I recently saw it mentioned that Alexander ONeal was originally supposed to be in Morris Day's spot in The Time, but he and P disagreed about the money so Alexander ended up staying solo.

I've always loved Alexander's duets with Cherelle. This is what they sounded like back in the day: https://youtu.be/hIVzQBer0GU https://youtu.be/PnvJfRkK6oI so I went searching to find out what they'd been up to over the years. That led me to this 2013 reunion show: https://youtu.be/MlGEdO95Pf8

Wow. Is it me or are they woefully offkey and cringeworthy?

It made me sad to think that this is what such wonderful voices sound like after 30+ years of drug abuse.

So, I'm gonna have to say that considering this was P in 2013, https://youtu.be/NJwYJuV6XBY , forgive me if I feel as if the consistant quality of P's voice over nearly 40 years makes any probability of drug abuse unlikely.

Just a thought

[Edited 3/3/17 0:38am]

I'm not sure how taking pain killers always affects one's voice. That's a bit of a misnomer, isn't it? We know he took prescription pain meds. He was at Walgreens or CVS more than once picking them up. The employees have stated as much. He came in a lot to shop, and pick up a prescription. (The problem is that what killed him was not a prescription.) So let's not glaze over the truth of the matter, as horrible as it might be.

Back to the music: I thought it was fairly common knowledge that O'Neal was in The Time early on. Prince, Alexander, and a few others were at a diner (or something like that), and Alex said he wanted more money. Specifically, He wanted "more paper", and Prince nixed that idea. Morris was the drummer, and Prince put him up front as the singer. While I love The Time, I sorta wonder how it would have panned out with Alex as the lead singer. What songs would they have done then? Prince was good about fitting a song to a person's voice, so would we have had "777-9311" with Alex's gruffer voice? Or "The Walk"? We'll never know.

Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, produced his first three albums, and Jellybean Johnson, Monte Moir, and Jerome were on those albums. Jellybean even co-wrote "Criticize". Jellybean's talents go far beyond being a drummer. He's a guitarist, and plays keyboards, too. Cherelle was on some of those songs & albums, and even Lisa Keith (who was on the Jam & Lewis produced Herb Alpert Keep Your Eye On Me) made an appearance.

And even cooler note about this third record is the Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy worked on that album. They were really the Jam & Lewis of their own genre. They wrote & produced En Vogue's early records, and were previously part of Timex Social Club & Club Nouveau (with that asshole Jay King - believe me, he's a dick!). Foster & McElroy were the pioneers of New Jack Swing.

To me, Alex's records early on were almost a real reunion of The Time in many ways. Hell, even Janet had half the group in the "Control" video, and Monte wrote "The Pleasure Principle" for that album. He was on the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother a few years ago, but left the house after Perez Hilton's constant drama and negativity. I hate that Alex has fought drugs so much over the years, but that's his own journey to take.

TrivialPursuit said:

And even cooler note about this third record is the Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy worked on that album. They were really the Jam & Lewis of their own genre. They wrote & produced En Vogue's early records, and were previously part of Timex Social Club & Club Nouveau (with that asshole Jay King - believe me, he's a dick!). Foster & McElroy were the pioneers of New Jack Swing.

oh yeah...I have heard some stories about Jay King he's not a very nice person at all.We'll save that for another thread,lol.

SoulAlive said:

TrivialPursuit said:

And even cooler note about this third record is the Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy worked on that album. They were really the Jam & Lewis of their own genre. They wrote & produced En Vogue's early records, and were previously part of Timex Social Club & Club Nouveau (with that asshole Jay King - believe me, he's a dick!). Foster & McElroy were the pioneers of New Jack Swing.

oh yeah...I have heard some stories about Jay King he's not a very nice person at all.We'll save that for another thread,lol.

We can. But I will say this: I've interacted with Jay King, personally, more than once. He calls everyone a racial slur, and hides behind he's an equal opportunity offender. He's extremely homophobic, says that gays "has some female in them" and that's why men are attracted to men. It's such a 1950s flawed ideology. If you're Latino, Asian, or even a dark-skinned black - he has a name for you, too. He's a bigot, and an overall horrible guy to deal with.

LBrent said:

I recently saw it mentioned that Alexander ONeal was originally supposed to be in Morris Day's spot in The Time, but he and P disagreed about the money so Alexander ended up staying solo.

I've always loved Alexander's duets with Cherelle. This is what they sounded like back in the day: https://youtu.be/hIVzQBer0GU https://youtu.be/PnvJfRkK6oI so I went searching to find out what they'd been up to over the years. That led me to this 2013 reunion show: https://youtu.be/MlGEdO95Pf8

Wow. Is it me or are they woefully offkey and cringeworthy?

It made me sad to think that this is what such wonderful voices sound like after 30+ years of drug abuse.

So, I'm gonna have to say that considering this was P in 2013, https://youtu.be/NJwYJuV6XBY , forgive me if I feel as if the consistant quality of P's voice over nearly 40 years makes any probability of drug abuse unlikely.

Just a thought

[Edited 3/3/17 0:38am]

just one of things that don't make sense, someday we'll get more answers, most of us probably won't live long enough.

TrivialPursuit said:

I'm not sure how taking pain killers always affects one's voice. That's a bit of a misnomer, isn't it? We know he took prescription pain meds. He was at Walgreens or CVS more than once picking them up. The employees have stated as much. He came in a lot to shop, and pick up a prescription. (The problem is that what killed him was not a prescription.) So let's not glaze over the truth of the matter, as horrible as it might be.

Back to the music: I thought it was fairly common knowledge that O'Neal was in The Time early on. Prince, Alexander, and a few others were at a diner (or something like that), and Alex said he wanted more money. Specifically, He wanted "more paper", and Prince nixed that idea. Morris was the drummer, and Prince put him up front as the singer. While I love The Time, I sorta wonder how it would have panned out with Alex as the lead singer. What songs would they have done then? Prince was good about fitting a song to a person's voice, so would we have had "777-9311" with Alex's gruffer voice? Or "The Walk"? We'll never know.

Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, produced his first three albums, and Jellybean Johnson, Monte Moir, and Jerome were on those albums. Jellybean even co-wrote "Criticize". Jellybean's talents go far beyond being a drummer. He's a guitarist, and plays keyboards, too. Cherelle was on some of those songs & albums, and even Lisa Keith (who was on the Jam & Lewis produced Herb Alpert Keep Your Eye On Me) made an appearance.

And even cooler note about this third record is the Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy worked on that album. They were really the Jam & Lewis of their own genre. They wrote & produced En Vogue's early records, and were previously part of Timex Social Club & Club Nouveau (with that asshole Jay King - believe me, he's a dick!). Foster & McElroy were the pioneers of New Jack Swing.

To me, Alex's records early on were almost a real reunion of The Time in many ways. Hell, even Janet had half the group in the "Control" video, and Monte wrote "The Pleasure Principle" for that album. He was on the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother a few years ago, but left the house after Perez Hilton's constant drama and negativity. I hate that Alex has fought drugs so much over the years, but that's his own journey to take.

depends on the drug but many of them are bad for the voice, pretty much everything a person does affects the voice, which is why it takes high maintenance. Said it many times, it's not like it's something you can put in a case somewhere. Lots of singers fall off just from lack of practice and laziness. Males generally get better as they get older if they take care of the voice, just think of singers who were so so when they were young and are fantastic in their 50's and 60's. I don't know how Alexander would have worked with the time, he was a better singer but in a business that's more about image, he may not have been able to equal morris' charisma, in fact i doubt he could. None of those guys were stable though, Morris, Alexander and others around the p circle screwed themselves worse than they ever thought Prince would.