104: I’ll Never B Another Fool

Unreleased (1995) / Come 2 My House (1998)
When Sandra St Victor gave Prince a tape of her songs for a possible collaboration she wasn’t expecting him to rework, rename and release them without her consent. That’s how her I’ll Never Open My Legs Again was laundered into Chaka Khan’s Eye’ll Never B Another Fool. Other than sharing certain lyrics the two releases bear little relation to each other but the gold is found in the space between. The version left abandoned on the alchemist’s workbench. Prince’s unreleased demo is a simpler version of the one Khan put out, yet is harder, faster, better, stronger and possibly the wrong speed (such are the pitfalls of the bootleg market) but sounding more energetic for it if so. It has a purity unconcerned by market demands. If Prince giving it the big diva vocals over a sampled Sonny T and Michael B loop is your kind of thing (and why wouldn’t it be?) then you need this leaked track in your life. Any moral doubts can easily be sidestepped by changing its title. Hey Presto it’s your track now. And it’s better than the alternative of speeding up Khan’s version and squinting your ears a bit.