The Point in the Video for "Party All the Time" That Rick James Agonizes Over, Then Celebrates, Eddie Murphy Holding a Note

Personnel has been introduced. Niceties have been exchanged. The force field inside the recording studio pulses with geniality and generosity as the young man who rescued Saturday Night Live from the brink of irrelevance kindly, but nervously, receives a soon-to-be hero’s welcome.

Rick James, the producer of the session, is happy and hopeful on the surface, too. But he knows the stakes. And no matter what combination of beneficence and creative anxiety alchemizes the session into Hot 100 gold, James fusses secretly inside: 

The Note is coming.

James knows The Note is imminent. He wrote it. It punctuates the second and final chorus of “Party All the Time,” the composition this assemblage has gathered to record today. It’s not just another dot and stem hanging on the stave. It is the climax: A single word, “time,” extended over four measures.

It is this Note that the success of the song hinges upon. Before it, Murphy will sing of his frustration with his romantic partner, who has flouted his entreaties of material goods and directed affection in favor of a lifestyle of nightclub revelry.

Murphy, or rather his character, is disappointed, to say the least. Why is she drawn to the ephemeral pneuma of the madding crowd? Does she find his wooing efforts too transactional? Or does she heedlessly dwell amongst the neon bouquet in avoidance of a more settled life?

The Note is the fulmination of Murphy’s frustration: The word “time” stretched out over parcels of inner turmoil. In fact, its proposed length and sustenance reinforces the notion of time itself. It is Murphy’s realization of the consumptive nature of eternalism, that time can breach its quantitative constructs — no longer merely a census of sequence, but a chassis for anguish Murphy fears he cannot disassemble.

To sum up, Eddie Murphy must nail this Note.

Perhaps the recording engineers sense Rick James’s angst, but they’re professionals. While not artless technicians, they are charged with ensuring the dials and faders are calibrated to capture The Note if and when it arrives. No, the emotional burden The Note confers is James’s onus, and James’s alone.

Indeed, for the first two minutes and forty-seven seconds of the video, there is no visible sign of The Note’s impendence. The audio engineers, backup musicians, and background singers perform san souci, free of any worry other than professional competence. They betray no knowledge of any portent, or of James’s disguised apprehension (does he deny it too?).

But then, at the 2:47 mark, begins a 20-second play-within-a-play that changes the trajectory of an entire afternoon.

The Note is close at hand. For a split-second, James seems to acknowledge its looming entry. 

These are the eyes of a man coming face to face with the giant he himself has fashioned. Will it be a benevolent giant, like the Sukhama-sukhamā from Jain mythology, or Medieval Europe’s grisly, disfigured basilisk? James doesn’t know. Or if he does, he understands the force will be too immense to stop. Fortune favors not just the bold, but also the pragmatic.

Murphy approaches The Note. He is just a few supportive notes ahead of it, when James suddenly becomes aware of its place at the doorstep.

It is as if James has received a pre-Note confirmation, not a presage, that transcendence will happen, that what has only been a theoretical, best-case scenario is about to take place. He has been welcomed underneath the comforting shroud of certainty, as his fears and trepidation fall from his emotional frame like canned goods in an earthquake. He knows, after this one moment of loud volume, peace will govern.

Murphy hits The Note. In a quick glance as the scene dissolves to Murphy’s feat, we see James in full rapture, his ambitions substantiated in the most cantabile way possible.

Murphy, ever the bodhisattva, then delivers the moment of grace:

“Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime, yeah!”

James, predictably, is overcome. He tosses a few sheets of paper around the studio in exhilaration. 

What need has he of prescribed rules and performance notes? Magic has seized the proceedings, defying the dogma of written plans and contingencies. The visitation has occurred. Qualms negated, dreams lucid, sanctification accomplished.

James recovers from the euphoria and regains his assured mien. He strolls victoriously out of the control room and into the performance space, realizing this triumph belongs to Murphy as well, and lip-synchs his pre-recorded background vocal, his elated muse at his side.

The party commences. Time is vanquished.