When it comes to Prince protégé bands there’s The Time, Vanity 6 (also Apollonia 6), The Family, and then there’s the great purple one’s often overlooked funk rock new wave project known as Mazarati.
With The Revolution’s bassist Brownmark as the producer of their first album, Mazarati’s roster included Sir Casey Terry on lead vocals, Jerome “Romeo” Cox on bass, Craig “Screamer” Powell on lead guitar, Tony Christian (aka Bruce DeShazer) on rhythm guitar, Kevin Patricks on drums, as well as Marr Starr (aka OneGunn) and Aaron Paul Keith on keyboards.
From 1986 to 19889, Mazarati was a blip on the Prince protégé map with their most notable song “100 MPH” written and co-produced by Prince.
Their self-titled debut was followed up with a second album at Motown but that was it for Prince’s new wave glam septet.
And we may have not had the current version of Prince’s iconic “Kiss” if it weren’t for Mazarati. Prince offered the band the song and they reworked it into a dope demo. So dope Prince ended up taking it back.
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