Just wondering...The Black Album seems really tame compared to a lot of music today...Dirty Mind , with the exception of maybe Sister (still kinda gross) and Head (!) could get airplay...Does anybody think that it was the play on words or just the actual that made him a bad boy (i.e., LRC offered "pocket full of Trojans...some of them used" or LPWM "I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth"?

holla back

i think a lot of songs banned from the radio way back then can get played now. Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood was banned when it came out but it always gets played now. our morals and standards have slipt i'm afraid.

"Holocaust aside many lived and died,but when all truth is told,would you rather be dead or be sold?"
I think that line pretty much answers your question.

muirdo said:

Totaly agrea!

yeah Jasper
for me that one line almosts ruins a nice tune.
i can see his point about slavery but i dont think its really on Par with the Holocaust.
I dont mean to offend anyone its just my opinion.

muirdo said:

I think we share that opinion. Due to these lyrics I don´t listen to TRC that much, when I listen to it I pretend I don´t hear those lyrics. They offend me.

muirdo said:

It's not possible to measure which race of people suffered the greatest tragedy. Millions of Jews lost everything they ever had, their families, businesses, suffered humiliation and and eventually were exterminated at the hands of the Nazis in Europe.

Millions of blacks were enslaved, forbidden to be educated, treated like animals, lynched, branded like cattle and whipped for generations and then suffered the indignities of Jim Crow laws in the Southern U.S.

You cannot measure the depths of human misery and degradation. Both Jews and blacks have suffered terribly.

Whether you think they're shocking or not, Prince's lyrics are still causing controversy.

Nikki Darling said:


It's not possible to measure which race of people suffered the greatest tragedy. Millions of Jews lost everything they ever had, their families, businesses, suffered humiliation and and eventually were exterminated at the hands of the Nazis in Europe.

Millions of blacks were enslaved, forbidden to be educated, treated like animals, lynched, branded like cattle and whipped for generations and then suffered the indignities of Jim Crow laws in the Southern U.S.

You cannot measure the depths of human misery and degradation. Both Jews and blacks have suffered terribly.

___


True.

Jasper - why do those lyrics offend you so? What is your interpretation of them?

shocking no, interesting maybe, listenable yes...

I have a question.
I've read estimates that 11-12 million people died at the hands of Nazis in concentration camps. Of that number, approximately 6 million were Jews. Why are the deaths of the other 5-6 million people not as emphasized as the 6 million Jews?
What about the Gypsies, political prisoners, Protestants, Catholic priests and nuns, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other undesirables?
There was a book by Corrie Ten Boom called The Hiding Place(made into a movie).
Sure you can find some information in books and literature dealing with the Holocaust but it's as if their deaths are secondary to those of the Jews. Any TV programs, movies, or documentaries may mention the other kinds of victims but still they are always a side issue. The focus is not on them, but only the 6 million Jews.

I've read and heard, with no way to verify sources, that it is estimated that many more millions of black Africans died on the voyages to the Americas in slave ships. And obviously those who survived this trip were then enslaved in the New World.
Could this be something of what Prince is saying in his TRC lyric?
And if it offends you? Why?

ConsciousContact said:

ta-da!!!

Times changed and barriers are pushed forward.

What was deamed shocking 20 years ago, is not shocking today.

Prince is no longer shocking, the lyrics to the TRC may have some interesting, and ambiguous at best, themes, but apart from that he has become the stuff your dad used to listen to.

for His time Period Prince was Shocking because of His Lyrics&His Overall Presentation.He is the Artist that Got the Sticker on Albums Placed in the first place.but that Prince seems like a Lifetime ago.His Old Stuff though is a Link to Now but everything after a certain Point on the Lyrical Tip is as Risky as Tom Jones or Rod Stewart.

Mindflux said:

I think that they can only be interpreted in one way.
The line suggest that the blacks where worse off because they had there lives sold to rich white folk, and that they where better off dead like the Jews in the holocaust. I think Prince is wrong, there was always hope that slaves could be freed. Once dead all hope is lost. Both black and jews suffered in different ways, no man can decide who was worse off. I think it's offensive even to suggest that they could be compared.