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I Feel For You is the eighth track on Prince’s second album Prince. Prince did not release it as a single at the time, but four years later it became a worldwide hit when performed by soul singer Chaka Khan (with whom Prince would work many years later).
In 1993, the track was included as the fourth track on Prince’s first compilation album The Hits 1 (also included as the first disc of The Hits / The B-Sides).
In 2019 an acoustic demo version from late 1978 or early 1979, with just Prince accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, was released as a stand alone digital track and as a limited-run ’made-to-order' 7" purple vinyl single (with orders taken for seven days from 18 October 2019) to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Prince album.
An early more fleshed out version of the song was recorded in February 1978 at Music Farm Studios in New York, NY, USA, around the same time as of sessions led by Pepé Willie intended for Tony Silvester, leader of the group The Main Ingredient to use as demos for Little Anthony and the Imperials, who he wanted to produce (the one-day session also produced Thrill You Or Kill You, With You and André Cymone’s original version of Do Me, Baby).
While specific recording dates for the album version are not known, the album sessions took place from late April to late May 1979 at Alpha Studios in Burbank, California. Overdubs and mixing took place at Hollywood Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, California. The song was edited down for the album. This included cutting out an instrumental section and some more explicit lyrics.
The liner notes on The Hits 1 (also on The Hits / The B-Sides), written by Alan Leeds, state that I Feel For You was a "demo written 4 the Patrice Rushen project. PRN tended 2 write more Top 40 when writing 4 other artists."
Patrice Rushen has worked with Prince on the song Baby in late 1977. I Feel For You may have been offered for her fourth album (released in October 1978) or Pizzazz (released just four days after Prince’s second album). Rushen did not re-recorded her own version of the song however. It has been suggested that I Wanna Be Your Lover was also written about and for her.
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