Dirty Mind

Dirty Mind was recorded in a makeshift 16-track studio in the basement of Prince's home on Lake Minnetonka. He engineered it himself under the name Jamie Starr and played nearly all the instruments, with Doctor Fink on keyboards for some tracks and Lisa Coleman contributing too. Half of the songs were written on tour while Prince and his band opened for Rick James. Doctor Fink devised the core riff of the title track as a jam for the band. The music for Partyup was originally written by Morris Day, and Prince later created the Time as a vehicle for him.

It reached number 45 on the Billboard 200 and number seven on the Top Black Albums chart. Uptown, the first single, reached number five on both the Hot Soul Singles and Dance Club Songs charts. The RIAA certified the album gold on 6 June 1984. When You Were Mine was later recorded by Cyndi Lauper on her 1983 album She's So Unusual.

Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone called it "cool music dealing with hot emotions", and Robert Christgau compared its metallic textures to Funkadelic and the Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stone Album Guide's Michaelangelo Matos wrote that it remained one of the most radical 180-degree turns in pop history. Simon Price of the Guardian called it the album with which Prince really found his direction.