Trivia / The Time

• Breakup Breakout: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are probably better known for their decades as hitmaking producers and songwriters than as members of The Time. The duo wrote 16 Billboard Hot 100 #1 hits, while Prince only wrote six (five of his own, plus Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U".) The duo's biggest success? Janet Jackson.
• Chart Displacement: "Jerk Out" was The Time's highest charting pop single, reaching #6, but it's far less known than the group's signature track "Jungle Love", which topped out at #20. Averted on the R&B charts, where they had multiple top ten entries.
• Throw It In!: Jerome Benton was acting as a roadie in various capacities for the Time during their early rehearsal. When Morris sang the lyric "Somebody get me a mirror", Jerome grabbed a large brass mirror off the wall and held it up for Morris to primp with as a joke. Prince loved it so much he demanded they replicate it on stage and hired Jerome on the spot as a hype man.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Time's original frontman was R&B singer Alexander O'Neal. He was removed after a disagreement with Prince over pay (it's also been alleged that O'Neal was considered to be "too black" for the band by Prince), and replaced with Morris Day. Jellybean Johnson was then hired to replace Morris on drums. After The Time broke up, Jam & Lewis produced the first five albums for O'Neal, and his 1987 album Hearsay is a great way to hear what The Time fronted by O'Neal could have sounded like. The album even begins with a skit of O'Neal welcoming Jam, Jerome and Jellybean to his party, and he apes a few of Morris' catchphrases^note Which in actuality were Prince's catchphrases that he made up for the eventual singer on the original demos across the album.
  • Morris Day was originally intended to star in what would eventually become The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. When a spec script based around the Day version of the show fell through, co-creator Benny Medina and executive producer Quincy Jones gave it to Will Smith (at the time known solely as the second half of DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince).

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