I found this article interesting from the Art Of Record Prodction.....this is a little excerpt from it.

Prince, Camille, and the Challenge to “Authentic” Black Masculinity

“If I Was Your Girlfriend” and “Bob George” – by the African-American artist Prince, on which he exploits contemporary advances in recording technology in order to radically manipulate the character of his voice, both manually increasing and decreasing its pitch, and by doing so problematising the concept of his identity by continuously calling into question his own relationship to his gender, sexuality, and racial heritage. In particular, he maximises the potential of these effects in order to challenge and subvert traditional notions of patriarchal black masculinity, either by offering a radically alternative performance sensibility to that expected by patriarchy, as in the first instance, or latterly by appropriating and then exaggerating the stereotyped behavioural tropes of this ideology in a satirical manner that fully underlines the pitfalls of a one-dimensional view of “authentic” black masculinity.

http://joebennett.wordpre...session-5/

Thanks for sharing

Boy! If thats not a brain twister...

Astasheiks said:

Boy! If thats not a brain twister...

^ yes. I'll try though...

Basically he's confirming what we already know and that is...Prince has long experimented with (his art) music to challenge social precepts, successfully, and in advance of everyone else.

Prince's Camille is not Prince acting like a girl, its Prince projecting a mans viewpoint (stereotype) of what a women would say/do/be. Much like in Bob George, Prince projects the stereotypical, hard-core, black man.

The challenge is in our ability to expand our thoughts to consider that the audio (or visual) stereotype doesn't always match up with reality.

Consider the 20Ten CD cover and pre-promotion where Prince appears, at first, to be half-drawn, the left side appears curvy like a female, but as the drawing is completed, the image is clearly masculine--again, Prince toying (experimenting) this time in a visual way.

I believe the 20Ten drawing is a projection also--since it was only half-drawn and then later was finished. It signifies a third-party projection of Prince.

x

[Edited 1/23/11 23:11pm]

Interesting stuff. Contrasting these two tracks on this context. Bookmarked, will read when I get a chance.

P. wrestled with this I think. He wanted to stretch it out, but pulled himself back in too - much like the religion thing, like a lot of things in his career actually - This stuff is contextual.

NouveauDance said:

Interesting stuff. Contrasting these two tracks on this context. Bookmarked, will read when I get a chance.

P. wrestled with this I think. He wanted to stretch it out, but pulled himself back in too - much like the religion thing, like a lot of things in his career actually - This stuff is contextual.

So he is not as stupid as you think.

Damn!!

Nice article...Prince pushes the boundaries, makes you think outside of the box, and makes you think twice about assigning sterotypes.

i understand the gist of what is being said, but i think its still highly speculative as to P's motive with the Camille voice etc. He was walking the masculine feminine line when he first came out, more so with the Prince (eponymous) album cover and then Dirty Mind (costumes and lyrics). Sometimes i think he was just bored and played around and discovered the Camille voice as opposed to intentionally doing all the thing the paragraph states. Sometimes is just not that deep.

datdude said:

Sometimes is just not that deep.

I totally agree dude!