?uestlove Picks His 10 Favorite Prince Jams

?uestlove Picks His 10 Favorite Prince Jams

via rollingstone.com

The latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is called The Playlist Issue. “50 top musicians create virtual playlists on the music they love most,” The list includes Roots-drummer extraordinaire ?uestlove. In fact, Rolling Stone says:

“The new issue of Rolling Stone—the Playlist Issue—started with an idea from Roots drummer ?uestlove. We asked him to tell us his favorite songs, but he said he wanted to go deeper. “In my eyes, what defines a true artist is their filler,” he said. “I happen to like the Stevie Wonder songs that aren’t hits. I can say the same thing for Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Prince’s hits are like a red carpet that he lays out to lead you to the good stuff.”

So who does ?uestlove dig for a rotation on his iPod, you guessed it Prince. As extra credit at which concert(s) did ?uestlove perform with his Royal Badness ?

1. “Baby I’m a Star” (Live from Landover, Maryland, Purple Rain tour) 1984 – His “James Brown on The T.A.M.I. Show doing ‘Night Train’ ” moment. He’s the best bandleader of his generation — and if I ever need to prove that to someone, this is my surefire crash course.

2. “Movie Star” 1986 – Prince’s best display of humor, quirkiness, self-mockery and a dash of funk. This was originally a demo intended for the Time, but I can’t see Morris Day waxing poetic about potato chips like this.

3. “Irresistible Bitch” 1983 “Tricky” 1984 “Cloreen Bacon Skin” 1983 – A three-way tie between songs that share DNA: funky drums and a bass line in the key of A. No way I could separate ‘em.

4. “Little Red Corvette” (12-inch extended version) 1983 – A major face-lift: Prince transforms the song into this sweaty funk-out and — sorry, Diddy! — invents the remix.

5. “Lady Cab Driver” 1982 – 1999 was the kind of album where you couldn’t just bite one chip, and this was the mightiest chip.

6. “The Bird” (Rehearsal demo) 1983 – I’m certain Prince would be chagrined by this list of hard-to-find classics (in his eyes: illegal), but practicing and absorbing this song has shaped many a musician’s life, including mine — it was all the college I needed. He builds a groove here from the ground up, note by note. This one shows that even the smallest detail is crucial to a song.

7. “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” 1987 – If Graham Central Station’s Release Yourself and Joni Mitchell’s Hissing of Summer Lawns fell in love, got married and had a baby.

8. “The Sex of It” (Demo for Kid Creole and the Coconuts) 1987 – Our hero reflects on his dead-end relationship, feeling like a used piece of meat — but don’t cue the strings, because we’d all love for women to just want us “for the sex!” This brings his vulnerability to light.

9. “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” 1983 – A bare-bones song that shows off his gospel side (the piano), his soul side (the falsetto) and his jazz side (the way he phrases his ad-libs toward the song’s fade-out). This song has wound up on every mope/breakup mix I ever made.

10. “Erotic City” 1984 – This is one of his most popular B sides. It’s his ode to P-Funk, and it makes for the perfect counterbalance to its A side, “Let’s Go Crazy.” It also marks the beginning of him singing as a helium-voiced female character named Camille.

That's one funky list now class dismissed ! For homework go dig out your Maryland boot and check out Baby I'm A Star, those who do will get an A+ from the 4riction school of cool.