255: Johnny

Goldnigga (1993)
This live favourite is a ten minute slow funk jam that fills the oceanic space between its two rap verses with a smorgasbord of background chatter, call and response shouts, an ode to safe sex and even a borrowed chorus from the same album’s A Deuce and a Quarter, all lovingly wrapped up in a blanket of receptive crowd noise. If you wade past the first minute of scripted skittage, Johnny begins to feel very organic, an after-show vibe preserved in CD amber. The title’s another dick euphemism but one the whole family can sing along to. Prince later regretted the “NPG in the motherfuckin’ house” chants though, once retaliating “We ain’t doing nothing to nobody’s momma!” Try as he might, that genie wasn’t going back into the bottle.