Pop Life: Desiring Prince

The vaporous body of a pop star.

To this day, the structure of a standard hiphop video is not at all like the structure of a Prince video or album cover. The former is all about the production of envy. It's about the rapper not being the object of desire, but rather the one who has access to things an uncomplicated heterosexual male mind desires, namely the company of thickish, young, bubbly women. With Prince, the object of desire was always himself. And this confused things for many of his straightforward fans. He did not want to be the subject of envy, like the masculine rapper; he wanted to be the destination of the gaze, like a rump-shaking woman.

A mainstream male rapper fears being the object of desire because he doesn't know where that desire might come from. He could attract a man, even a very manly man. This is why the rapper has to be a subject of envy. From this safe position, he can manage and direct the flows of desire. Prince had no such fear. What mattered to him was not the source of desire but its direction—toward him, toward his vaporous body.

It is said that light, after its production in the core of the sun, takes thousands upon thousands of years to reach the surface. Photons are bounced this way and that way until the day they are finally free of the star's chaos. With Prince, it was the other way round. Rays of desire came from every direction, every sex and race, entered his vaporous stardom and became trapped there until the day he died.