Something Rhymes with Purple - Toni Morrison

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

Today we are celebrating Women’s History Month and looking at the pioneering writer, Toni Morrison.  From her poem, ‘Someone leans near’ to her debut novel, ‘The Bluest Eye’, Susie and Gyles delve into the books, poetry, and legacy of the Nobel Literary Prize winner. We encounter Levi Roots, a trip to Princeton and a recount of the time Gyles met her (of course!) as we look at her life, work, and the impact that she has had on the English language. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: [e-mail]   Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms'   Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com    Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Gutling: A great eater, a glutton. Anythingarian: One who professes no creed in particular; an indifferentist. Unlike: To give up liking; to cease to like     Gyles' poem this week was 'Beside Tragedy' by 'Grace Nichols'   Beside Tragedy she is always damned So seemingly carefree to the woes of the world So seemingly enamoured of her own god giving laughter  But who sees her waxing tears in the nights deep calm Or knows that she too rides out the dark storm  Who hears her whisper, ‘oh tears you too stem from the gift of salt’    A Somethin’ Else & Sony Music Entertainment production.     Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play LEGO Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Hello and welcome to this special edition of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is the podcast, as most of you will know by now, that is very much about language, how we use it, why we use it, and where the words that we use come from. I'm Susie Dent, and with me, as always, is the wonderful Giles Branders. Hi, Giles. Hello, it's good to be with you again. You're in Oxford, I'm in London. How this works normally is

we and the team, Harriet, our producer, we bounce ideas around. But this week, Susie said, oh, I want to talk about Toni Morrison. And I didn't say to her at the time, I said, I don't know much about Toni Morrison, though I didn't tell you, which I will confess to now, that I did actually meet her many, many years ago. Many years ago, before she was famous, really. I met her, I think, maybe possibly more than once, because I knew people in publishing. And I was in the States during my gap year, towards the end of the 1960s, and then in the early 1970s. And I met her once, because I was introduced by a lovely academic called Sydney

Ramey. She introduced me to her. I think she was working at Random House, where she, this was before I think her novels were published, where she simply was an unusual. I think she was working at Random House where she, this was before I think her novels were published, where she simply was an unusual figure because she was the first black editor there. So I really don't know much about her, but I do know that famous, of course, as an editor, as a novelist and as a poet. And I know her poetry, but I'm hoping you've chosen her for a special reason and you're going to tell us why. Yes. Last Wednesday, so the 8th of March, was International Women's Day. But the whole month of March is, in fact, Women's History Month. And so I wanted to choose somebody who has done so much for language, for the English language, and sort of dug almost more deeply and more

profoundly than anyone I think I've ever read. I became aware of her because I was lucky enough to go to Princeton University for three years, actually, to do a master's in German, actually. But she was very much a name at Princeton. Having gone to Howard University and Cornell University herself, she taught at Howard in the 50s and 60s, as you say, then became a fiction editor at Random House. And in 1989, she joined the faculty of Princeton University. And the buzz and the excitement of having there, and it wasn't just an initial buzz. I mean, I wasn't actually there when she arrived. I went there in 1991. But it was just a continuous sort of joy that someone so amazing was just there.

I mean, she really was the sort of, for me anyway, the figure and for a lot of other people as well. And the other reason I wanted to choose her, Giles, is that she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. And she delivered a speech which is possibly the most exquisite speech on language that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It is just, it's astonishing. The way she writes is extraordinary. And the way she views language is also extraordinary. And I'll dip into it in a minute once we've talked about her poetry, because you're right, she's not just a novelist. She was also a writer of poetry.

Can you, before we do that, just give us a flavour of when she was born, when she died? Just give us some context. Yes. So she was born on February the 18th, 1931 in Ohio, and she died on August the 5th, 2019 in the Bronx. She was particularly celebrated for her exploration really of the black female experience and she grew up in the American Midwest and her family had an intense love for and appreciation of black culture so you can tell both implicitly and explicitly that she draws on the folklore and the storytelling and the songs of that culture which she obviously listened to throughout her childhood. So she was steeped very much in that tradition and it is carried through in all her work, really. Then, as I say, she went to university at Cornell and Howard University. She then taught at Texas

Southern University, fiction editor at Random House. She was the first female black editor there and then, as I say, joined the faculty at Princeton and she retired in 2006. And she won all sorts of prizes for her poetry, for her novels, for her nonfiction writing. She was extraordinary. I've got one of my favourite poems of hers here, which I thought I would read to you. And maybe, well, you can see, is it one of your favourites too? Absolutely, yes. It's called Someone Leans Near.

Someone leans near and sees the salt your eyes have shed. You wait, longing to hear words of reason, love or play, to lash or lull you toward the hollow day. toward the hollow day. Silence needs your fear of crumbled star ash sifting down, clouding the rooms here, here. You shore up your heart to run, to stay, but no sign or design marks the narrow way. Then on your skin a breath caresses

the salt your eyes have shed, and you remember a call clear, A breath caresses the salt your eyes have shed. And you remember a call clear, so clear you will never die again. Once more you know you will never die again. It's beautiful, isn't it? And actually listening to you read it there, I realised that almost a double meaning that the poem has in some areas, because silence needs your fear. Obviously, as you're speaking that out loud, I think I would interpret that as silence requiring your fear. Yeah, exactly. But it's needing as in

needing dough, isn't it? K-M-E-A-D-S. Yes. And that, for me, has particular resonance because it's all about, you know, someone leans in and sees the fact that you've been crying and you long to hear the words of reassurance and you long to hear someone sort of say, look, be logical, be rational. This is going to be OK to lull you towards the hollow day. But silence, there's silence and it needs your fear as if it's kind of, you know, just just moulding it and manipulating it and doing nothing to sort of allay it. It's just giving it different shapes. So the needing, I've always read that way. But actually actually it's interesting to read it the other way as well. Why does it speak to you?

Well, just I think for those very reasons, which is that, you know, for sorrow and for melancholy, that some people need almost a companion in their melancholy. So they need someone to come in and sit with them and accept that melancholy and say, I'm very sorry, but not do anything to fix it. Whereas I am very much a person that wants to go right in and say, it'll be okay. And I'm going to make it okay. So there are fixes in life. And I think for me, what really struck me was this, you wait longing to hear the words of reason, love or play. You long to hear. For me, that's how it speaks to me is that fixing voice, but there's silence and it needs your fear. It's almost sort of, as I say, manipulating or just working through your fear. And then, you know,

you don't know whether to run or to stay. And then a breath caresses the salt your eyes have shed. And you remember a call saying you will never die again. And that can be just interpreted in so many different ways, either reassurance or, you know, it's interesting as well, that wouldn't come across from reading it out, but you will never die again is in quote marks. So obviously someone is saying that or has said that to you, you will never die again, which you can interpret as it'll never be this bad again. Or how would you interpret that line? Well, I think the poem repays very close study. I think it is, the idea, the end of it is reassurance. You will never die again. Once more, you know, because you've been told this before,

assurance. You will never die again. Once more, you know, because you've been told this before, you will never die again. But of course, you do die again. I mean, that for me is the clever bit. You remember a call so clear, you will never die again. Once more, you know, you will never die again. And yet it will repeat itself. I mean, in some ways, all human life is here. Absolutely, because we are all ultimately totally alone. I think that's what it sort of underscores. And yet we are longing for, as I say, either that companion in sadness or for someone to come along and make that sadness better. And what do we call this wonderful phrase of crumbled star ash sifting down? When you evoke in language something like that, what is that called? Is that a metaphor? It's

not quite a metaphor. It's actually seeing it. She's seeing it in her eye, isn't she? Yeah, it is a metaphor. But it's also, I think, in a way, it's a form of something called pathetic fallacy, which is when nature and your surroundings seem to empathise with your emotional state. So nature is exhibiting the same response as you are. So the star ash is crumbling and falling down just as your life seems to be crumbling with it in sorrow. So I think at a push, I would call that pathetic fallacy. Very good. This is, as it were, your dreams, what you were hoping for. That's now the star has turned to ash and it's floating over you as though well it is literally

ash that you're there clouding the room the clouding the room's here here oh it's it's powerful stuff it is and there's no one showing you the way no sign or design marks the narrow way yeah in fact it's narrow as well but the good news is someone leans near though in fact do they give you the consolation you want? Because at the end, you see that on your skin, a breath caresses the salt your eyes have shed, and you remember a call clear, so clear, you will never die again. And so that's recollected from the past. And then again, you know, you will never die again, so long as there are other people. People need people. Wow.

Gorgeous, isn't it? I think it can be interpreted in a myriad ways. I'm sure that anyone listening will have, you know, it may be struck them in a completely different way with a very different narrative, but that ultimately is the beauty of poetry. But can I read you, before we go to the break, and I know we want to talk about her novels, but can I just read you some of what she wrote in that amazing Nobel speech about language, really? So essentially, she describes the importance of language in our lives. And it's a fable, essentially, about a blind woman who is visited by a group of young people who almost tauntingly say to her, we have a bird in our hand, tell us, is it alive or dead? And it is all her contemplations on the life of language, the uses of language, whether it can fly, whether it's just, it's absolutely perfect, whether it can elucidate or cloud, I mean, a touch of Orwell there, you know, whether it can oppress and liberate, whether it can honour people or whether it can actually undermine them.

And it's all about the human experience and how we have this amazing tool available to us that can make any expression of it so magical, but also so dangerous, really. And she quotes Abraham Lincoln in it, and his Gettysburg Address is an example. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. And what Morrison explains is that trying to sum up the pain felt that from the Civil War is just impossible. And so instead, Abraham Lincoln has focused on the impossibility of capturing that and kind of talks about how it's going to linger in our memory and do we need to articulate it or will it kind of persist in a more sort of profound way? And then she says, and listen to this, this is just perfect. We die, Morrison says, that may be the meaning of life,

but we do language, that may be the measure of our lives. It just gives me goosebumps, really. Because it sums up also what you and I, in a way, believe. That it's the language, it's the words that will last. When the life has gone, I mean, you know, think of William Shakespeare. This is the 400th anniversary of the publication of his plays, all his plays in that first folio for the first time. Whatever happened then, they're still there.

Yeah. And listen to this. This for me is just such a lovely demonstration of how Morrison uses language. And you'll find this gift, this perfect gift throughout her novels as well. So again, she's talking about language. Language can never pin down slavery, genocide, war, nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach towards the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting or refusing to sanctify, whether it laughs

out loud or is a cry without an alphabet. The choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges towards knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative, discredited because it is critical, erased because alternate, and how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue. Word work is sublime because it is generative. It makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference, the way in which we are like no other life. Oh, and so it goes on. Honestly, it is so worth reading the whole fable. And it's almost like a riddle that this woman is presented with. And she gives a really oblique answer back and then

sort of unpacks it. It's honestly brilliant. And where would we find that? So I think you can find it on the Nobel Prize website. But actually, if you just look up Toni Morrison, Nobel speech on language, you'll find it. And it's worth reading the entire thing. And it's just absolutely gorgeous. I have on my shelf, but I haven't read it, her very first book, The Bluest Eye, published in 1970. Let's talk about that and what that's about. It's the book that made her initially famous after we've taken our break. Lovely. Hello. We have more live shows coming up. You can see Something Wives with Purple on stage in London at the Ambassadors Theatre. The first show is Sunday the 16th of April and tickets are on sale now.

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We've done that occasionally. And this today, we're talking about Toni Morrison. I don't think that was her original name, was it? I think that's a sort of nom de plume. I think her real name was Chloe Anthony Wofford. When she was 12, Chloe joined the Roman Catholic Church, and she took as her baptismal name, Anthony. People did this.

It would take her, even if you were a girl, you would take a male saint's name. So you could be called, you know, St. Michael, St. Martin, St. Anthony. But she then became known as Chloe Anthony Wofford. And she changed it to Tony when she was at university, because apparently people really struggled to pronounce Chloe. So she then, and she married Howard Morrison, hence the Morrison bit. But yeah, Chloe was changed to Tony.

Yeah. Yes. When I met her, the reason I met her was because I was being looked after during my gap year and then when I went back and stayed with the same family by really wonderful American academics. That's how I was lucky enough to meet her. Not that I knew she was anybody of significance because she at that stage hadn't made her reputation. But she was noted then because it was so unusual to find a black editor at a leading publishing house. And actually what was brilliant about Morrison as well is that she was totally unapologetic about her choice of subject. And she said very clearly, I'm writing for black people in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me, a 14-year-old coloured girl from Lorraine, Ohio. I don't have to apologise or consider myself limited because I don't write about white people, which is not absolutely true. She said, there are lots of white people in my books, but the point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it.

That is very interesting. I mean, her poetry, to me, is universal. Her poetry, like the one we've just read, rings true to everybody, whatever your background, colour or story. But the first book, her first book, The Bluest Eye, it's a novel that is very much part of her childhood, isn't it? What is the essence of the story? Yeah, well, it's all about wanting to fit in. And I think as a black woman feeling like you don't. fit in and I think as a black woman feeling like you don't and she she said in a forward to it that she wanted to focus on how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society a child the most vulnerable member a female and it's all about a black girl who longs to have blue eyes and is obsessed by

white standards of beauty. And I remember when I was looking at the vocabulary of beauty and cosmetics, particularly in the middle of the 20th century, and there were so many products on sale for skin whitening as well. You know, part of that same sort of desire, that desire to look a certain way because you didn't want to look the way that you looked. And of course, that's so central to adolescence in so many different ways, but particularly as a teenage, you know, black girl, really. So it takes place in the 1940s, this novel in Ohio.

And yes, as I say, it's about a young African-an-american woman who's marginalized anyway by her community in her larger society and who so desperately wants to to fit in is it written in what we would now call black english i mean is the vocabulary of it different from that of a white writer writing at the same time yes this characterization through language was so important to tony Toni Morrison and is so much part of the fabric of the novel, if you say. So yes, if you like, it definitely is. There's sort of whole grammatical elements that are very, very special to African-American vernacular English or

Black English. Does that make it difficult to read? Can you give me an example? I mean, does it make it less accessible if you don't have that experience yourself? No, I don't think it is actually. A quote here, I don't know what I'm supposed to be running here. I can't do the accent. I apologise. I ain't supposed to have nothing. I'm supposed to end up in the poorhouse. So no, it's both orthographical. So, you know, you can see it from looking at the page, but also particularly when it's read out and, you know, and it's still there. I had a great discussion actually with Levi Roots the other day, who was a guest on Countdown. Levi, he's a man. He has, he produced Reggae Reggae Sauce, he's perhaps most famous for that, but he does huge amounts of prison work and various charities anyway he loves and savors and just wallows in this

brilliant brilliant form of English and so we have great discussions about it but yeah Toni Morrison it's just a beautiful exploration really of that form of language and also again very unapologetic it's just as I say a really vital way to understand the characters in his novels so yeah I would definitely recommend that and it's interesting blue is interesting this in this context because blue in English has had so many different meanings you think of a clear blue sky cerulean sky and that's just the best guy that you can get but then you have feeling blue you have the blues music which is all about sorrow and melancholy and depression. If you remember, that came from the blue devils that were thought to beset the demons that were supposed to come about and beset alcoholics when they were trying to give up alcohol.

So just the choice of blue, obviously, this is all about blue eyes, but just all the various interpretations of that colour and what it means, I think is quite interesting too. all the various interpretations of that colour and what it means, I think is quite interesting too. Well, you're sending me to my bookshelf to actually take down the copy of this book I've had for 40 years and haven't read, but I'm going to read it now, The Bluest Eye, 1970. And I know, I think on my shelves, I've also got another book by her called Paradise and one called Love. I've not read any of these. I've only read the poetry. So I must now try to read the novels. You must. Can I just give you a quote from the final page of The Bluest Eye? Please.

Which lovely Naya actually has helped us with, she knows Toni Morrison inside out, and she's helped us select some here. And this is just a truth. Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love wickedly violent people love violently weak people love weakly stupid people love stupidly but the love of a free man is never safe there is no gift for the beloved the lover alone possesses his gift of love the loved one is shorn neutralized frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye so So that idea that actually receiving love, actually, it almost brings along status. You can't budge from that, you know, idealised view of yourself.

And do you remember actually when we were, I think it was Sylvia Plath was saying very much the same thing when we read one of her poems, that the male gaze particularly is unwavering. And if there is an idealised view of you, it'll stay there. But actually, that's horrible because it means you can't grow. So I really like the idea that the person who's being loved, it's not there as a gift. It's the lover alone that possesses the gift of love and who has that freedom. Good. Well, very intriguing. And if out there, you've got another writer that you think we should be talking about whose language or story is particularly intriguing. Do let us know. Keep in touch. It's purple at somethingelse.com. Have we heard from people this week? We have, from Connett Dowd. Of County Cork. I'm going to be visiting County Cork soon, Susie.

Oh, good. Yeah, my wife's family, they come as well as from South Wales. They also come from County Cork. Ireland, amazing. Yeah. So anyway, I, Susie and Giles, writes Connor, love the show. I'm a long time listener from the first episode. Well done. You've aged during this, haven't you, Connor?

Anyway, two questions, please. What's the origin of the word dint in the phrase by dint of? Oh, that's good. And what's the origin of the phrase rank outsider? And what does the rank here simply mean? Okay. Okay. Well, I'll start with the, by dint of. So actually pretty violent origins this, and actually I think if you go back far enough, then dint and dent are probably related. So a dint was a stroke or a blow with a weapon. If you remember the word thrill actually meant to pierce

somebody with a sword. So a dint was a blow or a stroke from that same sword. And so by dint of meant by force of, given that these strokes or blows were often quite violent. So by dint of sword was a way of saying, you know, he died by dint of sword, he died by the force of his sword. So that's that one. And the origin of the phrase rank outsider, the rank there, or rank actually has got cognates as we call it in linguistic terms, so relatives in lots of different languages. So in German it's rang and it's also related to ring for us. And it's been around since medieval times in the sense of hierarchy. So the rank and file of an organisation are the ordinary members of an organisation. It's distinct from the leaders.

And it looks back to the rows and the columns of soldiers in military formation drawn up in rank and file. So the ranks are the rows and the files are the columns. We talk about breaking ranks, don't we, etc. But rank as an adjective, which you will find here in rank outsider, that's a very different word. And that goes back to old English. And actually, it began as something very positive. So it meant fully grown, but also sort of luxuriant and growing in abundance. But that idea of abundance came to mean sort of excess and particularly disagreeable, unpleasant excess. So a rank smell is a horrible one. Rank

grass grows too thickly and a rank outsider has got a sort of slight dismissal about it. You know, they're such an outsider that there's no way they're going to win, for example, if it's in a race. So very different to the rank of, you know, that you might find in soldiers and military contexts. Very good. I hope that answers the question, Connor. No kith or kin. I live in upstate New York and I love your show. That's very nice. That says N. Colburn. I watched an old pirate movie recently and heard the pirate say he had no kith or kin. I know kin is family, but what does the kith refer to? Oh, good question.

Isn't it funny? Words like that, like I can never bring myself to talk about the pith of an orange because it just sounds so ridiculous. It sounds like you're trying to say something else, but you know, can't quite get it out. And kith is the same. It's such an unusual sound, isn't it for us? Because immediately it sounds like it should be double S. Do you think, or is that just me? No, I'm with you totally. Pith, kith. Anyway, it's a funny movement that you make with your tongue, but we have to go back to Germanic for this one. And it's actually kith is related to kuth. And kuth nowadays used to mean polite and courteous.

And if you're uncouth, you're the opposite. That actually meant also knowledge, really. And that was the original sense of kith as well. It was knowledge. It was something innate. And so it also could apply to your native land, something that you were indigenous to. And of course, in your native land, you have your friends and your neighbours. And the phrase kith and kin were your country and your relatives. So the kin were the relatives and the kith was your native land. But then later the two sort of merged. So your kith and kin are one and the same, your friends and your relatives, I suppose. But kin there is also behind king as well, weirdly, because the first kings were

the chiefs of Anglo-Saxon tribes, the invading Angles and the invading Saxons, and they were the heads of those small tribes. So kin gave us quite a lot. But yeah, kith is a linguistic fossil. It doesn't exist in any other way other than in that phrase, kith and kin. Speaking of linguistic fossils, you do keep a collection almost of fossils. These are lovely words that you feel have lost their currency and that you'd like to revive. What is in your trio of interesting words for today? Okay, so I like this one from the 17th century. You're right, it's a fossil, this one. You'll find it in the OED. A gutling, a gutling, one. You'll find it in the OED, a gutling, gutling, and gut is at the heart of this. And it means a great eater or a glutton. So from 1632, there's a sermon that says the poets made themselves

bitterly merry with discanting upon the fat paunches of these lazy gutlings. So never complimentary that one. Also from the OED, it sounds so modern, this one. I can't remember if I've had this before, actually, Giles, but it's from 1704, the first record, An Anything Aryan. And an anything Aryan is somebody who is pretty indifferent to everything and just doesn't really subscribe to any particular belief. They're just anything goes, an anything Aryan. I like that. Anything Aryan. Clever. Yes. And finally, for anyone who thinks that unliking is very much an aspect of social media and together with unfriending, you might be interested to know that it actually goes back to

1761 at the very least. And the memoirs of someone called Miss Sidney Biddulph, my heart is not in a disposition to love. I cannot compel it to like and unlike and like anew at pleasure. So, unliking, to give up liking someone, is just quite a useful word. Very good. An excellent trio. Thank you. And I think I've got an interesting poem to share with you this week. Inspired by your suggesting that we talk about Toni Morrison,

I've uncovered, and the poem that we read, Someone Leans Near, I have looked up a poem that I remember reading last year and being very affected by. It's called Beside Tragedy. It's by Grace Nichols, who was born and educated in Guyana. She moved to Britain in the 1970s and has written children's books, novels, poetry. She won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. I think she's a wonderful writer. All her work, I think, is published by Virago, though this poem I'm going to read you now comes from Bloodaxe Books, and the collection is entitled Picasso, I Want My Face Back. And it was you mentioning being a victim of the male gaze that made me think, ah, yes, I think Grace Nichols understands all this. And the tears that occurred in the Toni Morrison poem, well, they have, well, you'll see, this poem, I think, echoes that poem in a different way. tragedy she is always damned so seemingly carefree to the woes of the world so seemingly enamored of her own god-given laughter but who sees her waxing tears in the night's deep calm

or knows that she too rides out the dark storm who hears her whisper oh tears you too stem from the gift of salt. Oh, yeah. Really similar, isn't it? It's an interesting one, isn't it? Yeah. It's part of a series of poems inspired by the famous painting that Picasso did of Dora Mar, who was Picasso's muse and mistress, and the inspiration of a painting that I'm sure many people would recognise called The Weeping Woman. And what Grace Nichols tries to do is get inside the head of that

weeping woman and actually tell the world, and Picasso, if he's listening in heaven or hell, whatever he is, what was going on inside her head. Anyway, it's self-reclamation for women. Well, absolutely. I'm going to just add one lovely quote from that nobel speech actually from tony morrison who says tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man what moves at the margin what it is to have no home in this place to be set adrift from the one you knew what it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company and Amazing. She's amazing. She is amazing.

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing her amazingness with us, if that's the word, and for listening to us today. A special show, as they say, to celebrate women's history. We're raising a glass to you, Purple people. Thanks for listening. If you want to get in touch with us, it's purple at somethingelse.com. And that's something without a G. It is indeed. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Harriet Wells with additional production from Chris Skinner, Ollie Wilson, Naya Dio, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale, and...

I think he's disappeared down one. Golly.