Prince's pop life, song by song, in chronological order.
With “Doves” now on deck for his next single, Prince was in the market for a suitably killer B-side–a role “17 Days” would fill with aplomb.
The mental image evoked by “Cool” was inseparable from the literal image being created around Morris Day and the Time.
If “Get It Up” was a proof of concept for the Time, then “The Stick” is the moment when their own distinct personality begins to shine through: cut from the same Minneapolis Sound cloth as Prince, but more unselfconsciously funky, with a sexuality that is less provocative than cartoonishly tongue-in-cheek.
Here, for the first time on record, was Prince playing funk in the raw, “uncut” style of Parliament and Funkadelic–or, for that matter, his former onstage rival Rick James.