Album dossier / 1982

1999

Prince · Funk/Pop

Prince built 1999 around the Linn LM-1 drum machine, an obscure $5,000 unit he had customized so heavily -- detuning its stock sounds, running its individual outputs through guitar pedals -- that engineer Roger Linn himself said even close collaborators couldn't fully explain how Prince got such unusual tones from it. The title track and "Little Red Corvette" were both recorded the same day, July 1982, at Prince's own Kiowa Trail home studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota, with engineer Peggy McCreary, before mixing at Sunset Sound in Hollywood; "Little Red Corvette" reportedly grew out of a dream Prince had while sleeping in bandmate Lisa Coleman's pink Mercury Montclair. A sprawling, synth-and-drum-machine-heavy double LP that the Rolling Stone Album Guide later called his most influential record for codifying the "Minneapolis sound," 1999 gave Prince his first Billboard top-10 album and set the stage directly for Purple Rain two years later.