{{{Great column in the East Bay Express! http://www.eastbayexpress...index.html

Mourning the Prince Deficit
Only one man can save us from our own devastating lack of sex appeal.
BY ROB HARVILLA
rob.harvilla@eastbayexpress.com}}}

The Great Super Bowl Rogue Breast Disaster of 2004 has reached truly epic levels of overexposure, with every pundit, columnist, blogger, and dude-standing-behind-you-at-Subway scrambling to weigh in on the moral outrage of it all. But in our haste to denounce either our shot-to-hell sense of human decency or the Puritan prudes who can't handle a little prime-time T&A, we've missed the real story, the real point, the real outrage here.

Janet Jackson wasn't offensive because she got carried away being sexy and titillating. She was offensive because she was neither sexy nor titillating in the slightest.

We don't know how to be sexy anymore. Rock culture has irreparably split into two completely polarized halves: You're either a deadly serious "artist" with Important Things to Say and all the sex appeal of a large-mouth bass, or you're teen-pop jailbait whose "songs" unfold like acid-hit lap-dance routines that slap you across the face with all the subtlety of, well, a large-mouth bass. The hallowed middle ground no longer exists; you can have actual musical talent or you can have sex appeal. Not both.

Furthermore, those with any sex appeal are strictly of the dunderheaded jerkoff mag variety. The video for KMEL vixen of the moment Kelis' "Milkshake" is so ridiculous it's hilarious, with metric tons of howling cleavage and blatant blow-job imagery. (Though that scene where the restaurant cook opens the oven and pulls out a loaf of bread shaped like an ass is pure genius.)

Never mind that. This sucks.

And I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson, but you're Exhibit A: After an actually quite splendid mainstream run (Rhythm Nation represents!), her career since the mid-'90s has sunk ever deeper into a swirling sea of retarded sexuality. Janet tried to straddle the artist/sex symbol line, but merely crossed over and ended up straddling everything else. Sadly, the Super Bowl only serves as the climax to her shocking softcore-porn death spiral of absurd "wardrobe malfunctions," awkward bondage references, and increasingly ludicrous lyrics: "Got a nice package alright/Guess I'm gonna have to ride it tonight."

Janet Jackson abandoned pop music altogether in her quest to give the whole world a boner, and the baby Jesus has suffered accordingly. The sexiest thing she ever said was "Who's that eatin' that nasty food?" and that was in 1987.

Where have our actually talented sex symbols gone? Why must Blender be so head-thwackingly lewd and vapid, and Magnet so sexless and staid? Who's playing the Madonna role nowadays? Certainly not Madonna herself, reduced to MTV-style faux lesbianism. R&B pop-rap studs like Ja Rule and 50 Cent are saddled with washboard abs and wet-cardboard personalities. (Funniest song of the moment: the Ja-assaulting "So Many Rappers in Love" by Westside Connection. No one embodies the funnier-when-he's-angrier paradigm like Ice Cube.) A flock of synchronized-swimming nuns packs more sex appeal than any Creed-biting "modern rock" frontman, and the entire once-promising '90s "alternative" stable has lapsed into self-importance (Eddie), self-loathing (Trent), or self-crappifying (Billy). My mom could beat up John Mayer. My grandmother could beat up Clay Aiken. You get the idea.

The indie-rock realm is infinitely worse, where a single ounce of sexuality gets dismissed as pandering inauthenticity. Ask Liz Phair, who first surfaced as the nerdy virginal rock critic's ultimate wet dream -- lithe, blonde, uncouth, unbelievably horny, and responsible for a concept album about Exile on Main Street -- only to withstand 2003's most public flogging when she attempted her own Janet Jackson leap in reverse, from sexpot artiste to pop princess, and wound up bleating on about "hot white cum." And don't you even bring up Karen O, the inexplicably lusted-after Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman, who in reality looks like she dresses in the dark while falling down an elevator shaft and only continues New York City's hallowed tradition of selling the world shit by pretending it's shinola: She's electroclash in convenient female form.

The Bay Area scene is even more complicated -- blatantly sexual acts like Mandonna and Gravy Train!!!! are soaked in cheap smirking hipster irony. Barry Zito doesn't count. The iMusicast teenage-lust-after-Fingertight-et al. scene doesn't either, merely exploiting the fact that 25-year-old aggro-rock band dudes connect with sixteen-year-old girls because, well, 25-year-old band dudes write, think, and act like sixteen-year-old girls. There are a few exceptions -- every warm-blooded Pitchfork-reading straight guy I know goes through a Joanna Newsom phase -- but ain't nobody bringing the pain and the pleasure like, oh, say, Prince.

We need Prince so very badly right now. The Grammys would indicate we have him again, but is it really him? Is this the Lovesexy or Graffiti Bridge vintage? Let us pray it's the former.

Imagine Prince's Super Bowl half-time show. Beautiful, isn't it? The buttless pants alone would be majestic. Has anyone ever aligned the planets of raw sexuality and artistic greatness with such towering bravado? Can anyone else in the universe possibly sing songs like "Gett Off," "Cream," "Dirty Mind," or "Little Red Corvette" without sounding like a juiced-up asshole? Has anyone in any artistic medium every made pure animalistic lust feel so natural, so unforced, so nonthreatening, so necessary? How did he do it? How did we not appreciate him sufficiently while he did it? Even his ongoing public collapse -- label squabbles, smooth jazz excursions, this whole Jehovah's Witness business -- bears a certain psychotic sensuality. But his comeback chances -- even with Beyoncé by his side -- are hopelessly slim as a result.

What Janet Jackson actually exposed to the world on Super Bowl Sunday was a void, a nonentity, a vacuum. Our nation's very own Prince Deficit. Who will rise to the challenge of replacing him and reconnecting the sexual with the artistically worthwhile? Andre 3000? Sure, The Love Below is a trip -- the bright-pink smoking revolver he's brandishing on the cover says it all. But in interviews he comes across as just another sad-sack lookin' for Ms. Right, a gigolo surrounded by sexpots but desperate for looove. Spare me, spare yourself, spare the children. As a nation and as a musical culture, we've never been more sex-obsessed, never been less sexy.

This is what it sounds like when doves cry.

eastbayexpress.com | originally published: February 11, 2004

well written

prince may be in a quiet storm

as far as his sexuality goes

but one ounce of his brand

of sensuality is a motherload

compared 2 the cheap and

blatant wanna be sex vixens

impersonating artists

and andre 3000 is creative

yet he could never match

the groundbreaking, power packed

sexuality of prince

It's all so true. However, something would be wrong if Prince tried to go back and re-create that. I would hope he's evolved. Somebody else will have to carry that torch, and not necessarily a musician.

Nice writing. Interesting premise.
That durn Prince done ruint it for everybody else who follows it seems. LOL
So far, no one has the right combination of brains, talent, awareness and sexual authenticity that the writer is talking about to successfully succeed the man. Prince talked sex when it was not the popular thing but apparently for him, the natural thing.
I think Whodknee could well be right. Everyone was looking for the next Michael Jordan to show up on a basketball court, but he strolled onto a golf course instead (Tiger Woods). The "next Prince" may not be a musician at all.
Long live Prince.

this is the quote right here:



That is the TRUTH.

I'm so going to use that term in describing most anything now.

well said! but I'm happy I appreciated him when he did it...and I am proud my esteem for him never died. I don't think he should look again at the past: it was ok when he was 25-30, but now he would be ridiculous..let's just wait and appreciate whatever this little-big man offers us, without telling him what to do, he's the man!!

That's avery interesting and entertaining article.

Well Said

I said it once and I'll say it again. THE MUSIC WORLD HAS BEEN IN NEED OF A "PRINCE", a hero, a true musical presence SINCE 1988, when Prince decided to go a completely different route with Lovesexy instead of The Black Album. Look how easily Prince almost reconquered the music world in 1991-92. They keep searching (Tricky, D'Angelo, Maxwell, Alicia Keys, Macy Gray, Kravitz, Timberlake, damn list goes on and on and gets longer every year) In the 80's Prince music was fun, mysteriously, classical, sexy, and brilliant unfortunatley by the time the rest of the world rediscovers that the talent was still in the original he will be 55 years old.

not only do we need his musical sexuality[because thats what it is, unlike strippers his sexuality had purpose a point was being made]but we need his chance taking music,his love to be different and not be like the rest.thats what music needs right now.hell, good music is sexy in itself, my mans to old to return to the form of beind half nude, but damn he can give us some sexy music 4 show.if the world would just play the shit bfore he dies.

"Rock culture has irreparably split into two completely polarized halves: You're either a deadly serious "artist" with Important Things to Say and all the sex appeal of a large-mouth bass, or you're teen-pop jailbait whose "songs" unfold like acid-hit lap-dance routines that slap you across the face with all the subtlety of, well, a large-mouth bass."

Prince deficit.....keep lookin...coz a talent this great happens maybe 5 times a century...you have to put his genius in the context of the times when he made his music....the song "Kiss" is the perfect example....everything about this song is at odds with the year of its release 1986....the almost non existent musical backing...the flaired pants in the video...the slicked back Elvis hair....the ridiculous black vest with Silver Dollars sized white buttons.....And yet what do we have....a world wide smash despite all of this & probably one of the greatest songs of that decade....This sort of achievement I have not seen since by any modern artist....We will never see the sheer smouldering being that existed during this time again...It is time for the next genius to stake his or her claim to Greatness...I hope I am alive to see it....