorded during sessions that took place in London during June 1990. These sessions were focused on a possible solo album for Rosie Gaines, with only a few songs intended for Prince projects being produced. Most of those Rosie Gaines tracks were never used, and the album didn’t come out until 1995. In any case, this song is an oddity. Listening to it feels like you’re standing in a tornado of samples from random funk records. The drums are a sample from “Rock Steady” by Aretha Franklin, the drums on that track played by Bernard Purdie. That in itself is almost unheard of. I can think of maybe a half a dozen songs in Prince’s discography that use samples from other artists’ records, and this is the first one I’ve ever heard of that’s uncredited. In any case, it’s catchy enough, but for some reason, it’s not “sticky” like the best Prince hits, although Rosie Gaines’ background vocals will probably be on an endless loop in my brain for the rest of the day.
Diamonds And Pearls
This is one of those bigass opulent ballads that Prince was so good at overproducing that people rarely noticed how overdone the whole thing was. It was supposed to be overdone. It is one of my favorite Prince ballads, and one of his most effective. I’m pretty sure the voice of Rosie Gaines inspired it, since it was clearly written as a showcase for her, and she made good use of the opportunity. This was recorded in late 1989 on the same day as the album closer “Live 4 Love” and they were used as the centerpieces around which the rest of the album was constructed. Also of note is that this is the first track on which Michael B. and Sonny T. appear at all, and the first in which they appear together with Tommy Barbarella and Rosie Gaines, so in many ways this is the very first “Prince and the NPG” track to be recorded.
Cream
Recorded almost exactly a year after “Diamonds And Pearls,” this song is another example of Prince using his band to excellent effect. All the personnel from the prior track are here again, with the addition of Levi Seacer, Jr. on rhythm guitar. An interesting feature of the song is the lead guitar is a slide part.
For those who don’t know, “slide” guitar is when instead of pressing down on the strings with the tips of the fingers of the left hand to create chords, a solid object (usually a tube, like a piece of steel pipe or a glass bottleneck) is pressed against the strings above the fingerboard and slid across the strings, producing a whining, singing sound. The thing is, Prince didn’t really play slide guitar. It’s notoriously difficult. Jimi Hendrix didn’t play slide, Stevie Ray Vaughan didn’t play slide beyond the simplest possible version. I think this might be the only Prince song with slide guitar on it.
This was always just a curiosity until I started researching for this series. According to Bonnie Riatt, the slide part on “Cream” is her. It’s unclear whether the studio track is her playing and then when the song was performed live, Tommy Barbarella sampled her playing or possibly it was all samples, but one way or the other, that was Bonnie Riatt. This makes a lot of sense, as she is one of the great living masters of the technique, she was recording at Paisley Park at this time, and Prince admired her work almost as much as he did Joni Mitchell’s. Once it was pointed out to me, it does sound unmistakably like her playing.
Strollin’
When someone asks me for deep cut Prince songs, great stuff nobody remembers, this song and the next always make my short list. It’s a real sign of Prince’s continued creative vitality that in the middle of this concerted effort to appeal to contemporary sensibilities, he will still wander down an almost Tin-Pan Alley style jazz-guitar detour like this one. Recorded in Tokyo in 1990 on a break from the Nude Tour, with Michael B. on drums and Levi Seacer on bass.
Willing And Able
This song has much the same vibe as above, except substituting rockabilly and gospel styles. The Steeles provide the gospel feel with their background vocals. This song has a rap from Tony M. that feels more artificially added that any of the other hip-hop elements on the album. It’s clear some effort was gone to in order to disguise this, including putting an effect on the vocals to make it sound like he was rapping through an old radio speaker, but still. Did we need this? I suppose the argument could be made that before you start dropping in the full-on rap tracks, it might be best to prime the listener for it, but even so, I’m not sure this is the place for it.
Gett Off
Much has already been said about this song, but I do have a couple of notes that didn’t fit elsewhere. First, Prince’s lead guitar has finally had life breathed back into it after several years of ballad-and-slow-jam-only-duty, and there is an interesting style of elastic two-note bass which I don’t think Prince ever returns to in a consistent way. Also, only Prince would bring in Eric Leeds to play on a song called “Gett Off” and then ask only for a flute solo, please. Also, here I will make the obligatory mention of his 1991 VMAs appearance where he apparently showed his bare ass on MTV while performing this song. However, the person who built his outfit says nope, it was a piece of fabric dyed the color of his skin, and if you look at it now, you can kind of see yeah, that's not his ass. No really. Look closer.
Walk Don’t Walk
The rest of the album is very inconsistent, and I’m not sure this song isn’t emblematic of that. I go back and forth on it. On the one hand, it’s one of Prince’s naïve, silly “do your own thing, be yourself, and the world will love you songs,” which I am a sucker for. On the other hand, it uses the early 90’s slang of saying “psych!” and has car horns tuned to musical pitches. I’m very conflicted. Again, though, Rosie Gaines kills it with those silky smoove vocals.
Jughead
Oh Lord. First of all, this is the song where Tony M. comes fully into effect. Well, I should say, Tony, Kirky J., and Damon D., who were, before joining the NPG, collectively known as…<cringe> the Game Boyz. This song has not aged well. I’m not sure why, but for a minute Prince seemed to believe that the best thing that hip-hop could do would be to make songs that would do essentially what “The Twist” did for Rock ‘n’ Roll. He wanted to deliberately create a dance craze. Both this song, and “Horny Pony” were intended to do this, and I doubt either had a chance.
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night
This song came from the same sessions in Tokyo that produced “Strollin’” and “Willing And Able,” and like those songs, this one is a gem. I think over time this one has become somewhat better known. It has been included on a couple of compilations over the years (as it deserves to), but it is one of the standout tracks on this album. Again, this is not my favorite album, but the songs that are not terrible are stone classics, and this is one of them. The "official" video for this is directed by Spike Lee.
Push
You know you’re in trouble when the first lyrics to a song are “Step 1, Step on to the dance floor”. I have a feeling this song may have killed when they played it live, but on the album, it comes off as as trying way too hard, especially when there is the staged “Prince – get on the mike” moment. The lyrics to his rap verse are printed on the back of the album, because they include the album’s tracklist. Except, of course, “Horny Pony” had to be crossed out on the back of the album and replaced with “Gett Off”. But whatever.
Insatiable
This is another song I’m surprised didn’t get more attention at the time it was released as a single. The only thing it has against it is that it really is just another of Prince’s Al Green style falsetto slow jams.
Live 4 Love
This is one of the few times where I can say that Tony M. was truly effective in a song. He really does shine here in a way he did not anywhere else on this album. The song is an indictment of systemic violence. The opening part of the song is Prince railing against military violence and how it chews up young people (specifically young people of color), and Tony M’s rap blurs the lines between that and gang violence. What is the difference, really, which system destroys these young people, if violence destroys them in any case? I’m not sure I buy the argument, but at least it’s made well.
Singles
Diamonds And Pearls produced a large number of singles, as did most of Prince’s albums in the 90’s. My general policy is going to be to focus on commercially available singles and tracks of interest that did not appear on regular albums. These sections are definitely non-exhaustive, but I’m doing my best to give a good overview.
Gett Off
The first of two singles to precede the album, the story of how “Gett Off” made it to market has already been done to death in this essay. There are a fleet of remixes to wade through if you’re really interested, many of which are available on Tidal and other streaming services. The one that’s really of note is the “Houstyle” remix. I’m not certain exactly how much in the style of House music it really is, but it is one of the few remixes Prince ever performed live, usually as part of a medley starting with the more familiar version of “Gett Off.”
B-Sides:
Violet The Organ Grinder
As with a lot of B-sides from the early 90’s, this could almost qualify as a remix of “Gett Off” with a new melody and lyrics applied. I’m not sure exactly why Prince seemed so interested in doing this sort of thing, but he really was. So yeah it’s a patter song that’s mostly based on the groove from “Gett Off” with some overdubs. That said, on Tidal, this thing has it's own video. Which is baffling as hell to me. They spent the money to make a video for this?
Gangster Glam
This track was created using the same method as “Violet the Organ Grinder” except this is mostly Tony M on lead with Prince and Rosie Gaines on background vocals. According to princevault this track was planned for its own single release at one point, with 7 and 12 inch singles with their own tracklists. I consider it a mercy this was never followed through on. This is enough.
Horny Pony
Ahhh yes. The song that “Gett Off” bumped off the album became its B-side. Are we to take this seriously? The lyrics are completely ridiculous, but the instrumentation is one of the best things from this project. Throughout the song, there is a woman’s voice who speaks over the track as if she is watching the song being performed live in the club, and she is having the reaction the listener is very likely having. At one point she says “Yeah, the music’s jammin’…but it’s about these words!” I find it hard to argue with her. Even the soulful moan of Rosie Gaines cannot make the words “Horny Pony” into something I can take seriously.
However!
“Horny Pony” has its defenders, and they are serious and committed. My partner thinks this song is great. Full stop. I had known her quite a while, and played her many, many Prince songs before I got around to this one because I wanted to get to the point where I could credibly say “yeah, but he did lots of really good stuff too” before I laid this ridiculous Avenue Q outtake on her. She heard this song and looked at me with this wounded expression, like I had been holding out on her. She loves this song. For real. She thinks it’s funny, mind you, but she loves it. Every now and then, she’ll be walking around and I’ll catch her singing under her breath: “hornyyyyyy pony!”
This song does come up again in the 2000’s, in one of Prince’s weirder attempts at half-hearted self-censorship. Catch me again in 2002.
Cream
One of my favorite Prince singles. Love that watery-sounding reverberating bass line. Not as many out-and-out remixes on this one, the most widely available being the “NPG mix” which I’m pretty sure was a co-production of Prince and Kirk Johnson, an up-tempo dance mix that was also included on the “Ultimate” compilation.
B-Sides
Things Have Gotta Change
We have another situation where many of these B-sides are based on the A-Side. Although there is a bit of a twist on this one, because these are mostly based on the NPG remix. This is one features Tony M. in a rap that has a more unique style than anything on Diamonds And Pearls, and as such is more satisfying. Still not my preferred style of hip-hop, but at least he’s doing his own thing, and seems to have something to say.
2 The Wire
Instrumental extension of the previous track.
Get Some Solo
A weird minute and a half of Prince noodling on a guitar.
Do Your Dance
Again, a re-build from the NPG remix of Cream with new instrumentation and a new melody and vocals by Jevetta Steele.
Insatiable
The single edit cuts two and a half minutes off the song, and frankly the song suffers for it.
B-Side
I Love U In Me
It’s unusual to want to back a ballad with another ballad, but this one dates back to 1989, back to just before sessions for Diamonds And Pearls got underway. It’s surprisingly personal, so if it got released at all, it’s pretty typical that it should be released as a B-Side. Beautiful vocal arrangement. If you can’t find the single, it is on “The Hits / The B-Sides” as well.
Money Don’t Matter 2 Night
There is an edit that was released on the 7 inch single, but it says something that even on the one compilation this one was placed on, the album version was used. It’s not a song that needs to be cut.
B-Side
Call The Law
It’s interesting to me that this song would be placed here. It was recorded in 1990, meaning that Prince was already thinking about releasing an album crediting only his band and not himself. That would play out over the next decade or so in various ways, but this was the first rumbling of that. It’s a funky little track too…
Turning A Corner, Like It Or Not
As I said at the beginning of this essay, the music industry was on the edge of a cataclysmic series of changes from which it would never recover.
Since pop music first hit the radio, the audience had been basically cohesive. By which I mean, there was one Top 40, everyone listened to the same Top 40 hits all the time, whatever they were. The only real competition for that audience was R&B and Country radio, in that order, and even then, it was all more or less under the same roof. Nobody looked elsewhere.
And nobody looked backwards. You didn’t listen to you Mom and Dad’s old records. Then CD’s came along, and there was a problem. They had too much space to fill, so the record companies started reprinting old albums by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Marvin Gaye, and every other “classic” artist, just to be able to fill up the shelves. Suddenly young people could listen to old stuff. They had…wait for it…an alternative…to the Top 40.
Then 1990 rolled around. On February 21, 1990 the 32nd Grammy Awards were held. These things were a big deal. They were actually a bigger deal then they pretend to be these days. Because the audience for pop music was so cohesive, things like Best Artist and Best Album actually carried real weight. This was long before itunes or streaming. The Grammys and The Billboard charts were the metrics. There had been some discontent as production had gotten cheezier and more homogenous as the 80’s had worn on, but there was still something about the Grammys, right? They meant something. Then, at the 32nd Grammy Awards, they gave the Best New Artist award to Milli Vanilli.
Y'all ain't smiling, though...
Then they had to take it back, because Milli Vanilli were not actually the artists on their records. They were models hired to lip sync to other people’s records. For the first time, the foundations of that monolithic audience started to shake a bit.
I know this all seems irrelevant, but bear with me.
Meanwhile, in Nashville, Garth Brooks was getting ready to release a new album called No Fences that had a country twang to it, but it also had, let’s be honest, a more “classic pop / rock” approach to production values. And there was this song, “Friends in Low Places” that was catchy as hell.
(c) Capital Nashville
And as all this destabilizing action was happening, on September 24, 1991, a virtually unknown rock trio from Seattle called Nirvana released Nevermind and that was about it for the monolithic Top 40 radio audience.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the man who brought us all the music we know today. Even the stuff you hate.
“Alternative Rock” happened, seemingly overnight. “Classic Rock” stations sprouted up, Country radio roared back to a level of popularity it had never seen before. Remember the “Black Charts?” Right around this time they were hastily renamed “R&B.”
All Right, So What’s That Got To Do With Prince?
As I said, Nevermind hit store shelves on September 24, 1991. Diamonds And Pearls dropped seven days later, on October 1. It was a hit, sold the millions of copies Prince needed it to sell, etc etc etc, but let’s face it: the music business was undergoing massive, crippling changes, and this was just the beginning. The music industry infrastructure that made his career possible was corroding quickly.
Meanwhile, the work continued at a feverish pace. The tour supporting Diamonds and Pearls kicked off in Japan in April 1992, which began a dense period of live performance for Prince and his band. The New Power Generation, especially in its first few lineups, was a hard-touring band. In terms of their touring schedule, their only peers are perhaps The J.B.’s or B.B. King’s band. From now until the end of 1993, Prince and the NPG were playing live almost constantly, either touring or playing impromptu shows at Prince’s clubs (he had a small chain of clubs called Glam Slam in a few cities) or at Paisley Park. Often they would be on stage for eight to ten hours a day. But things were changing. After the next album, things would have changed so much that Prince's career could never be the same again.
What Does It All Mean?
This album represents Prince’s last truly sincere attempt to be the same kind of chart-topping pop star that put out 1999, Purple Rain or Sign O The Times. This is the end of Prince’s pop music relevance. I understand if this sounds like a bad thing, like this is the last great music Prince will ever release. What I am trying to express is the opposite. All of his greatest work comes after this. His most far-reaching experiments, his greatest artistic risks and his best music all come only once he gets detached from the need to get the next hit on the top of the charts. Trust me, it only gets better from here.
NEXT WEEK: The Unpronounceable Album Featuring Kirstie Alley!
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