From 1996 until 2008 I spent 3-4 hours damn near every weekday in The Jungle. The Jungle was (is?) a nickname for The Jim Rome Show, a syndicated sports talk radio show. From 11AM – 3PM weekdays yes, I was at work, but Rome was on my radio. I dug the slang (or gloss, as it’s called in The Jungle), the attitude, the comedy, and pretty much everything about it. It’s a long, boring story, but in 2008 I took on a different position at work. My desk moved to an area of the building where radio signal was bad and my job required me to spend a lot less time sitting there anyway. I had to quit Rome cold turkey. I’m getting to my point.
Rome always had the same music coming in and out of breaks. Guns N’ Roses “Welcome to the Jungle,” of course. Iggy Pop “Lust For Life.” Boomtown Rats “Up All Night.” Prince “Now.” Wait, what? Yes, Jim Rome was playing a Prince song every single day on his show for years and I didn’t even realize it. On the radio show they just loop the instrumental intro to the song and you don’t hear Prince’s voice or any lyrics. At some point when I started expanding my Prince listening beyond the hits and the 80’s stuff I got my hands on a CD copy of his 1995 album “The Gold Experience.” I was floored when a random album cut on a lesser known Prince album was “that song from The Jim Rome Show.”
The song itself has a banging beat and a lot of yelling/chanting for freaks to get on the floor. Prince plays all instruments, and as he always does, sneaks in a funky ass bass line. Another thing he did quite often in the 1990’s, unfortunately, was rap. He raps this entire song with mixed results. In the first verse he drops the line, “Don’t worry about my name, it’s too long to remember. I could tell you now but we’d be here ’til next September.” This is obviously in reference to Prince’s Love Symbol name. “The Gold Experience” was the first album he released under his new name. The rest of the lyrics to the song are pretty much nonsense to me. There’s not a lot of substance here. This song, in Prince’s own words, is about “freaks doin’ everything they wanna do now!”
“Now” is a fun song with a ton of energy and a dope bass line. You know by now, however, that I’m not a huge fan of Prince the rapper. I’m not giving this song a great score but would definitely include it on a party or workout mix.
mookiefantana 