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With Dirty Mind, Prince dropped the double entendres

Prince’s third album established his genius and his prurience

When Prince’s debut album For You came out in 1978, he was hyped as a Stevie Wonder-like wunderkind—a genre-splicing prodigy who played all the instruments on his records. Also, the word was out that he liked sex. Prince’s first single, “Soft And Wet,” is a short, sparse disco track that begins, “Hey, lover, I got a sugarcane that I want to lose in you,” just in case anyone wondered whether the song’s title was meant to be as suggestive as it seemed. Prince then had his first real hit in 1979 with “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” the lead track off his self-titled second album, which includes the line, “I wanna be the only one you come for.”

Then in 1980, Prince doubled down on his big gimmick. Dirty Mind delivers what its name promises: songs about orgies, oral sex, ejaculation, bisexuality, and incest, all as frank and fantastical as a letter to Penthouse. Prince’s leap into outright smut was a little like the arc of the Saturday Night Live sketch “Tales Of Ribaldry,” where the coy double entendres of a historical romance give way to undisguised carnality. The rock critics of 1980 weren’t as affronted as Jon Lovitz on SNL, though. Reviewing Dirty Mind for Rolling Stone, Ken Tucker wrote, “This is lewdness cleansed by art, with joy its socially redeeming feature.” Famed music critic Robert Christgau was blunter, declaring, “Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home.”

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