THE PASSION OF THE PRINCE
The Holy Fuck-Fire and Messianic Fall of Prince
by Sam Mickens


Prince
Wed Sept 1
Rose Garden
One Center Ct.


Once, Prince was the final solution to American black music's age-old struggle between God and sex. Transcending the Saturday night/Sunday morning dichotomy worked out on the sweaty brows and searing pipes of predecessors like Sam Cooke and Al Green, Prince made the two entirely separable. For him, it seemed the very meaning of life was found in the interweaving and overlapping of these forces. Prince not only preached the gospel of fucking, but also illustrated the orgasmic potential of spirituality.

Furthermore, like many before and since (Vaslav Nijinsky, Billy Corgan, etc.) Prince seemed to be instilled with an acute sense of his own godliness--not in the way perhaps every believer does, but as a true avatar. All six minutes and 18 seconds of "Purple Rain" are nothing so much as a proselytizing call to the banner of Prince's messianic grandeur, a beseechment to allow His divine love to rain (or reign) benevolent over the world: "U say u want a leader/ But u can't seem 2 make up your mind/I think u better close it/ Let me guide u 2 the purple rain."

And so he did, from approximately 1982 to 1988. Beginning with 1999, Prince began to establish himself beyond the bounds of his occasional hits and semi-generic synth-funk albums and into the great beyond. He was the rare golden story of the music industry, in which creative genius and chart standings explode as one, a validation of the ephemeral dream of genuine pop music.

Prince's Judas came with the initials WB. Around '87, Prince began to expand beyond the comfortable horizons of his record label, and was immediately and viciously restrained. He had prepared for near-simultaneous release of both a three disc set, Crystal Ball, and the funked-up, emotionally charred Black Album. Both of these jumped off from the weirdness of Parade, his final album with The Revolution, and into extreme stylistic and emotional experimentalism. Warner Brothers demanded Crystal Ball be whittled down to the double-set Sign O' The Times, and the Black Album was shelved for seven years. For an artist not only of such expansive genius, but also of such then-unchallenged commercial clout, this must have felt like a true crucifixion.

A hint of what was lost can be glimpsed on the track "Crystal Ball" from the Prince-released bootleg collection of the same name. At nearly 10 and a half minutes long, it marries stunningly advanced and unusual orchestration to a completely hook-laden yet complex, non-linear song structure. It also carries his fuck-faith all the way to the apocalypse--the song sets a classic Prince come-on amidst riotous social Armageddon, stating, "The only thing u can be sure of is the love we make 2night."

Prince was rapidly accelerating beyond even his own established prodigious potential, leading to a prolonged and messy divorce from Warner Brothers. With ever-diminishing artistic conviction, Prince labored through the rest of his contractually obligated albums for Warner, ending with the slightly pitiful Chaos & Disorder. During this time, he became something of a public spectacle, due to his varied attempts at achieving some form of dignity. The "slave" painting, name changing, glyph adopting--all of these were quietly heroic, pained cries for his well-deserved freedom. And yet, even after he gained his independence, his march through the stations of the cross continued.

A perpetual self-mythologizer, Prince was already preparing for his next storied phase as he departed from Warner. With the triple album Emancipation, he launched the fully independent NPG imprint and finally seemed to be casting off the shackles of his long, painful contractual struggle. He had recently married a beautiful model named Mayte, and would soon become a first-time father. The sprawling Emancipation contained love odes to both his wife and unborn child, and even included his baby's sampled heartbeat on one track. But the baby died at birth, Mayte and Prince split soon thereafter, and without a clear direction forward, the understandably damaged Prince fell into a period of muddled, disappointing work, and a drastically muted public profile.

What then, has precipitated his current media-approved resurrection? Perhaps his well-publicized conversion to Jehovah's Witness provides some of the answers. Prince's religion of old always seemed highly personalized--wrapped up in eroticism and his own megalomania, it seemed a faith that held himself almost as highly as God. He even ended Around the World In a Day (possibly the apex of his maniacal creativity) with a stern argument between himself and his creator (both voices, of course, provided by Prince). His new role as a Witness demands an intense humility, even taking him as far as the door-to-door trademark of his faith. This humility may be the method by which Prince has regained his public stature. He has dimmed his fiery genius to return to the fluorescent glare of the public's love. Just as Prince is now a servant to--rather than a vital expression of--his god, he's also a servant to the dictates of pop consumption rather than a vital, shaping force.

His "comeback" album, Musicology, smacks of this downsizing of vision; it's undeniably able, workman-like funk-rock, but betrays a lack of reaching that one could never have accused the former Prince of. In recent interviews he has alluded to this gentle lessening of himself in various arenas, including on stage, saying that he now exerts far less control over his band, allowing things to develop more organically. Perhaps this is indicative of an artist's maturation, but it's impossible to imagine this more lackadaisical Prince ever producing work of the caliber of his glory days.

Once upon a time, every aspect of the man--his unabashedly sexualized guitar playing, his hyper-balletic dancing, his endlessly vulnerable yet masterfully theatrical singing--reflected a ferocious artistic hunger wed to unnerving discipline. It may not be too late for Prince, but if his current arc proves the story of his life, this new, gentrified persona may overwhelm the memory of what he once was: a true artist perpetually striving for a more dizzying, more terrifying purple mountaintop.

http://www.portlandmercur...music.html

Gotta disagree with alot here. Prince woved spirituality and sexuality TOGETHER; he didn't make them "entirely separable." He definitely misses on Prince's beliefs and pushes the megalomania angle entirely too much.

As always it seems, he missed the experimentation and sheer musicality of TRC and Xpectation.

This article is the truth...

The new material, although I love it, is not nearly as exciting as his 80s material... Prince's new stuff is amazing, but the old stuff had so much character...

He was such a strange act... strange in the greatest use of the word. Prince's music from the 80s is so amazing and vivid... it's so full of colours...

Mind you, I don't think his songwriting skills have lessened since... I still think he's as a great a songwriter, if not better, now then before... I do think his choice of sounds he uses [keyboard sounds, guitar, bass, so much use of horns], is not clear like it used to be... it's more conventional now.

Sad... but Prince's huhumility, I gotta agree with the author here, is gonna hold him back from being even greater than he is now... He's really become a victim of society and all it's boundaries. Too bad

This picture of him is an insult. They just took the face of any old Black guy, and put a perm on him, with a 0+> guitar. And the baby did not die at birth. He survived for a week. This "journalist" needs to get his facts straight before trying to provide some type of pseudo-intellectual analysis of Prince's career.

THE PASSION OF THE PRINCE
The Holy Fuck-Fire and Messianic Fall of Prince
by Sam Mickens


Prince
Wed Sept 1
Rose Garden
One Center Ct.


Once, Prince was the final solution to American black music's age-old struggle between God and sex. Transcending the Saturday night/Sunday morning dichotomy worked out on the sweaty brows and searing pipes of predecessors like Sam Cooke and Al Green, Prince made the two entirely separable. For him, it seemed the very meaning of life was found in the interweaving and overlapping of these forces. Prince not only preached the gospel of fucking, but also illustrated the orgasmic potential of spirituality.

Furthermore, like many before and since (Vaslav Nijinsky, Billy Corgan, etc.) Prince seemed to be instilled with an acute sense of his own godliness--not in the way perhaps every believer does, but as a true avatar. All six minutes and 18 seconds of "Purple Rain" are nothing so much as a proselytizing call to the banner of Prince's messianic grandeur, a beseechment to allow His divine love to rain (or reign) benevolent over the world: "U say u want a leader/ But u can't seem 2 make up your mind/I think u better close it/ Let me guide u 2 the purple rain."

And so he did, from approximately 1982 to 1988. Beginning with 1999, Prince began to establish himself beyond the bounds of his occasional hits and semi-generic synth-funk albums and into the great beyond. He was the rare golden story of the music industry, in which creative genius and chart standings explode as one, a validation of the ephemeral dream of genuine pop music.

Prince's Judas came with the initials WB. Around '87, Prince began to expand beyond the comfortable horizons of his record label, and was immediately and viciously restrained. He had prepared for near-simultaneous release of both a three disc set, Crystal Ball, and the funked-up, emotionally charred Black Album. Both of these jumped off from the weirdness of Parade, his final album with The Revolution, and into extreme stylistic and emotional experimentalism. Warner Brothers demanded Crystal Ball be whittled down to the double-set Sign O' The Times, and the Black Album was shelved for seven years. For an artist not only of such expansive genius, but also of such then-unchallenged commercial clout, this must have felt like a true crucifixion.

A hint of what was lost can be glimpsed on the track "Crystal Ball" from the Prince-released bootleg collection of the same name. At nearly 10 and a half minutes long, it marries stunningly advanced and unusual orchestration to a completely hook-laden yet complex, non-linear song structure. It also carries his fuck-faith all the way to the apocalypse--the song sets a classic Prince come-on amidst riotous social Armageddon, stating, "The only thing u can be sure of is the love we make 2night."

Prince was rapidly accelerating beyond even his own established prodigious potential, leading to a prolonged and messy divorce from Warner Brothers. With ever-diminishing artistic conviction, Prince labored through the rest of his contractually obligated albums for Warner, ending with the slightly pitiful Chaos & Disorder. During this time, he became something of a public spectacle, due to his varied attempts at achieving some form of dignity. The "slave" painting, name changing, glyph adopting--all of these were quietly heroic, pained cries for his well-deserved freedom. And yet, even after he gained his independence, his march through the stations of the cross continued.

A perpetual self-mythologizer, Prince was already preparing for his next storied phase as he departed from Warner. With the triple album Emancipation, he launched the fully independent NPG imprint and finally seemed to be casting off the shackles of his long, painful contractual struggle. He had recently married a beautiful model named Mayte, and would soon become a first-time father. The sprawling Emancipation contained love odes to both his wife and unborn child, and even included his baby's sampled heartbeat on one track. But the baby died at birth, Mayte and Prince split soon thereafter, and without a clear direction forward, the understandably damaged Prince fell into a period of muddled, disappointing work, and a drastically muted public profile.

What then, has precipitated his current media-approved resurrection? Perhaps his well-publicized conversion to Jehovah's Witness provides some of the answers. Prince's religion of old always seemed highly personalized--wrapped up in eroticism and his own megalomania, it seemed a faith that held himself almost as highly as God. He even ended Around the World In a Day (possibly the apex of his maniacal creativity) with a stern argument between himself and his creator (both voices, of course, provided by Prince). His new role as a Witness demands an intense humility, even taking him as far as the door-to-door trademark of his faith. This humility may be the method by which Prince has regained his public stature. He has dimmed his fiery genius to return to the fluorescent glare of the public's love. Just as Prince is now a servant to--rather than a vital expression of--his god, he's also a servant to the dictates of pop consumption rather than a vital, shaping force.

His "comeback" album, Musicology, smacks of this downsizing of vision; it's undeniably able, workman-like funk-rock, but betrays a lack of reaching that one could never have accused the former Prince of. In recent interviews he has alluded to this gentle lessening of himself in various arenas, including on stage, saying that he now exerts far less control over his band, allowing things to develop more organically. Perhaps this is indicative of an artist's maturation, but it's impossible to imagine this more lackadaisical Prince ever producing work of the caliber of his glory days.

Once upon a time, every aspect of the man--his unabashedly sexualized guitar playing, his hyper-balletic dancing, his endlessly vulnerable yet masterfully theatrical singing--reflected a ferocious artistic hunger wed to unnerving discipline. It may not be too late for Prince, but if his current arc proves the story of his life, this new, gentrified persona may overwhelm the memory of what he once was: a true artist perpetually striving for a more dizzying, more terrifying purple mountaintop.

http://www.portlandmercur...ml[/quote]

I'm not so sure I can agree with that. Granted, P's 80's work was cutting edge ~ unlike anything we had heard before ~ but "Musicology" is all about dipping into that well of inspiration. He's going back to the place from where the music came, and is making it new again. I have no doubt that his next venture will not be a repeat of the 70's, rather, it will take us on a new journey... He just needed to set the stage first (and remind us what "real" music is all about).

I also think that the author kind of missed something on the topic of sex and spirituality. He did combine the two, rather than seperate them. I always felt that was obvious, but maybe I have missed something there.

All in all, I thought this was a good read. Somewhat misaligned, but well written.

I agree! The old stuff had so much character. The lyrics of his other songs are "clever" and sometimes funny. He just seemed to be much more of a "writer" back then.

I still get excited when I read the lyrics to Little Red Corvette and Rasberry Beret -- "Overcast days don't usually turn me on, but something about the clouds and her mixed" and this:



I look at that and I'm like, "What inspired him to write that?"

and then in When Doves Cry -- "Animals strike curious poses," I still love that line! Musicology is listenable, but it's not above average.

jayARDAHB said:

Yeah...too bad you don't get it.

TheDreamingPeasant said:

A (deleted) scene from Purple Rain -- isn't most of the song about the Apollonia character of Purple Rain?

Anyway...

Interesting writer, but I don't like how he starts off the article with racial statements (note: I didn't say racist), and then makes allusions to the Passion of Christ and tries to make Prince fit into that same symbolism. The guy goes off on some weird tangents before finally landing at the point of his article: a true artist perpetually striving for a more dizzying, more terrifying purple mountaintop. I think this year is just Prince feeling the temperature of the waters and getting ready to climb a whole new mountain -- get ready, y'all!

Snap said:

go figure; the muthafucka's from OREGON

you have to be a true fan to appreciate every song even if the words have no meaning for you the beats and melodies are right on. He is at a level of intense spirituality

SquarePeg said:

he's from NORTHERN Oregon... big diff

All that anyone here needs to REALLY know just in case they haven't figured it out already is that Prince is still evolving as an eclectic musician. I would not put him in any one musical category.

This is an FYI for the newbie or bandwagoner since it appears to me there are more and more of these people here. It's MY turn to do a breakdown of Prince. Seems like that shyt is goin' on way too much, and I've become agitated enough to add my 20 cents in this this forum.

Prince has covered sexuality, often referencing or creating spiritual inuendo (of which Prince has always been into his faith so let's not start separating things here) in various genre's of music from Jazzy (too many songs to mention) to country-ish funk (Baby Knows) , to without a doubt R&B (too many songs to mention). pop (u know darn well too many songs to mention), Rock n Roll with some heavy metal riffs (a few are out there). He's even done classic symphonic funk (Old Friends 4 Sale) and even had some touches of with a touch of rap (notables like Eve on The Greatest Romance Ever Sold).

The music he has created over the years is a unique signature to his soul. Like everyone on this earth, he has had to grow and mature in all facets of his life. It is reflected by the love for music and song which is channeled down those avenues by his feelings over certain moments in his life.

In all of the musical gems he has created, Prince puts out his heart and soul for all humanity to see. The old clique fits where "he's been there, done that". That is a reference to evolving and changing..moving forward with having had an experience.

So I feel the article in the Mercury was written by some person who just had to attempt in breaking Prince down by using some intellectual jargon that seems to bore most people with the exception of those in the writing industry. How easy is it to learn about Prince by looking him up on the WWW? My 8 yr old nephew can do that too.

I already know everything I need to know about your purple highness since I feel we grew up together in the figurative sense. He is spectacular, unique and full of spririt with a whole lotta hope and optimism and my word.. I need to mention PASSION. Oh lawd..cant have true music withouth passion. I wish to have a fraction of what he has. He like the rest of 'become' who we are through all our previous experiences in life up and down (what a rollercoaster). Bless him for being able to melt all facets of life into his music with style, attitude, color and flavor. To keep going after everything he has endured over these decades is something very few real musicians can lay claim too.

Cheers to Prince for enduring all the BS and doin' his own thang regardless of ineptitude or ignorance from the bandwagoner or the person who seems to think he/she knows it all (wtf..said who?) who appear to get there information from previously issued articles and other sources.


I'm annoyed. Sorry if this bugs you. Shooo..that's how I feel right now.

Anyway, we are all entitled to our opinions. I just love the
feedom of speech without retribution.

Thank you for allowing me to post. Stay cool like the other side of the pillow. Much love to the true Prince guru's (lmao).

Peace love n chicken grease! <
Ta ta )~
[Edited 8/31/04 22:53pm]

jayARDAHB said:

Sooo...now this supposed humility is lamented instead of the complaints about his ego? Prince can't win. Ever.

JackieinOregon said:

Jackie -- I have to disagree that the original post shows much intellect -- it's more a play on words than anything (passion, resurrection, comeback, social Armageddon, proselytizing call, messianic grandeur, divine love, benevolence, WB as Judas, artistic conviction, etc.) -- the allusions are over-reaching and awkward (even offensive by comparing Prince's sacrfice to that of Jesus?) -- and as a writer, you should be able to see that -- you have him whipped, easily -- we look forward to hearing more from you, Jackie. Good post! Peace.

Thanks for posting this article! It's the best I've read, regarding Prince, all year. I don't agree with half of it, but it still managed to evoke some furious nostalgia.

Luv & Peace,
Alex
Clubbin' in Mpls/A Night w. Prince
[Edited 9/1/04 1:23am]

jayARDAHB said:

I hear ya'. This is the most perceptive critique of Prince I've read in a long time.

For me Prince has lost something that was last seen with The Gold Experience... and that is "FUN." It just doesn't sound like he is having fun anymore and dang it, i miss the days he was having fun so damn much!! Have fun with your genius duuuuddee!!!!

SquarePeg said:

bullshit

TheDreamingPeasant said:[quote]

WERD. Why? you think. And you laugh and say "we'll never know..."