Do Me, Baby

Around the same time Prince was co-opting Flyte Tyme for his project with Morris Day, he was also falling out with another of his oldest comrades: the co-founder of Grand Central and his closest musical partner, André Cymone.

André’s and Prince’s musical fates had been linked since the moment they first locked eyes in the Bryant Junior High gymnasium. Both were budding multi-instrumentalists, the children of talented jazz musicians: André’s father, Fred Anderson, used to play bass with Prince’s father, John L. Nelson. Both, too, possessed a preternatural drive far beyond their age and circumstance. “There was a sixth sense between the two of us,” Cymone told Billboard in 2016. “It’s something that doesn’t happen, I don’t think, very often where you find two people come together who are really passionate about what they do at a time when they’re both growing and learning” (Cymone 2016).

There was a sixth sense between the two of us… It’s something that doesn’t happen… very often where you find two people come together who are really passionate about what they do at a time when they’re both growing and learning.

André Cymone

Perhaps most of all, Prince and André completed each other: like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, they were two complementary halves of a singular whole. While Prince grew up in a solidly middle-class neighborhood, André came from “the other side of the tracks.” “I was a very wild kid,” he told Billboard. “I was from the projects. I was a hustler… I was always talking about we gotta do this, do that, we gotta make some money. He was more laid back” (Cymone 2016). As the pair matured, they began to look like variations on a theme, similar but distinct: André taller and more conventionally handsome, Prince shorter and slighter, a little awkward, but with a doelike prettiness. Even their birth dates were close, but different: Prince’s on June 7, 1958, André’s a mere 20 days later in the same year. They were something like fraternal twins–a bond that became almost literalized when Prince moved in with André’s family at age 14.

For those who knew them, both Prince Nelson and André Anderson seemed poised to become stars; indeed, it was often a toss-up as to which would break first. As Jim Hamilton, a veteran jazz sideman turned Central High music teacher, told Jon Bream of the Minnesota Star, “when it came to business sense, performance, and playing, I would bet ten dollars to a penny that André would be the guy to make it” (Bream 1984). Meanwhile, the two young men were as inseparable as they were laser-focused. “When he moved in, we’d sit in the kitchen and just play,” André recalled. “We spent literally hours and hours doing that” (Cymone 2016). Even after Prince got his break, André claimed, the plan was for them to share the spotlight: a kind of nonbiological Brothers Johnson, afros and all (Eveland 2014).

[W]hen it came to business sense, performance, and playing, I would bet ten dollars to a penny that André would be the guy to make it.

Jim Hamilton

But as Prince’s artistic stature continued to grow, tensions with André brewed. The latter, a talented musician and strong personality in his own right, didn’t see himself as “just” a supporting player; furthermore, he had made significant contributions to the groundbreaking musical and visual style that was now being credited to Prince alone. “We both looked similar,” he told Wax Poetics in 2012. “We dressed funky–rock and roll–and we both had that swagger like we were the baddest motherfuckers on the planet. That’s the way we carried ourselves” (Danois 2012). Many of Prince’s early sartorial innovations–the bikini underwear (with or without clear plastic pants), the trenchcoats, the eyeliner–were as much an expression of André’s personal style as his; in those days, the majority of the band’s stage costumes were designed and sewn by André’s sister, Sylvia Anderson. André also had a hand in developing, if not single-handedly writing, many of the songs advertised as “Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed by Prince”: including “I’m Yours,” “Bambi,” “Still Waiting,” “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?”, and “Uptown.”

Prince, according to his cousin and former Grand Central bandmate, Charles Smith, “depended on André. He believed in André’s ear and would often ask him his opinion. When he was writing something, he would ask André what he thought. André would go, ‘Change this’ or ‘change that,’ and Prince would do it” (Nilsen 1999 41). But Prince also depended on his reputation, established at the onset of his career, as the Next Stevie Wonder: a sui generis prodigy who could write, play, and produce it all himself. His relationship with his surrogate brother was thus increasingly calculated to limit his solo opportunities for success. Biographers Alex Hahn and Laura Tiebert recount a story from around 1980, when André “expressed interest in setting up his own studio to work on songs.” Prince, instead, offered for André to come over and use his own home studio. “This seemingly generous gesture,” they write, “allowed Prince to keep physical custody of André’s music.” When André finally came back for his demos, Prince told him he had “accidentally” erased the tape (Hahn 2017).

[Prince] depended on André. He believed in André’s ear and would often ask him his opinion. When he was writing something, he would ask André what he thought. André would go, ‘Change this’ or ‘change that,’ and Prince would do it.

Charles Smith

The final straw, according to many of Prince’s and André’s associates, came when the former decided to dig up a song the latter had written back in 1978. “Do Me, Baby” originated from the pair’s February 1978 session with Pepé Willie at Music Farm Studios in New York City: the same date that produced 94 East’s “If You Feel Like Dancin’” and “One Man Jam,” as well as early versions of André’s “Thrill You or Kill You” and Prince’s “I Feel for You” and “With You.” Like the rest of the songs recorded that day, both Prince and André played on “Do Me”; but its authorship was unambiguously Cymone’s. “I had written it for a girlfriend,” he recalled on the Dr. Funk Podcast, and had “forgot about the song” by the time he heard it again at a band rehearsal–introduced as a new composition by Prince (Funkenberry 2017).

“André called me up on that song,” Willie told biographer Dave Hill. “He said, ‘Hey, you remember I did it in New York?’ I said, ‘What, the slow jam?’ He said, ‘Yeah, well, Prince has taken it for his album’” (Hill 38). In fact, he’d almost taken it even earlier, for an entirely different album. In October 2021, the Prince Estate released an early “demo” version of “Do Me,” dating back to the Prince album sessions at Los Angeles’ Alpha Studios in April 1979. According to the press release, Prince had “fully reimagined the track as a solo recording”–a contention for which we’re going to have to take their word, at least until such a time as the 1978 version leaks. For now, though, I’ll just say I doubt Cymone would have described it in quite the same way.

Besides, the sticking point for André seemingly wasn’t about Prince’s appropriation of the song in itself. This was, after all, not the first time his friend had borrowed his licks; and it’s not as though “Do Me” was a wildly original composition in the first place–the chord progression, as others have observed, bears more than a passing resemblance to both “Frantic Moment,” from the 1977 solo album by Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel, and Aretha Franklin’s 1973 ballad “Angel.” What appears to have cut much deeper was Prince’s increasingly dismissive attitude toward his closest friend. Terry Jackson, another mutual friend from the Grand Central days, told Hahn and Tiebert that Cymone confronted Prince the first time he heard “Do Me” in rehearsal, asking, “Why are you doing this, man?” Prince simply replied, “Because I’m a star and you’re not” (Hahn 2017).

André called me up… He said, ‘Hey, you remember I did [“Do Me, Baby”] in New York?’ I said, ‘What, the slow jam?’ He said, ‘Yeah, well, Prince has taken it for his album.’

Pepé Willie

To be clear, this part of my analysis is pure speculation; but I wonder if part of what rankled Cymone was that, on some level, he knew Prince was right. André Cymone was and is an undeniable talent: a highly skilled songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who played an integral role in developing, popularizing, and innovating the Minneapolis Sound. But he didn’t have the intangible “It”-factor that would soon make Prince not just a star, but a superstar.

The version of “Do Me” recorded during the Prince sessions is, I’d argue, well within its original writer’s range. It’s a lushly-arranged slow jam with a gorgeous melody and a simple, indelibly sexy bassline that belies its origins as a track written by a bass player; easily a stronger ballad than “With You,” and toe to toe with “When We’re Dancing Close and Slow” in terms of craft, if not atmosphere. But the version released on Controversy, which Prince tracked at his Kiowa Trail home studio and then completed at Sunset Sound in August of 1981, is a different story altogether. Prince’s vocal performance propels the song into a whole new stratosphere: his mellifluous falsetto wrapping around the words, shifting back and forth between a fey whimper and a full-on gospel scream. Speaking as a fan of André Cymone’s solo work, if he’s ever sung like this, I must have missed it.

There is also a magnetically eccentric streak to the album version of “Do Me” that, while not absent from Cymone’s work, was never indulged to the same extent. After the song reaches its, ahem, climax–right around the point when the radio version is fading out–the mix pares back to just bass, drums, and piano, leaving plenty of room for Prince’s heavy breathing. “You ain’t leaving me no choice,” he sighs, his breaths becoming even more suggestive. “What are you gonna do, you just gonna sit there and watch?” A few measures later, he’s still at it, announcing that he’s “not gonna stop until the war is over.” The song finally ends at just under eight minutes, when Prince reaches an impressively authentic-sounding orgasm and murmurs, “I’m so cold… just hold me,” his trembling voice awash in a post-coital synthesizer haze.

“Do Me” wasn’t the first piece of aural erotica to reach the American charts–that barrier had been broken in the previous decade, by disco hits like Donna Summer’s epochal “Love to Love You Baby” and “More, More, More” by porn star-turned-professional-moaner Andrea True. But those songs, however suggestive, had stayed within the realm of plausible deniability; in contrast, there’s no question what Prince is doing at the end of “Do Me.” Indeed, the artist took pains to sell the idea that he was literally masturbating in the studio: in his liner notes for his 1993 compilation The Hits, he recalled his vocal overdubs on the track as “the 1st time Prince turned the control room into a bedroom. Candles were lit, chiffon veils were hung and all the doors were locked” (Dash 2016). True or not, it’s an easy story to believe after listening to the second half of the song.

[T]he 1st time [I] turned the control room into a bedroom. Candles were lit, chiffon veils were hung and all the doors were locked.

Prince

And it was that second half that made “Do Me” a signature track for Prince. The ballad was a centerpiece of his live sets for years, from the Controversy tour all the way through the ’90s. Early performances in particular replicated the album version’s slow burn, with Prince disrobing to the waist and unbuttoning his pants for the end-of-song breakdown; in other words, it became a striptease rather than a porno. But it was still plenty effective: for proof, just watch the video above, and listen to the crowd at New Jersey’s Capitol Theatre squeal. By early 1982, “Do Me” had become the ultimate vehicle for Prince’s mission to, as guitarist Dez Dickerson recalled, “portray pure sex” (Dickerson 62).

Decades later, in his unfinished memoir, the artist himself would go further still, writing, “Everybody can point 2 at least one song that is ‘their jam’ & nobody else’s. The 1st time [eye] knew [eye] had written [one] of those jams was ‘Do Me, Baby,’ a song whose intro made me feel the same way [eye] felt the 1st time [eye] heard ‘Sweet Thing’ by Rufus featuring Chaka Khan” (Prince 2019 113). Given the timing of these comments–he wrote them in early 2016, not long after Cymone began receiving credit as a co-writer of “Do Me” on streaming services–it’s hard not to read them as a pointed message to his erstwhile collaborator.

Everybody can point 2 at least one song that is ‘their jam’ & nobody else’s. The 1st time [eye] knew [eye] had written [one] of those jams was ‘Do Me, Baby.’

Prince

It’s ironic, but not unbelievable, that a song so central to Prince’s mystique–“[his] jam & nobody else’s”–was actually written by someone else. After all, as anyone who’s heard his covers of modern rock hits like Radiohead’s “Creep” and the Foo Fighters’ “Best of You” can attest, Prince could be as astonishing an interpreter of other artists’ work as his own. And, while Cymone’s demo may never see the light of day, we already have access to a version of “Do Me” without Prince’s touch: the cover by Meli’sa Morgan, which topped the Billboard R&B charts in 1986. Like the original, Morgan’s cover is tailor-made for the “Quiet Storm” R&B radio format, which by 1986 had become more codified than it was in 1981: all tinkly keyboards, soft-muted guitar plucking, and cavernous processed drums. It’s a fine interpretation, and it has its supporters; but it lacks the frisson, the electric sexual charge, that Prince brought to his version.

In purely Machiavellian terms, Prince made the right decision by wresting “Do Me” from its creator; he’d make plenty of variations on that same decision in the future, all more or less artistically (if not ethically) justifiable. What’s harder to defend is his decision to claim full credit for the song: not sharing the songwriting credit, like he did with Carole Davis for “Slow Love”; or giving credit for the arrangement, like he did with David Z for “Kiss“; or even paying Cymone under the table, like he did with Morris Day for “Partyup.” There is, as always, the excuse that he felt pressured to hoard the authorship for his songs, having expended so much energy promoting himself as a one-man music machine. But that doesn’t explain why, for years, he made no effort to compensate Cymone for his work behind the scenes–even, presumably, pocketing the publishing royalties from Morgan’s aforementioned cover version. This, combined with the story of Cymone’s erased demos, suggests that Prince’s motivations were more spiteful than merely pragmatic.

In any case, by the time Prince released “Do Me,” André had long since departed the band. He’d made the decision to leave in early 1981–“Right before we did Saturday Night Live,” he told podcaster Dr. Funkenberry–but stayed on board for the short European leg of the Dirty Mind tour “out of friendship.” He left, he recalled, because he felt like he was losing his identity: “Because we were so close, and… I feel like there was a lot of me in what was going on at the time” (Funkenberry 2017).

These days, Cymone is philosophical about his sometimes vexed relationship with Prince. “We literally saw each other every day for maybe 4-5 years straight before all the fame,” he told Billboard in the wake of his old friend’s death. “When you have that kind of a closeness, you kind of know what the other person is thinking without even having to speak. And when you start talking about music, it’s the same thing. There are gigs and pictures where I’m playing the bottom end of the bass and he’s playing the finger board; that doesn’t really work unless you’re really on the same page” (Cymone 2016).

That closeness would, of course, be the undoing of their professional relationship; but, as he told podcaster Michael Dean, “we came up together… we inspired each other, we lived in the same house, we used to bounce ideas off each other; so when people would say things like, ‘You know, I know André wrote this song’ and ‘I know André wrote that song’… I wasn’t looking at it like I ripped Prince off or he ripped me off or whatever… I just think that, you can’t take credit for something when everybody’s in there, you know, cookin’ the same dish” (Dean 2016).

When you have that kind of a closeness, you kind of know what the other person is thinking without even having to speak. And when you start talking about music, it’s the same thing. There are gigs and pictures where I’m playing the bottom end of the bass and he’s playing the finger board; that doesn’t really work unless you’re really on the same page.

André Cymone

Like many other former collaborators, Cymone reemerged in the public eye after Prince’s death in April 2016, paying tribute to his departed friend alongside first the Revolution, then the early ’90s lineup of the New Power Generation. There’s a great video (above) of him at the 2016 Minnesota State Fair, playing his and Prince’s songs and talking to Andrea Swensson from Minneapolis’ public radio station the Current. It’s intriguing, however, that of the songs he plays–“Sometimes It Snows in April,” “Little Red Corvette,” “When You Were Mine”–only one comes from his tenure with Prince. “Do Me” is not on the setlist.

(This post has been updated to reflect the 2021 release of Prince’s previously-unknown 1979 recording of “Do Me, Baby.” Also, while I didn’t think there was enough difference from his past comments to warrant updating them here, I highly recommend Cymone’s recent interview with Sean McPherson of the Current on the 40th anniversary of Controversy. I hope that what I’ve written here captures at least some of the nuance he expresses about the song’s authorship… and, André, if you ever want to set the record straight with me personally, my door is open!)

“Do Me, Baby”
(“Demo,” 1979)
Spotify / TIDAL

“Do Me, Baby”
(Controversy, 1981)
Electric Fetus / Spotify / TIDAL

“Do Me Baby”
(Mel’isa Morgan, 1986)
Electric Fetus / Spotify / TIDAL