djzyonsevenLet’s start this journey at the very beginning…
The first album I ever bought with my own money. When I tell you I saved every single dime of my chore money to get it, I mean I was out here grinding like that little paycheck was about to change my whole destiny.
And honestly… it did.
I walked into that record store with one mission:
Prince. Purple Rain.
That was the moment my ears woke up, my imagination cracked open, and music stopped being just “background noise” and became the blueprint of who I was about to become.
But you know me, I wasn’t leaving with just one thing in my bag.
Nah, I was already building the catalog.
I grabbed some 45s too:
The Pointer Sisters, “Jump (For My Love)”
Chaka freakin’ Khan, “I Feel for You”
Talk about a starter pack.
A young DJ in the making and didn’t even know it yet.
Quick trivia:
Prince first conceived “Purple Rain” with a country feel before The Revolution helped shape it into the towering soul anthem we know now. Even people close to the song have described its early form as a “country” or “little country tune” before it bloomed into something far bigger.“I Feel for You” was Prince’s song first. He wrote it and recorded the original on his 1979 Prince album years before Chaka Khan turned it into a pop-R&B earthquake. Her version didn’t just cover it.
It reinvented it.“Automatic” helped push robotic, synth-heavy R&B deeper into the mainstream in 1984. It wasn’t the first song to use that sound, but its icy groove, machine-like pulse, and Ruth Pointer’s deep lead vocal made it one of the era’s signature records.
