Album: Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience
Year: 1991
. . .
I’ll admit that I slept on P.M. Dawn during the overstuffed musical year of 1991, partly because I was kinda overwhelmed with everything that was going on in my life, but also because I wasn’t all that wild about their one big hit, “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss,” probably because it relied heavily on a sample of another song I never really liked, Spandau Ballet’s “True.”
I’ve softened on both songs (though you won’t be seeing “True” in this blog), but when I finally went back to explore P.M. Dawn’s catalog in the wake of Jesus Wept, the song that struck me from their debut Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience was “Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine.”
I mean, that’s a fucking great song title in and of itself, but Prince Be earned the right to deploy it with his incessant chanting — neither rapping nor singing, really — over a piano-and-drums driven sample.
Reality used to be a friend of mine
Reality used to be a friend of mine
Maybe “Why?” is the question that’s on your mind
But reality used to be a friend of mine
Reality used to be a friend of mine
Reality used to be a friend of mine
Please don’t ask me cause I don’t know why
But reality used to be a friend of mine
Maybe it’s because piano is such a percussive instrument, but a lot of my favorite hip-hop songs deploy piano samples, but very few do so as well as “Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine,” so with the piano riffing and the backing vocals singing (not chanting nor rapping) “oooooh reality” as the hook, it finds its own groove, its own space, and yes, it’s own reality.
“Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine” Official Video
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