Morris Day believes Prince would not approve of recent releases from his vault: “I know he never intended for a lot of this stuff to be heard”

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ABC/Randy Holmes

Few people knew Prince better than Morris Day, and the leader of The Time says the Minneapolis icon would have objected to some of the releases from his vault following his death.

“They’re putting a lot of private moments out now that would never see the light of day,” Day tells Billboard. “I know he never intended for a lot of this stuff to be heard.”

Prince died in April 2016, and there have been many posthumous music releases, including the Originals album, which dropped last June on what would have been his 61st birthday. 

Morris and Prince met as teenagers growing up in Minneapolis, and they produced The Time’s self-titled 1981 album. The group signed a recording contract solely on the success of their first single.

“We got a deal sight unseen, based on ‘Get It Up,’ and we didn’t really have a band at the time,” Day recalls. 

The Time became very successful under Prince’s guidance, and appeared in the classic movie Purple Rain. Day says their mentor made all the decisions for them.

“He just wanted to be in control,” Morris recalls. “I was getting offers to produce other people and everything was getting squashed. It put us in a situation where [members of The Time] couldn’t get out there and make the kind of money we could potentially have made because we were being controlled so much.”

However, Day says he misses that control when he attempts to record music with other musicians without the man who discovered him.

“[Prince] would p*** us off at times, but it kept the egos at a minimum,” he says. “Now it’s tough to get stuff done without too much drama.”

Day tells the story of his career in his new autobiography, On Time: A Princely Life in Funk.

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