Thirty years ago, on June 25, 1984, Prince’s masterful Purple Rain was released and the world of Black music hasn’t been the same since. Spearheaded by the multitalented boy wonder from Minneapolis (who had no problems prancing around onstage in his bikini underwear while playing the hell out of a out of a Fender Stratocaster), this was the first disc that Prince credited his touring band, the aptly named the Revolution, for their contributions.

Proving themselves as musically tight as their fearless leader, who rehearsed them as relentlessly as James Brown did his players, the Revolution was a Sly Stone-inspired, racially and sexually diverse band at the top of their game. With the release Purple Rain, group members Wendy Melvion (guitar), Lisa Coleman (piano/keyboards), Brown Mark (bass), Bobby Z (drums) and Matt Fink (keyboards) all became stars in their own right.

Prior to the Purple Rain phenomenon, the little brother in the platform shoes already possessed a devoted fan base following his music since the salad days of his debut, For You. Luckily for us, Prince wasn’t sacked by his record label; Warner Bros. allowed him more free expression in his art than, say, Capitol Records ever gave to Jheri-curled rival O’Bryan. Instead of bringing in outside producers like Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White, they left him alone, crossing their moneyed fingers as they awaited the dopeness they knew he could deliver.

Having grown up listening to a mixture of funk (James Brown, Ohio Players), rock (Little Richard, Carlos Santana) as well as Joni Mitchell, Gamble & Huff, the Beatles and Motown, Prince began combining the coolness of computerized instrumentation with the heat of guitars, drums and bass. From the beginning, he had the voice of a naughty angel and the swagger of a Minneapolis pimp. “Ain’t no pimp like a Midwestern pimp,” guitarist Vernon Reid once said.

While he was a little cheesy early on, posing for teen-dream magazine centerfolds and being a smartass on American Bandstand in 1980 (where he performed his first big hits, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “Why You Want to Treat Me So Bad”), Prince soon began slipping into various personas. Building on the sexually charged wild boy on his third joint, Dirty Mind, and the apocalyptic visionary soul man who reared his horny head on 1999, on Purple Rain, he was content to become a sonic savior whisking us all from the boredom of our everyday existence into his own new wave-funkdafied Oz.

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Who writes this shit? Oh. Ebony.com. It makes sense now.

A Hohner Telecaster is quite a bit different than a Fender Stratocaster.

steakfinger said:

Who writes this shit? Oh. Ebony.com. It makes sense now.

A Hohner Telecaster is quite a bit different than a Fender Stratocaster.

What is your issue with Ebony? It is not a music mag and this is not the first time you have taken a shoot at something urban.