Who's imitating who? On Cloreen, Prince is doing that dirty voice...on Tricky, Morris does the same voice...it's hard to tell the difference...Hell...Even Sheila E. does the voice...It's like a funky demon takes over...I love to hear it...But who did it first? Prince or Morris?

actually, on tricky morris just did the opening. once the beat started that was prince as well.

~Oh lawd~

WHAT?? U mean to tell me that it's Prince on "Tricky" doing all of the trash talkin' ? Just like on Cloreen Baconskin? Damn..This whole time I thought it was Morris on Tricky...I gotta listen to those cuts again.

I think Prince came up with the whole Morris Day voice and vocal stylings. He wrote all the Time stuff and listening to demos like Movie Star he wrote as his alter ego, Morris, then Morris did it. Quite the side project, I wish he would do ore side projects these days.

An author named Jon Bream wrote a book about "Prince".. I think it's called "Inside the Purple Reign" or something like that; this book came out in 1985 I believe..

In this book, Bream describes how Prince- back in high school- often did impersonations of movie stars, etc.
1 voice he apparently imitated was that of Bela Lugosi, a film actor from the 50s who did several horror & b-movie type flicks.

"Prince" apparently developed this voice into what can be heard in songs like "Baconskin" "Tricky" as well as his versions of "Do yourself a favor" ("I'll kick yo' ass!")& "Chocolate" ("mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas..")

It's very likely that to give Morris a little more of a "stage personality" after the 1st Time album, Prince &/or Morris decided to have him do a "toned down" variation of this Lugosi voice/Prince personna. Morris himself, in a song from his 1st solo album "Color of success" called "Character" describes how he never was this skwawking, cackling character that many thought him to be, this variation that developed from the Lugosi imitation.

As further proof, watch the video "Under the cherry moon."
During that early scene when that girl comes to collect the rent that the Prince & Jerome characters don't have, the Jerome character implores the Prince character to do his Bela Lugosi voice.. which the Prince character does- WITH the exagerated facial expressions. The way "Prince" does this voice characterization is basically the same voice he did on "Baconskin" et al.

"Baconskin" by the way, is probably the funniest "Prince" song I've ever heard..!