1725topp, I enjoyed reading what you said. Very wise and insightful. 2elijah and AtenO, your comments were just as strong and on point.

It's refreshing to read views from those who have a well considered understanding of the subject and are able to articulate in turn. Its a very refreshing contrast to those whom I will only assume speak out of ignorance to the actual facts and perceptions to those whose lives these types of subjects have effected most.


2elijah... I wonder if you are a member of 'the Hair Care Forums'...? If I ever make the mistake of using saying 'good or bad hair'... 'somebody' gives me the 'No More Candy 4 U' look.


As far as TRC went... I wasn't bothered by much if any and I understood the messages Prince touched on. Nor was I bothered by the Vadar voice. I just found the 'music' itself to be rather boring.

no bigotry, only PERCEIVED when people, usually non-African American wrongfully understand and process Prince's references to race, racism, and distinctions between African-American oppression and Jewish oppression. Ex; in Family Name, he says that at least Jews were able to keep their "family names". While its an oversimplification, it is more true than for African Americans who typically adopted the name of their slave owners. I NEVER thought the cd was bigoted in any way until i got on this site. I GET Prince when he goes political and takes it there (Dreamer, Colonized Mind, etc). i find many don't like and can't TAKE this version of Prince

datdude said:

I don't see the need to make the comparison at all... Why single out Jews? Why not some other group that suffered oppression and kept their family name? I don't get it.

Keep in mind that many white supremacists used the mark of Cain theory to mistreat African people. However, it seems that .....

BIGOTRY,SEXISM and ANGER on TRC ?
NO !
HISTORY & FACTS on TRC ?
YES !
...History's no more a mystery...Steel Pulse " True Democraty"
...Recall,recall...History is reality...Burning Spear "Slavery Days"

coolcat said:

Coolcat, probably because many in America, like myself, were shown films of the Jewish holocaust and the atrocities that were involved. From second to 7th grade, I was shown documentaries, which included the horrific photographs of the Jewish holocaust. Keep in mind, I was just "7" when my class watched those horrific images and discussed it in class. Unfortunately, rarely was the subject of American slavery discussed nor were there any documentaries or in-depth discussions about America's past regarding slavery discussed in many American classrooms. It did make me wonder as I got older as to why? Maybe this is the point Prince was trying to make, that what happened in America's past was pretty much not covered much, which in my opinion, was a very important part of American history, and how many immigrants came to this country, their survival and means of support and wealth, where much of the wealth and the how this country was built, depended upon the enslavement of people. I believe the Jewish Holocaust has always been a subject that was taught in many schools in America, when a lot about the Native Americans and Africans/African-Americans' atrocities were not given the same attention or value.

So I don't see the mention of Jewish holocaust compared to slavery in America as any less or more valuable than the other in the RC album. Both unfortunate situations were atrocities that affected various societies, and it is important that we remember both incidents, so that we can make sure these type of inhumane activity never happens again, but unfortunately, some of has and is still happening around various parts of the world to various groups.

Of course Prince is not a Bigot against all white people. But he certainly is towards record and radio executives and 'All the Haters on the internet', they are always WHITE people. don't believe me look around at HQ and in here.
[Edited 5/24/09 4:55am]

Dayclear said:

I don't really listen to the Rainbow Children much, honestly. The deep 'darth vador' narration is just terribly irritating to me. One thing I've always hated in movies is when inner dialogue is spoken out loud by a character, almost patronizing the audience for being to stupid to figure out the emotional impact of a scene---or maybe showing the lack of confidence in an actor to pull of the nuances of a scene in such a way that the audience will not need the actual narration.
I feel the same way about music. It should not need to be narrated if it's a concept album. It should not need endless dialogue in it's interludes and segues (and thankful Prince had to cut out much of that on the symbol album during the early 90s). Trent Reznor's first concept album, The Downward Spiral is a perfect example of a concept album that takes you on a journey through the devolving mind of a person without the need to narrate the way through it. The songs and material speak for themselves.

And this is not the say the Rainbow Children didn't have the material. It certainly did . Yet, many of the songs are way too long and almost put me half to sleep, most of this is due to my lack of interest in the ways he blended the genres chosen together in this album--and not because the material wasn't strong. Indeed, The Rainbow Children was a refreshing break from his plastic years and sounds as organic as his NPG Club releases sounded pre-packaged and bland.

That being said, much of the message in the Rainbow Children got lost in the mix for me. Where Kevin Smith speaks of groups of people at Paisley Park ( during one of those weird cultish 'celebrations') speaking of their distaste in some of the racial and patriarchal themes presented in the albums, I got no sense of this.

To me, all I gathered from the album was that there were banished ones reading shit in 'skagazines' , banished into a digital garden were Akashic records and shit are mentioned when blacks lost their family name before everybody comes together in the name of the father in his last fucking December!!! x 1 billion

And I dread the idea of listening to this thing all the way through again, so can somebody fill me in?

Is this album angry or hateful?
Is it sexist?
And is there bigotry in it?


Please present evidence or examples. Don't just give it a scathing review cause you're pissed at Prince, or a glowing review cause you want to lick his 50 year old ass.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You will be judged by your actions and not your intentions. You may have
a heart of gold, but so does an egg.

3 weeks and counting...


[Edited 5/23/09 22:41pm]

Allow me to play devils advocate here cause I'm hearing alot about "JW Bullshit/propaganda" as it relates to The Rainbow children.

What makes any of what he spoke of in this album different from LoveSexy. Why is that not Christian propaganda?




I admit the tone of LoveSexy is uplifting and über awesome while the Rainbow Children at times feels like you're being lectured by a very very uncool drunk old uncle.

But as far as the religious message, why is TRC any worse than LoveSexy?

Allow me to play devils advocate here cause I'm hearing alot about "JW Bullshit/propaganda" as it relates to The Rainbow children.

What makes any of what he spoke of in this album different from LoveSexy. Why is that not Christian propaganda?




I admit the tone of LoveSexy is uplifting and über awesome while the Rainbow Children at times feels like you're being lectured by a very very uncool drunk old uncle.

But as far as the religious message, why is TRC any worse than LoveSexy?

1725topp said:

I think you mean `the curse of canaan` not `the mark of cain`.

The mark of cain was issued as a protectionary measure for Cain so that he wouldn`t become an outcast.

The curse of canaan reduced the decendants of canaan to lowness and servitude. This curse was specificaly upon the Canaanites who were usurped by the Israelites. Yet it wasn`t issued to Cush, Canaans brother who was also the father of many black races.

the curse of canaan has often been ideologised by supremists as meaning the skin colour changed to denote a general hierachy of races.

Imago said:

Rorywan said:

It's totally true.

I don't really listen to the Rainbow Children much, honestly. The deep 'darth vador' narration is just terribly irritating to me. One thing I've always hated in movies is when inner dialogue is spoken out loud by a character, almost patronizing the audience for being to stupid to figure out the emotional impact of a scene---or maybe showing the lack of confidence in an actor to pull of the nuances of a scene in such a way that the audience will not need the actual narration.
I feel the same way about music. It should not need to be narrated if it's a concept album. It should not need endless dialogue in it's interludes and segues (and thankful Prince had to cut out much of that on the symbol album during the early 90s). Trent Reznor's first concept album, The Downward Spiral is a perfect example of a concept album that takes you on a journey through the devolving mind of a person without the need to narrate the way through it. The songs and material speak for themselves.

And this is not the say the Rainbow Children didn't have the material. It certainly did . Yet, many of the songs are way too long and almost put me half to sleep, most of this is due to my lack of interest in the ways he blended the genres chosen together in this album--and not because the material wasn't strong. Indeed, The Rainbow Children was a refreshing break from his plastic years and sounds as organic as his NPG Club releases sounded pre-packaged and bland.

That being said, much of the message in the Rainbow Children got lost in the mix for me. Where Kevin Smith speaks of groups of people at Paisley Park ( during one of those weird cultish 'celebrations') speaking of their distaste in some of the racial and patriarchal themes presented in the albums, I got no sense of this.

To me, all I gathered from the album was that there were banished ones reading shit in 'skagazines' , banished into a digital garden were Akashic records and shit are mentioned when blacks lost their family name before everybody comes together in the name of the father in his last fucking December!!! x 1 billion

And I dread the idea of listening to this thing all the way through again, so can somebody fill me in?

Is this album angry or hateful?
Is it sexist?
And is there bigotry in it?


Please present evidence or examples. Don't just give it a scathing review cause you're pissed at Prince, or a glowing review cause you want to lick his 50 year old ass.

See, I'm Jewish and I was born with the family name "Pearlman". I find some of the lyrics of TRC disturbign and yet it's still on eof my fave albums and Family Name possibly the best trak on it.

I agree that there's dogma etc, and there are some fucked up implications (he totally doesn't know his history as has been said before: most Jews of East European origin were FORCED to take Family Names so that the could be forcibly conscripted as cannon fodder for the Czar's armies which would often commit pogroms on the Jewish towns from which these soldiers originated).
But I liked all the cryptic shit. I liked the Akhenaten concept and that it was generally presented as open-ended with intentional internal contradictions (such as the King speech at the end of FN). I felt that he was fucking with u and that could be a little uncomfortable (like the "Rebecca" sketch on ONA) at times, but overall made the record more interesting (but then I like the segues on Symbol, so I could be totally Fucked up myself...).

As someone's pointed out, though, the albums post-NEWS (Musicology, 3121, PE and Lotusflow3r) have been somewhat more insidious lyrically. In TRC, it was all out there and his earnestness was, at least, cute. He seemed to be working it all out in public and that led to creative confusion, like in Lovesexy. However, by the time Musicology came around, he thought he'd worked it all out. Since then his lyrical approach is self-atisfied and pompous. He's thinly disguising his agenda, which no longer involves questions or dialectic. He seems to think he's cleverly beguiling and influencing all his naive fans - I find all that more off-putting than anything on TRC


Oh, and I was listening to Lotusflow3r while I was writing and, naturally, what follows the end of "Back to the Lotus" on my Music player is "Rain is wet, sugar is sweet..." etc - how cool is that!
[Edited 5/27/09 16:48pm]

To compare immigrants who came to America of their own will to Africans who came as slaves is a flawed and perpetually dangerous analogy. Immigrants were never sub-human, which means that they never suffered certain legal and psychological damages that are still perpetuated in the African American community, such as self hate as manifest in good and bad hair debates as well as the continued schism between light and dark members of the race. However, it is true that African tribes did work with white slavers to capture other African tribes, but we don't have time to discuss how Africa is the largest continent with more diversity in cultures and languages than any other continent so we should not view African people as a monolith and we don't have time to discuss how the second wave of European conquest set into motion African tribal warfare. (I find it interesting that it is "tribal warfare" when Fox News is discussing turmoil in Africa, but it is never "tribal warfare" when Fox News is discussing war between whites in Europe. This use of language is more psychological warfare.) Also, I always find it interesting that when African people discuss history or seek to get at the truth of history it is called embracing a victim's mentality or trying to divide people. There is no way that humanity can build a better future if we ignore history. As for Lincoln, which has been debated hundreds of times on this site and Housequake, he did not free the slaves because he wanted Africans to be first-class citizens; he freed the slaves as a military strategy because the South was winning the war due to the free "slave" labor. Remember, Lincoln did not free slaves in states that did not secede so in truth Lincoln did not end or abolish slavery. It was the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery, but the Thirteenth Amendment only ended slavery; it did not make African Americans citizens--and so on and so forth with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Thus, the point of "Avalanche" seems to be that one must look critically at history to know from where one has come, what battles one has fought, and to learn what solutions worked and did not work so that one can craft a better strategy for the future rather than allow someone to control you with lies.

Of course the constant refrain of needing an accurate understanding of knowledge throughout TRC has a double meaning for both Jehovah's Witnesses as well as Black Nationalists. For Jehovah's Witnesses, the goal is to witness the truth of God's message to the world so to prepare the world for God's Kingdom, which will destroy all of man's flawed kingdoms. This is their primary and exclusive mission, which is why they don't vote. For Black Nationalists, the goal is to retrain African people from what they see as a people taught to hate themselves, which makes them better slaves or servants. As Carter G. Woodson, who was not a Black Nationalist, asserts in his book, The Miseducation of the Negro, "black people are taught to hate themselves by the eleventh grade" because by then they are taught the accomplishments of all other races but themselves. Now, to some it may seem contradictory for Prince to weave JW and BN beliefs, but liberation theology (using religion to address socio-political issues), which is not exclusive to African people (David does this in "Psalm 23" and it is found throughout the Old Testament) has been a major part of the Civil Rights Movement, dating to the Abolitionist Movement with Frederick Douglass. And since Prince was mixing sex and religion as early as Dirty Mind, I always find it strange that more fans didn't see his embracing of some traditional religion coming for years. We tend to forget that the song, "The Second Coming," was played just before the band began "Uptown" during the Dirty Mind tour.

As for sexism, TRC is only sexist if one thinks that the Christian Bible is sexist, and many do. So, as with everything else, how one sees that point is based on one's background and personal beliefs.

As for the racism, I can see where whites could think that some of the statements are racist. I don't believe in telling anyone what they should feel. However, I often wonder if these same people who are offend by Prince's language understand the perpetuation of a race's inferiority by a language that views everything "black" as bad: blackmail, blackball, even black day of which Prince, himself, is guilty of using in "The Cross." So one could read into Prince's statements of the pale or banished ones as an act of what Mercer Cook called "Linguistic Liberation" where African people attempt to reverse language/words that perpetuate their inferiority. Keep in mind that many white supremacists used the mark of Cain theory to mistreat African people. However, it seems that Prince is probably using more BN rhetoric, or extreme BN rhetoric, that views whiteness as the absence of color as well as the absence of nutrients. Thus, bleach turns everything white because it is killing everything, brown sugar has more nutrients than white sugar, and wheat bread is healthier than white bread because white bread is overly processed bread. Thus, as an artistic act of linguistic liberation, some BN view whiteness as a metaphor for the negativity suffered by civilizations of color when coming into contact with whites. Of course the question is how much of this would Prince know from his own reading or exposure. While one can argue that the language on TRC is incendiary, one can also argue that people of color have not historically fared well after contact with their Caucasian brothers and sisters. And to connect all of this back to religion, Genesis 2:10 provides a geographic location for the Garden of Eden,which would be to the slight west of Egypt or the Nile River. Taking current scientific evidence into consideration, one could conclude that Adam and Eve, based solely on location, had to be people of color. Thus, Prince seems to be alluding to the BN notion that people of color where the first people on the planet and were tricked, allowed themselves to be trick, from their relationship with God. I'm writing all of this not to say that I believe in all of this, but to show that there are historical facts and religious beliefs on which Prince is basing TRC. Now whether someone accepts, likes, or dislikes the message is another discussion all together, but it seems quite unfair to discount or devalue the effort that Prince put into creating the narrative simply because one does not agree with the narrative. It is a great concept record of man's fall from grace and the need to reconnect with or regain grace by learning the Truth, which in this case is the truth according to JWs, BNs, and Prince's own weaving of the two. I'm not saying that anyone should take TRC as their mantra, but it is one hell of a concept record both lyrically and musically. I enjoy the aesthetics of it the same way that I enjoy the aesthetics of Beowulf, the Iliad, or the Odyssey, which, to me, are merely grand myths that are well written. For my personal tastes, TRC is one of my favorites, but I must admit that I am one of those people who like Prince's post-2000 work and am still jamming Lotus/MPLS.

Ultimately, TRC remains in the vein of Prince's solution for the world's problems that mankind must seek a higher solution of love and understanding, which begins as early as "Bambi" on Prince, as the speaker chooses to give the female the benefit of the doubt that she may be happy with her choice of lover rather than degrading her. "Maybe I'm really naive. Who's to say; maybe you're really having fun." And as he reaches his climax of the physical/sexual solution in Purple Rain, sexual salvation surrenders to a more metaphysical solution. By the time he gets to "Darlin' Nikki," Prince's songs seem to assert that where in the past sex could lead to liberation--"Head," "Sexuality," "Do Me, Baby," "1999," and "International Lover,"--if not salvation, now sex is seen as empty and unable to relieve or save his protagonists. Thus, "Darlin' Nikki" ends with the notion that sex ain't saving me so let me seek something higher..."Hello, how are you? I'm fine because I know that the Lord is coming soon." This is echoed by "Computer Blue" which declares that "love and lust both have four letters but entirely different meanings." All of this is elevated or expanded in ATWIAD, and spirituality replaces sex as the catch-all answer that Prince provides for humanity's problems, with "Temptation" being the the exclamation point as he says, "Now, I understand; love is more important than lust." So, if we didn't see the JW or some type of religious conversation coming, then that means that we completely missed the metaphor that culminates in Lovesexy, which is the second attempt or manifestation of TRC, with the New Breed being the first and the New Power Generation being the third. Of course, the major difference between the use of religion in TRC and Dirty Mind and Controversy is that by the time Prince's arrives at TRC, his definitions of right and wrong are more concretely and narrowly defined more on Christian doctrine rather than the more general notion of "let's just love each other and not hurt each other." In this, I can see how some who bought into or invested into this mulatto lookin' dude painting pictures of peace, love, and a multicultural Paisley Park world where sex and individuality are the only tools needed for happiness can feel ideologically betrayed. However, "Annie Christian" is rooted in Christian folklore and is a street that eventually leads to TRC. Prince is still selling a multicultural paradise; it is just that sex has been replaced with faith and the ten commandments.
[Edited 5/24/09 2:16am]