Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to Alphabet Suite, podcast for the Prince Songbook. There are hundreds of songs to choose from. You have chosen two digs.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: United for West Compton.
All right, that's not the intro, bro. All right, good.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: I got to stop laughing now, Dallasie. Look at you.
All right, so here we are again with another episode of Alphabet Suite.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: And we still haven't changed our clothes.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: Well, because we're still. Dude, it's the same day.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: How do you know?
[00:00:34] Speaker C: How do I know? Because I've been living it.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Well, let's do that.
[00:00:38] Speaker C: It doesn't matter. I got deodorant on, so what more do you need? All right. Do I need clean clothes? Do I stink?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: I don't smell you, man.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: You're good. Okay, yeah, well, I smell you.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: I can't get over my odor.
[00:00:50] Speaker C: To get to your soul, you smell like axe. The new Axe body spray.
Axe is old man body spray.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: You know that. But it's not the body spray. It's just the bathwash. I don't use the spray. I don't like that.
[00:01:04] Speaker C: Maybe you should.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Well, maybe a little stronger.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: Don't old lady it, though, because I don't want to walk through a.
Yes.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: Anyway, so this episode we are going to be discussing, two nigs United for West Compton. Am I allowed to say that as a white guy?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Did you just say that?
[00:01:25] Speaker C: Can I use that word?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: I don't know. I mean, it's the song.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: It's the song. And I'm not trying to be derogatory.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: It's all good.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: So, anyway, my kids are half mixed. Half mixed?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Half mixed.
Not what I meant to is half mixed. Dude, I meant to say.
[00:01:43] Speaker C: You meant to say your kids are half black. Half black kids that watch. Icarly.
The kids that watch.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Kids.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: The half mixed black kids that watch.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Let's get back to this.
We're all good.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: We're all good. You sure?
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Two niggs United for West Compton.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: This song almost didn't make it out because this is on. I don't know if you remember. I'm sure you do. But you out there. The whole black album. Remember the Black Album? Yeah, I know. We're going to show our age here some more.
I don't know how much more we can. But back right before Love sexy, Prince was going to. So love sexy was right after sign of the times.
And Sign of the Times is arguably one of his most critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums. It really was. It was a great album, and it was a double album, which was really daring at the time. To put that album. Anyway, after that, after he comes off that success, he was going to do this thing called the Black Album. And the Black Album was going to be just solid black. There's going to be no writing on it. There's going to be no indication of who it was, what it was. It was just going to solid black. And on the back would be the list of songs. So you wouldn't know the artist, you wouldn't know. I mean, technically, the Black Album is just what they called it. There was no name to the album, right. It was just the Black Album.
And at this time, he was hooking up with Ingrid Chavez.
I like her. Yeah, I know you do. Yeah, you had a thing for.
Now, these are just through research and stories we've heard. So, please, if we're wrong, let us know, because we don't want to mislead anyone on this. So if we start telling stories as we have heard them through the years or read on them and you're. Nope, nope, that's wrong, let us know, because we definitely do not want to mislead anyone. And Ingrid, if this is incorrect, don't sue us.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Well, one thing that's definitely correct, you were sexy.
Just know this.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Gotta have her know.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: She's got to know that.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: She may see it.
[00:04:20] Speaker C: She may be like, oh, that was nice of him.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah, look at that little fat white man. That old fat white man.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: He thought I was sexy.
So Ingrid was with them, and there was something. I can't remember specifically, but there was something going on with how she felt this album was too dark and kind of talked to him about it, and then he felt like it was more of a negative vibe and that it was evil.
And so after they had already printed up, they had already pressed everything and was getting ready to distribute it. Some of them actually did get distributed, like, overseas because they always ship them first so they can release them at the same time.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: So after they did all this, he decided to pull it. He himself, he's like, nope, I don't want that out because it's not like, I don't know if it was some evil entity that took him over to write. I don't know. I don't remember the whole story. So he himself paid Warner Brothers to destroy all the copies of this album. And then he created Love Sexy, which was a great. Which was also a great album, but it was very positive. There was a more positive energy and a more positive flow.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Totally different.
[00:05:39] Speaker C: Totally different than the Black Album. So the only song that survived from the Black album and made it to love. Sexy is when two are in love, and we'll talk about that down the road when we get to it. So this song was one of the songs on the Black Album, and it almost didn't see the light of day until.
I want to say, when was it?
Because it was finally released.
Let's see, when did it actually get released?
I had it on here.
So 1994 is when it actually got released. And it was supposed to get released in 87.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: It took a big, long wait.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: Yeah. So seven years after it was actually recorded, it finally got the official release. And I'm pretty sure it was just released to help fulfill his contract with Warner Brothers because he was fighting with them at that know, trying to get out of his contract and get the rights to his masters back and everything. So I'm pretty sure that this album was part of that. Just here, just release it as another album.
It almost didn't make it out on the market.
It's really kind of.
If you've ever listened to Prince's madhouse stuff, he had this side hustle that he did kind of in the same vein as this, where he just put it out as madhouse and didn't say he was involved in it at all.
But it's like this jazz infused funk kind of song with a lot of horns and things like that. So it's really in the same. And I think right around that time is also when the Madhouse albums were coming out.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: I think you're.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: So. Yeah, it was very jazzy, funky, enjoyable. It's enjoyable. One of my favorites. No, not really. I mean, I can take it or leave it.
As excited as I was to finally hear the Black album, I will say I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:13] Speaker C: Because all the hype that was all the hype behind it. I think you get so hyped to hear this. And I really did think that love Sexy was a better album. Oh, yeah.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: By far my favorite song is on that album.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: I know it is, and we'll talk about it. Well, you're going to leave everyone in suspense for now, though.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yes, we are.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: But there are two released versions of this song.
You got the Black album one, of course, which is studio version. And then on one night Alone Live, one of the discs is called the Aftershow, and he performed it live on there. However, according to my research, there's two unreleased versions of the song that, again, I've never heard.
I'll have to kind of go through some of my unreleased stuff that I have and see if I can find. I haven't had a chance to search for that.
So there are two unreleased versions according to what we found. And you got to remember that this research is difficult because when you're researching stuff that's unreleased, you're relying on a lot of sketchy information. Because it's people who have worked with Prince who said, hey, I saw that song, or I heard that song. Or someone who stole his music and was doing things. It was people he trusted to help keep things secure and safe that were actually coming out with this information. With a lot of it.
He did talk about some of it. People would talk about some of it. As I said before, he registered names of songs. I mean, there's other legitimate ways that some of this information got out. But a lot of the information and the songs that got out were just because from people stabbing him in the back, kind of.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: I think that probably played a lot in his way of thinking sometimes with his music and like this, my music. No, you ain't going to copy this. You ain't going to cover that kind of thing. Right.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: He was so protective of it all.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And he's Got to control so much.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: Well, he was definitely a control freak. Oh, yeah.
You look at it, he was definitely a control freak. But he made so much, and I see both sides. I do not ever think you should stab someone in the back and steal from them like that.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Never.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: However, I understand, you know, as a prince fan myself, wanting to hear what he's done, because he was a genius. And a lot of the stuff that he never released was amazing.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: So I kind of walked that line of feeling guilty for buying it, but feeling glad that I had it right. You know what I mean? It was really weird if anything good came from his passing, which, to me, I still miss the guy. I think of all the songs we'll never hear now that he won't create.
But we're starting to see the music flow out that we never got to hear before in true form. Because a lot of the quality of the bootlegs were out there was horrible.
It's not something you're going to stick into your radio, your CD player or something, and play because it's just to give you an idea of what the song sounded like.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: But now they're going through and they're mixing them and mastering them and releasing them. And so you get good versions of it. So if anything good came from his passing, it's that we're seeing what's in the vault. And he knew. I watched an interview with him one time on the View or something like that, and they asked him about his back catalog and if he was ever going to release it. He flat out said, he's like, I will never do it. However, I'm sure somebody eventually will. So he knew it was coming, right? And he wasn't mad about it. He didn't say, I don't want them to. He just said, I know someone's going to do it. So whether he was okay with it or not, he understood that this is what's going to happen. And I think as long as you respect him in the way you do it, a lot of people say, well, just by releasing it, you're not respecting them. He knew it was going to happen. He understood everything.
Anyway.
This is the first song that I was able to find that someone did something with. There is a sample of this song that someone used, and I can't remember now. I should have wrote that down.
The guys who did it, we'll put it in the notes below. You'll see. Yes.
So they didn't remake the song. They didn't cover it. They just sampled the drum beat. And when you first listen to the song, it's just music. Just like that is. It's just music, music, music.
You got to wait till the last minute of the song before you get to it, and then the whole last minute of the song is the drum beat from the last minute of two. Niggs United for West Compton. So you got to get through a lot of music.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: To get to the sample, but trust me, it's there and it's worth it.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: I enjoyed that.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: Did you enjoy that one?
[00:13:19] Speaker B: I like that.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: I was unsure of it, really? Yeah.
It's not something I would pick up to play.
If it's on, I might not change the station.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: But I don't know if I'd ever say, oh, let me listen to that version of it.
But again, maybe it'll grow on me. Who knows?
[00:13:41] Speaker B: It'll grow on you.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: It'll grow on me. Like a fungus.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah, like a.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: So, there you have it. That is our episode on Two nigs United for West Compton. Anything else you want to say?
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Not at all.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: No, you're good. You're all good. So, until next time, peace. Peace.
