The Time - Corporate World

During the early stages of Graffiti Bridge, Prince decided to get Morris Day back in the picture with the intention of including The Time in the film, at least in name. Morris and Prince proceeded to record an album of new Time songs and named it Corporate World. Warner Bros., being the people funding the Graffiti Bridge project, wisely decided that Morris' presence wasn't nearly enough to constitute a Time reunion and they wouldn't proceed unless a full-blown, legitimate reunion were to occur. With that, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Jesse Johnson, Monte Moir and Jellybean Johnson were brought back in the fold and it was decided that the songs recorded for Corporate World that appeared in the film would be relegated to the soundtrack album with the rest of the songs either appearing alongside newly written and recorded pieces or shelved altogether.

The reunited Time album, Pandemonium, would be half written and completed by The Time themselves, with the other half being Prince produced and primarily created. Technically speaking, this is the closest The Time ever came to recording a proper album of their own performances, as the majority of their first three albums are simply Prince and Morris in the studio. It's a pretty great effort, but it's no surprise that it doesn't sound like a traditional Time album, what with Prince's presence diminished, whereas Corporate World sounds more like a Prince album built around Morris' image and personality. It's pretty great too, with four unreleased tracks, a number of alternate versions and only one track unchanged from its final release. The big items of note are the wonderful Murph Drag, an upbeat number about a dance only people with money can do, 9 Lives, a slower groover initially intended for Prince-protege, Cat, and finally the title track, an ode to reinvesting in the community and improving the world. There is also a completely different recording of The Latest Fashion, done instead as Morris telling a deceitful lover "what time it is" to a Prince-stylized version of a James Brown rhythm. The rest of the songs are relatively unchanged from their released versions with Release It remaining identical to the version on the Graffiti Bridge album.

Corporate World would have been a worthy album for release, although the majority of it has seen the light of day. Even Murph Drag received a pseudo-release as part of a radio show Prince held for the NPG Music Club. That said, it was replaced by the superior Pandemonium so you can't say it remains unreleased for a dumb reason like so much of Prince's vault recordings does. What I wouldn't give for the keys to that big door, and not only would you find racks of unreleased Prince songs, you'd find even more unreleased Time material. Hopefully one day we'll get to hear those recordings too.


The Time - Corporate World

FLAC, Part 1
FLAC, Part 2
V0 MP3

01 Murph Drag
02 Nine Lives
03 Donald Trump (Black Version)
04 Love Machine
05 Data Bank
06 Shake!
07 Corporate World
08 The Latest Fashion
09 Release It
10 My Summertime Thang
11 My Summertime Thang (Remix)