Jungle Love - 45 Version

This funk classic is not subtle. The singer is letting a girl know that he's not one of those nice guys, but he's a little bit dangerous and wants to have some fun. The animal sounds add to the jungle atmosphere.

The Time was put together by Prince, and included Minneapolis musicians Morris Day, Jesse Johnson, Jimmy "Jam" Harris and Terry Lewis. The group released two albums before Ice Cream Castle, and they broke up shortly after "Jungle Love" was released. It's unclear how much each group member contributed to this song and how much involvement Prince had in it, but Prince, Morris Day and Jesse Johnson are the credited writers, and Day is listed as a producer on the album. Johnson claimed that Prince screwed him out of a production credit, telling NME in 1986: "Prince is such an a--hole. He's so scared of people rising to his level that he always tries to keep you down, don't never let you do nothing. He only let me write and produce on the last Time album 'cos he knew I was quitting, and when I quit anyway he took my production credit off. I wrote, played and produced stuff like 'Jungle Love,' that's MY sound." Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis weren't part of the album but went on to become one of the most successful songwriting/production teams in music. The group reunited in 1990 and had a hit with "Jerk Out."

This song is typical of the "Minneapolis Sound," which was popular in the mid to late '80s. In his NME interview, Jesse Johnson explained: "The Minneapolis 'sound' thing is bulls--t, it's just a load of bands who've moved here and are trying to sound like Dirty Mind and the early Time albums. The record companies still fall for it, but the whole point of the Time or Prince was that we went against the grain, sexually in Prince's case, musically in ours. Our music was naked, we avoided all the popular effects, sounded old really. We did anything anyone else would hate." You know who fell for it? Paula Abdul. When she got a record deal, she went looking for this "Minneapolis Sound" and found it in Oliver Leiber, an unknown producer/songwriter who moved there to be part of the scene. Check out our interview with Leiber for the full story.