Prince "Sexy MF" C/D

Who's that

That's the Trent Reznor "before" yearbook picture.

I never set eyes on Prince but the closest I came was seeing Michael Bland working the fuck out of a drum kit in a music store in Minneapolis before he started working with Prince.

bland's work on "love 2 the 9's" is exquisite

Food for thought: both Bland and Bowie's longstanding drummer Sterling Campbell served time in Soul Asylum.

The times I saw Michael Bland play for Soul Asylum, they were so great - throw Tommy up there on bass and it was like a whole new band.

Michael Bland apparently a big XTC fan, too — he lobbied to play on "Apple Venus."

Really? I didn't know that!

Uh I was asking tuomas actually

Bland joining Prince is possibly the exact moment his output started to suffer imo. surprised at the love here.

Not blands fault in any way

yeah, probably not to any significant degree. but as noted on some other Prince thread, 1990 feels like the first time Prince is backed up by, like, a normal, modern R&B band and some of his production idiosyncrasies/techniques start to suffer, and Bland's heavy-footedness is part of that sort of conventional sound creeping in.

Bland is an excellent drummer and the best NPG member. Shakey's right about Prince's gradual decline, but Bland anchored the best of it.

best NPG member.

is faint praise

he'd have been a good drummer in any band.

I find the whole NPG era (or what I think of as the NPG era...those first few records in the 90s) to be kind of fascinating in that while they def. lose some (even a lot) of the edge that made Prince unique, they so clearly are what he imagined would appeal to a black audience at the time – featuring Bland and Seacer's heavily syncopated grooves, Gaines' Aretha-esque wailing vocals, Barbarella's super funky organ parts, and, of course, Tony M rapping (and the dancers). It was like he was trying to put together his own Muscle Shoals All Stars in some 90s context. As a whole, it doesn't really work but in the instances when it does—mostly singles like "Get Off," "D&P," "7," this song—the results tended to be as weird and outrageous as anything in the guy's catalogue.

On another note, I played this song for my 8 year old the other day. I'm probably a horrible parent for doing it but I really wanted her to understand why her mom and I loved this Prince guy so much (it also provided a nice opportunity to let her know that some people use words to get a rise out of folks). Interestingly, her semi-embarrassed giggle was pretty much identical to the reaction everyone I knew had when it came out during college. I'm probably going to Hell.