Revisiting the debut of Prince's 'Cause and Effect'
February 26, 2018
Back in early 2010, The Current was fully spellbound connecting with Prince. Having welcomed Prince to our 5th birthday party, Prince's team reached out to us to debut a song, "Cause and Effect" on February 26, 2010.
"Prince has some new unreleased music and he'd like to know what you think of it."
That is one sentence you never expect to hear when you pick up your phone. But that's what happened to program Director Jim McGuinn in 2010 when Prince's rep called to say that Prince had been busy in the studio and wanted to extend his love for 89.3 The Current by giving us a new exclusive song to play.
A lot about the song remains unknown. According to the crowd-sourced website PrinceVault.com:
While specific recording dates are not known, it is assumed to have been recorded in early 2010 at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The song includes a repeated sample of Prince shouting "I am here... Where are you?" taken from his second 2009 Montreux Jazz Festival show, 18 July 2009.
The song made the set list frequently during the Live Out Loud tour of 2013, but never appeared on a physical album and was only availble for streaming on the (now defunct) lotusflow3r.com website.
The reactions by the Purple Army were decidedly mixed on the new song.
We were lucky to have built the beginning of a relationship, as Jim McGuinn got an invite to visit Paisley Park just a few months later.