André Cymone, Prince‘s childhood friend and original touring bass player from ’79 to ’81, is one of a very long list of Prince casualties: including Jheri Curl June veteran (yes, that’s a thing) Jesse Johnson, Mark “Brownmark” Brown, Morris Day, Vanity, and others, all of whom were pissed off at Prince just enough to leave his musical empire and go solo… only to end up making second-rate Prince music on their own, some of which was even written by the Purple One himself. On a side note, it’s eerie that all these people also happened to look like second-rate versions of Prince–with the possible exception of Brownmark, although he could arguably have passed as a chubbier version.
Anyway, before we get too far into diss territory, let me say that Cymone’s 1982 solo debut, Livin’ in the New Wave, is a freakin’ awesome album. Until I heard Livin’ in the New Wave, I had only heard unfinished bootleg versions of the Prince-authored tracks “So Fine” and “Trouble,” which gives it big Prince-nerd appeal. While it’s not a totally groundbreaking album, every song is at the least very listenable, and chock-full of interesting synthesizer blips and harmonies.

“Get It Girl,” the fifth track, is by far the best. I mean, c’mon, it has all the makings of a great song: a robot voice, ascending synth chords, and the phrase “get it girl.” The robot (because in my mind it’s an actual robot, not a vocoder) saying “can you bump, can you grind, can you jiggle it?” is the best thing I’ve ever heard. Somebody needs to sample the hell out of this one.
Listen to “Get It Girl,” and the other tracks on our playlist, on Spotify below:
Leave a Reply