One of the greatest soul voices the UK has ever produced, Mica Paris shot to fame in the late ‘80s with debut single ‘My One Temptation’ in 1988. Across the span of her sprawling career, she’s worked with the likes of Nile Rodgers, Eric B & Rakim and Boy George – but perhaps her best-known collaborative work was signing the Prince-penned ‘If I Love U 2nite’ in 1991.
Following the news that Mica features in an upcoming BBC Radio 4 documentary about Prince, we caught up with her to trace back the beginning of her working relationship with him and to find out about some exciting album projects of her own.
How are you Mica? What have you been working on recently?
I just finished an album with Rod Temperton, which I’ve been working on for two years, and I’m working on another project too. Apart from that, lots of TV and still doing the shows with my eight-piece band. Nothing’s changed – it’s just always doing 7 million things at once!
So you’ve taken part in the upcoming Radio 4 documentary about Prince. How did you first meet him?
It started off when I went to his show when I had just turned 18. I had just signed my first deal with Island and we were just about to release the first single ‘My One Temptation’. I was in the audience and he saw me and asked me – “aren’t you a singer?” – in the middle of the show. a Then he just sent the mic over to me for me to sing with him while he played ‘Just My Imagination’. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe he knew who I was! So after that I flew to Minneapolis and that was it – we started working from there.
What’s Paisley Park like? Is it true that he has every room in the building wired for impromptu recording?
Yeah he did. It’s a big place in the middle of just… green. It’s very green in Minneapolis. Where he is, it’s sort of in the countryside. There’s nothing around it; it’s just this big, big building. It’s kind of like a Pinewood [Studios] vibe, you know? Like a massive recording studio inside this huge complex. But there are other things in there. You could shoot movies in there…
How does he approach the writing and recording process?
The only thing that was unconventional was the time he turned up to meet me. I was told that he doesn’t work until four in the morning, so it was a bit out of my time zone! But it wasn’t too bad actually because I’d just flown in from London. He basically just sat down in the studio and played me all these songs and asked me which ones I liked.
What did you learn from him?
He hears things different from normal people, you know? [When we worked on] ‘If I Love U 2nite’… what was interesting was where he put the harmonies. It’s not somewhere I would put them. He’s totally non-conventional. The way he does things is completely non-conformist. Everything is outside the box. Just think of it like that. It’s great because it really stretches you. Where you would normally put something – he would not put it there. He would put it somewhere else. So that’s what I learnt from him: it’s not always about putting something where you would expect it.
I think that the most incredible thing about him is that he’s such an incredible lyricist. People don’t really talk about that as much as – ‘ah, he’s such a great musician’. He is such a great musician – but his lyrics are amazing too. I think that’s very unusual, to have someone who is multi-talented like that, who can play every instrument and kill it – but also to have the lyrical content of that level. He’s a real poet.
When I was a teenager, I was getting roasted for listening to his music, because he used to wear suspenders back then and stuff like that. And I come from a very Christian family. My grandparents were ministers, you know? So I used to have to hide to listen to this guy in suspenders! But I didn’t even care that he was weird. He was way more weird than he is now. People say now, ‘oh Prince is out there’ – Prince was out there earlier. He was even more crazy back then. The guy would come on stage just with suspenders on! Even though I was 15 at the time, I didn’t care that he looked like that. It was just the lyrics that killed me with him. The way he writes. He writes really unusually… the way he would describe love as a flower. You know what I mean? That’s what blew me away.
And I love the way that he’s got that kind of thing where you can’t define the music as soul, funk or classical or… he amalgamates all these different styles into one sound, which is definitely him. And this is why universally he is loved; because everyone can get a piece of it. It appeals to an aspect of every person, regardless of culture.
What doors did working with him open up for you?
The respect that you have from musicians that you have because you’ve worked with him… it was there even back then. People just kept going on and on – ‘how did you get to work with him’? And it’s not about how did I get to work with him – he called me and said that he wanted to work with me! I was in shock too! But he loves voices. He loves vocalists. He likes to hear big vocals.
The very first time we sat down and spoke – which was after the London gig – I bumped into him in LA in this club, and his bodyguard said he was up the other end. I didn’t even know he was there. He just said “come over there, Prince is here and he wants to say ‘hi’”. I sat down and he just said to me: “I love your voice. You’re like a baby Chaka Khan”. And I just thought that was really sweet. He didn’t have to say that. And he’s always been very supportive with what I did.
In more recent times you’ve had songs written for you by newer talents like James Morrison. Do you find you tend to get something different from songwriters who are a bit newer to the game?
Not necessarily. I think a great song is a great song – regardless of whose hands it’s written by. What’s different with the newer players is that you have a different environment which that song is in, musically. What’s really only changing musically is the style of music – the tempo and so on. That’s the only thing you’re getting with the newer guys. A great song is a great song – it just depends what outfit you’re gonna put on it.
What have you got coming up this year?
I’m working with a fantastic songwriter called Dee Adams who’s doing some really great things. She and I have been working for a year now, and I’m really enjoying working with her. We’re definitely going to be releasing something this year. I’m really excited about that. And the Rod Temperton album is a really great album, even though we’re probably not looking at releasing that here. We’re releasing that in the States, because really it’s more of an American record. So the stuff we’re looking at releasing over here is the stuff with Dee Adams.
Click here to enquire about Mica Paris via the MN2S booking agency.