The Family

With Morris Day and Jesse Johnson having left The Time in 1984, Prince decided to take the remaining members of the band, Jellybean, Jerome and St. Paul, and form a new band for them. Eric Leeds, in his first prominent role within Prince's camp, also joined the band and Susannah Melvoin, Wendy's twin sister and Prince's long-time girlfriend, were also added to the line-up. This new band, like The Time, was primarily a Prince curated project, with the majority of the songs written and recorded by him, only to have vocals and other embellishments added later. This group was named The Family, and their self-titled album is recognized as one of the best Prince side-projects released.

Sadly, The Family, like many other projects for Prince, was short-lived, playing only one show, releasing only one single, and having only one album. St. Paul left after the band disintegrated, much to Prince's disdain, to begin his solo career, Jerome was briefly integrated into the Revolution, which earned him a major role in Under The Cherry Moon, and Eric Leeds became a regular Prince collaborator.

What most people immediately tie The Family to is Nothing Compares 2 U, Prince's wonderful ballad which was so exquisitely rendered by Sinéad O'Connor. The album stands on it's own though, with Clare Fischer's lush orchestrations, St. Paul's strong lead vocals and Prince's thorough production. The quality of these songs is so great they all could have been released as standard Prince tracks, and to drive that point home there are rough mixes of most of the album in circulation with Prince on lead vocals. If you compare the roughs to the finished recordings, it becomes clear that St. Paul is purely aping Prince's vocal performance, much in the way that Morris and just about every other Prince protege has ended up doing. That's not a bad thing though, as some of Prince's alternate vocalists are better than others, and St. Paul is rather good, capturing Prince's vibe excellently.

The Family's one single, The Screams Of Passion, pops it's head up every once in a while and appeared on the Prince curated soundtrack to Spike Lee's Girl 6, but otherwise their material has languished in obscurity lacking a reissue. With that said, I present to you The Family's sole album in lossless FLAC and MP3 V0 formats. Grab this, burn it to a CD and go driving around your neighborhood imagining it's 1985 all over again!


The Family

FLAC Part 1

FLAC Part 2

MP3 V0


01 High Fashion
02 Mutiny
03 The Screams Of Passion
04 Yes
05 River Run Dry
06 Nothing Compares 2 U
07 Susannah's Pajamas
08 Desire


PS - The wikipedia page for the album gives a nice rundown of who the tracks were credited as written by, but in reality all songs were written by Prince except River Run Dry which was a Bobby Z. composition. Also, if you'd like to see the art for the album, follow this link to a discogs reference with just about everything you could want scanned in very nicely.