I just discovered it a week ago, and I hate myself for loving it so much.

I'm a dude but I recently discovered this track, it's probably my favourite of the unreleased stuff I've heard recently. In general I love the MPLSound from that period, so this was a gem for me ("Do Yourself a Favor" too), and I love the way he sings on the verses.

I'll assume you're inquiring about the rape lyrics. I'll probably catch flak for saying this, but I've known women who are turned on by Alex in A Clockwork Orange and women who love Eminem despite his songs about murdering women. I've known PhDs who teach courses on Shakespeare even though A Midsummer Night's Dream has a woman getting drugged and shagging a part-man-part-goat. There are university studies out there about women having rape fantasies; one of the biggest book series of the last decade was about a woman falling in love with a rich dude who ties her up and torture-fucks her and stalks her in between (I'm still waiting for that bestseller about trailer-park BDSM, ladies).

I imagine there are women out there who would be repulsed by Extraloveable 82, others who will express disagreement but be able to filter out the lyrics in favor of the music, others who will claim to dislike it when a part of them does, and still others who are quietly or not so quietly turned on. And that's fine. What would be wrong would be a dogmatic feminist saying women shouldn't like it, and should all conform to their narrow definition of what a woman is supposed to be.

Not a woman but I thought it was all tongue in cheek.

mtlfan said:

I'm a dude but I recently discovered this track, it's probably my favourite of the unreleased stuff I've heard recently. In general I love the MPLSound from that period, so this was a gem for me ("Do Yourself a Favor" too), and I love the way he sings on the verses.

I'll assume you're inquiring about the rape lyrics. I'll probably catch flak for saying this, but I've known women who are turned on by Alex in A Clockwork Orange and women who love Eminem despite his songs about murdering women. I've known PhDs who teach courses on Shakespeare even though A Midsummer Night's Dream has a woman getting drugged and shagging a part-man-part-goat. There are university studies out there about women having rape fantasies; one of the biggest book series of the last decade was about a woman falling in love with a rich dude who ties her up and torture-fucks her and stalks her in between (I'm still waiting for that bestseller about trailer-park BDSM, ladies).

I imagine there are women out there who would be repulsed by Extraloveable 82, others who will express disagreement but be able to filter out the lyrics in favor of the music, others who will claim to dislike it when a part of them does, and still others who are quietly or not so quietly turned on. And that's fine. What would be wrong would be a dogmatic feminist saying women shouldn't like it, and should all conform to their narrow definition of what a woman is supposed to be.

I am a woman

and yeah, what you said.

one time ooh

two time ooh ooh

There are so many sex and violence T.V. show, movies and everything else out there, that I don't know why I am so shocked by a sex and violence song. I fell in love with the 'Do Me Baby' and 'Let's Pretend We're Married' Prince a long time ago. Extralovable, that I just recently discovered, changed how I feel about Prince in a way that I don't quite understand yet. I love the song musically, and it turns me on in a way that pisses me off. It is gripping for that reason, and I can't stop listening to it.

[Edited 6/9/16 13:59pm]

Strive said:

Not a woman but I thought it was all tongue in cheek.

It doesn't feel tounge and cheek to me at all. It feels serious, scary and intense.

I love it...as is.

Its ART and shouldnt be changed....it's not literal, its metaphorical... hence the sounds.....

Xarina said:

I am a woman. I have been raped. I also love the living daylights outta that version and wouldn't change it for the world. It is art.

I'm a woman, don't find the rape lyric unacceptable at all. He's not actually raping someone, it's art and isn't hurting anyone.

No different than singing about murder or anything in the same taboo vein. It's just a song.

It is absolutely vile and below him.

When I was in my late teens I looked very young for my age. I think this is what provoked two attacks on me (plus another incident of a man following me until I started running, then he ran after me, but I eventually ran to a group of people and then he turned tail and disappeared - a bit spooky, but nothing really happened right?). One incident was just a group of teenage boys who cornered me. I was a little scared but as soon as they realised that I was no easy target (the moment I picked one of them up and threatened to drop him over a wall - I scared myself with that reaction), they left me alone. I was lucky.

However, the final incident was really very frightening. I was running when a van pulled up and a guy got out and started to talk as if he was about to ask directions. Next minute he had a knife to my throat and he was pulling me into his van. It took me a good 30 seconds or more to react to this. In that time, I figured I was dead. I thought if he released me he was going to prison so he had no choice but to kill me. I decided to try to hurt him as much as I could. As soon as there became a small gap beteen my neck and the knife I got one hand around the blade and one over his hand. I was tiny but strong. I knew I couldn't get the knife off him but we soon realised that he couldn't get it off me either. We were in stalemate for a long time. He couldn't make a move without me trying to stab him somewhere painfulf with that knife. He had to keep all his focus on it to stop me. He was much bigger than I was but he didn't have as much invested into this fight as I had. After what felt like half a day of him attempting to overpower me, but was probably only half an hour to an hour, he decided to let me go. He made a lot of death threats if I talked, but the police picked him up the next morning.

He had a matress in the back of that van. An evil predator. I was never as carefree again.

Comments about rape don't go down very well.

RiotPaisley said:

I love Extralovable- the original version is great, I love that old funky sound of his, until he takes it in that direction and the visuals of him dragging an unwilling woman to the car aren't that pleasant, and a bit scary.

In the version of 'Extralovable' that I listened to, he is threatening to drag her to the bathtub. How many different versions are out there?

I'm curious by the some things the conversation has brought up here - great topic (as in, a good and genuninely interesting question raised) by the OP...

I absolutely LOVE the original Extraloveable... and when it gets to the end, I cringe a little... it's not something I would listen to when anyone else was around.

Obviously, it's something that Prince didn't want released, and as others have said, he was probably embarrassed by it as years went by... that may even have driven him to remake it, knowing the original was out there... 'listen... THIS is it's supposed to go'...

However, as others have mentioned violence in music... is it any worse that people getting shot/murdered in hip-hop? Is it any worse than something like 'Tony, shoot that piece of shit' from the Symbol album?

While it is unpleasant, shouldn't we be more outraged when someone is figuratively killed on a record, or when someone alludes to that, than we are by someone alluding to sexual assault?

I'm not convinced that's the case.... I suspect it may be because murdering someone on a record becomes so extreme it seems all the more unreal, whereas the sexual threats in Extraloveable don't sound that far removed from a possible reality... but I'm genuinely interested to know what people think...

QueenofCardboard said:

Promotion of murder is vile too.

QueenofCardboard said:

mtlfan said:

I'm a dude but I recently discovered this track, it's probably my favourite of the unreleased stuff I've heard recently. In general I love the MPLSound from that period, so this was a gem for me ("Do Yourself a Favor" too), and I love the way he sings on the verses.

I'll assume you're inquiring about the rape lyrics. I'll probably catch flak for saying this, but I've known women who are turned on by Alex in A Clockwork Orange and women who love Eminem despite his songs about murdering women. I've known PhDs who teach courses on Shakespeare even though A Midsummer Night's Dream has a woman getting drugged and shagging a part-man-part-goat. There are university studies out there about women having rape fantasies; one of the biggest book series of the last decade was about a woman falling in love with a rich dude who ties her up and torture-fucks her and stalks her in between (I'm still waiting for that bestseller about trailer-park BDSM, ladies).

I imagine there are women out there who would be repulsed by Extraloveable 82, others who will express disagreement but be able to filter out the lyrics in favor of the music, others who will claim to dislike it when a part of them does, and still others who are quietly or not so quietly turned on. And that's fine. What would be wrong would be a dogmatic feminist saying women shouldn't like it, and should all conform to their narrow definition of what a woman is supposed to be.

I am a woman

and yeah, what you said.

one time ooh

two time ooh ooh

There are so many sex and violence T.V. show, movies and everything else out there, that I don't know why I am so shocked by a sex and violence song.

I've noticed this a lot with people and music in general. When it comes to movies and TV it seems like people are more easily able to see it as fantasy, but for some reason they think all songs are autobiographical or something. Songs can be just as fictional as any other artistic work, and most of them are.

I'm a man, but here's my opinion. I knew there was an older version, but I didn't hear it 'til recently. The "Reloaded" version has been my jam since it came out a few years ago (the version with horns and no rapping, specifically). When I finally heard the 1982 version, I was more than a bit shocked by the lyrics. It's ugly. I imagine that Prince thought better of the situation, and that's why it remained unreleased, even though it's a killer cut otherwise. The 2011 version is probably in my top 20 Prince songs (seriously), so I'm glad he fixed the ugliness in it.

As a woman I like the song but I do not like lyric. But I also do not think it should be changed. However if some defense attorney tries using a "prince" defense I would not be so charitable.

The rape part is unacceptable to me, but for some strange reason, his references to his father bothered me even more. I get it, it's probably fictional, it is art, but still disturbing. Reality, his father didn't die until 2001. I couldn't see myself ever singing anything like that, but yes, totally my opinion. It just made me wonder how messed up his childhood was....(that's the Sociologist, Psychologist in me. Sorry guys).

I have no issues with it its just a song

IRockThere4IAm said:

I'm a man, but here's my opinion. I knew there was an older version, but I didn't hear it 'til recently. The "Reloaded" version has been my jam since it came out a few years ago (the version with horns and no rapping, specifically). When I finally heard the 1982 version, I was more than a bit shocked by the lyrics. It's ugly. I imagine that Prince thought better of the situation, and that's why it remained unreleased, even though it's a killer cut otherwise. The 2011 version is probably in my top 20 Prince songs (seriously), so I'm glad he fixed the ugliness in it.

Exactly. I'm a woman but I feel the same way.

roxy831 said:

For those who think he didn't release this one because of the rape lyrics... I disagree. This is speculation, but I think he didn't release it because he recorded this track in 1982, and apart from the reference to "hippies," to me it sounds more like it belongs on Controversy than 1999. It would have been easy to excise the rape lyrics if he wanted to release it that badly back in '82. But he had a lot of tracks to choose from that year, even his B-sides from that period were unbelievable, and how many eight minute funk/EDM jams was he supposed to put on one record? He had four others on 1999, and they're all stronger tracks, IMO.

RiotPaisley said:

I'm not a woman, so my view is probably not important for this thread (for the record, I think the loss of the offending passage is the only way in which the later versions are preferable to the original)--but I do want to bring up another reference in a different outtake. Now, sometimes Extralovable is said to have been considered for Vanity 6, but it's hard for me to see that as that likely (at least not when he was recording it) because the outtake just plain doesn't sound like it, with the various band related asides (Hey Dez?) and the talk, but maybe... But he does use "rape" in another song that always seemed to be intended for a girl to sing, although it's not present in the released version. Both the Rebels version and the later Prince vocal version of U include the line "You drive a girl to rape, you know you do" (in the original it rhymes with "all the girls go ape for you," but that's gone before the second version). Paula Abdul's version doesn't have the line, but Prince's still using it in 1987 suggests that he still didn't see anything wrong with it. How do you feel about this use of the idea of saying "I want to rape you" to mean "you're attractive" when it's done by a woman to a man? Does that change things?

sunset3121 said: