Some of the songs, like “If I Luv U 2 Nite,” which Mica Paris recorded, ended up being produced by other artists. Prince’s version is more of a ballad. “U” went to Paula Abdul [which was produced by Prince as “Paisley Park”], which was Gayle’s song, but Prince wrote most of it. I know the record company wanted the song I did to be a single, “Thrill You or Kill You.” Dez had what I thought was the coolest song on the whole project, which was “Disco Away.” Disco was still really an issue back then, and Dez was such a rock- and-roll dude with a passion. It was a play on words—“Disco Away”—“leave me alone, I want to rock-and-roll.” It was a funny song. “Thrill You or Kill You” was kind of funky with a weird disco beat. I still have the original cassette with all the tracks on it. On the cassette, there’s “Let’s Work” when it was called “Let’s Rock.” I have a bunch of stuff we did that was never released.
How did the Prince tribute go?
started singing, “Dorothy was a waitress...” It was really beautiful. It was a blessing to see that he had such amazing people, spiritually good people around him. In so many ways, it’s unbelievable. We said so many times [to each other], “We gotta hook up,” and you always think you have time. We were talking about “it’s a shame” and “we shouldn’t let so much time go by.” You think you have time. I keep trying to find scenarios where it’s not real. .
During the show, I had a bad moment. Morris [Day] showed up to open up the show and I hadn’t talked to Morris in a long time. We went through the whole catching- up thing. I was saying it really hadn’t hit me yet. We know Prince and we know him well. If there was anybody to fake this situation, [we joked] it would be him, and we started laughing. He was like, “You go back with Prince even before me.” That stuck in my head. I went out and did the first couple of songs, I think “Uptown,” and I kept thinking about what he said. I was sitting there and, all of a sudden, it hit me. When you think about Prince, he’s had so many reinventions and what finally hit me is that I went back to the dude that I knew when we were kids and I realized that dude is gone. He’s gone. I’m standing up there and tears just start coming out of my eyes. I said, “I gotta get my shit together.” I saw [singer] Kip Blackshire, who was on the show as well, and he was like, “I think you’re supposed to be out there right now.” I was like, “What?” He was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Oh shit!” They were doing [“The Ballad of] Dorothy Parker.” All of a sudden, I could hear them playing it. They were doing a flute solo. I
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( opposite ) Photo courtesy of André Cymone. ( top ) Photo by Katherine Copeland Anderson.
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