Song Of The Day 4/24/2016: 94 East featuring Prince – “Just Another Sucker”

Part 2 of the Prince memorial piece is in testing right now. It'll go up shortly. In the meantime there's this. As you're no doubt aware Prince was very determined about the availability and control of his work, which is why he rescinded his catalog from streaming services and scrubbed YouTube clean of all his videos. And of course in the last couple of days there's been an uptick of "new" videos of Prince songs suddenly appearing on YouTube in very unofficial presentations. There's a seriously de-pitched version of the video for "I Wanna Be Your Lover" in chopped 'n' screwed fashion, except it's not slowed down, so it sounds like someone on cough syrup and Red Bull at the same time. It's not that fantastic. Thankfully, there's an official release that we can put up here without stepping all over somebody's lawyer, from 94 East. This was Prince's first band. It was put together by someone named Pepe Willie, who was once married to Prince's cousin. 94 East was, more or less and with utmost respect, Prince's apprenticeship. I have a hard time picturing Prince as just a sideman, but "Just Another Sucker" was the only official release on which he had a co-writing credit, with the inestimable Pepe. He's also playing drums, guitars and keyboards on this track as well, and longtime Prince cohort Andre Cymone is on the bass. 94 East's catalog was re-released in 1985 to capitalize on his surging presence on rock music's celestial mountain.