“Erotic City” by Prince

"Erotic City" never got to be an A-side, and it never needed one. Prince tucked it onto the flip of "Let's Go Crazy" in 1984, shared the lead vocal with Sheila E., and handled every instrument in the credits himself: drum machine, synthesizer, bass and guitars. Years later, inducting Parliament-Funkadelic into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, he explained that he cut it straight after watching them play the Beverly Theatre in Los Angeles in 1983.

You can hear the mothership in it, only stripped down to the chassis: a lean, sticky groove that hangs somewhere between a come-on and a dare, Prince and Sheila E. circling each other over the beat. It later turned up on The Hits/The B-Sides, and in 2022 Rolling Stone put it on its list of the 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.