7. Prince
There’s not much that hasn’t already been said about this man, but wow… When this record came out, I was in a club in Sutton in Surrey, called Scamps, on a Tuesday night. I wasn’t old enough to be there, I think about 14 or 15 years old but tall enough to pass as 18, I had school the next morning, but I’d still go, I’d creep home at two in the morning get to bed and get up at eight for school. I couldn’t afford to drink, I couldn’t afford to get a taxi, but I’d go there and walk back home just to hear this sort of music. And there was a DJ at that time called Mark Damon, he got this record, and he announced it in the club, like "hey, there’s this new guy on the block called Prince, got a new record out, check it out", and the intro slammed in… The place went POW, and that lit the torch, it was the number one most requested record in the club for months and months and months – and of course it’s shown its longevity, because it keeps getting re-edited and being current in the clubs all over again. I mean, every Prince record is a classic of course, but because this was the first record released to the world, he was a mere slip of a lad, but this was him stamping his authority on everything, this is the one that means everything to me.
