“777-9311” is one of the breakthrough hits of the American funk-soul group The Time, released on August 25, 1982 and included in their second studio album What Time Is It?.

The song was entirely written and produced by Prince, close friend of the members of the band as they both grew up and developed their passion in Minneapolis.

The instrumental of the track is well-known for his complexity: especially the drums, probably made with an electronic machine, are rather stunning and anticipate sound techniques like the doubled or tripled hi-hats, those have become commonly used in hip-hop music only more than 20 years later, with the advent of sub-genres like crunk and trap music. Still, this pattern is executable by a human drummer, as it’s proved here:

As the song deals with an ascending climax of love, the phone number that is quoted could be innocuous: in reality, it’s the real number of the guitarist Dez Dickerson!
At the time, he had just left Prince’s iconic support band The Revolution (he would be replaced with the legendary Wendy Melvoin) to pursue other options: Prince seemed to not be happy of it, so he decided to make a little joke…