The Prince song that references James Brown
If there was a single artist who influenced the persona of Prince, it was James Brown. Brown’s iconic stage presence, featuring tireless dancing, singing, and crowd work, was the first of its kind in pop music. As Brown’s music got funkier and funkier, his approach to live performance got sharper and more refined. Everyone in Brown’s band had to be at the top of their game, with penalties and fines waiting for those who missed notes or stepped out of time.
Prince’s dedication to stagecraft wasn’t the only element that he borrowed from Brown. Sometimes, Prince would take whole sections of Brown’s work. It wasn’t uncommon for artists to sample Brown’s songs: ‘Funky Drummer’ remains one of the most spliced and stollen beats of all time. But Prince opted to go with a different, lesser-known track when he made a reference to Brown’s work in ‘Gett Off’.
‘Mother Popcorn (You Got to Have a Mother for Me)’ was a single from Brown’s 1969 album It’s a Mother. Like most of Brown’s singles at the time, ‘Mother Popcorn’ had a part one and two on both sides of the single release. Brown was leaning heavily into The Popcorn dance fad at the time, releasing songs like ‘The Popcorn’, ‘Lowdown Popcorn’, and ‘Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn’ that referenced it in quick succession. Brown’s original version of the track, ‘You Got to Have a Mother for Me’, was rejected and re-recorded with a more direct reference to the dance.
‘Mother Popcorn (You Got to Have a Mother for Me)’ was a hit for Brown, topping the Billboard R&B Singles chart and peaking at number 11 on the Hot 100. It would be Brown’s highest charting single for over a decade, with only 1985’s ‘Living in America’ peaking higher at number four. While black audiences were familiar with the track, rock audiences were largely ignorant of the song outside of live renditions by the likes of Aerosmith and The Blues Brothers.
When Prince recorded ‘Gett Off’ for his 1991 album Diamonds and Pearls, one of the lines included was directly lifted from ‘Mother Popcorn’. “I like ’em fat / I like ’em proud / You got to have a mother for me” was written by Brown, and Prince decided to make the inspiration clear by inserting the line “reminds me of something James used to say” immediately before it.
Check out both ‘Mother Popcorn’ and ‘Gett Off’ down below.
