Strive said:

Prince didn't fit into any partisan box. Trying to cram him into one is a fool's errand by people that want to co-opt him.

Strive said:

donnyenglish said:

Strive said:

Prince didn't fit into any partisan box. Trying to cram him into one is a fool's errand by people that want to co-opt him.

Very true. Prince did make a point to identify as a black man and was very aware of and spoke out on black american issues. He was clear. Even clearer than when he said produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince. Let’s not whitewash his wokeness too. [Edited 9/10/20 12:00pm]

be careful of speaking too much truth Donny, they'll snip your comments, hide the thread, and say "youre crying about race"... or better yet, they'll ban me and accuse ME of saying it...

[Edited 9/10/20 12:05pm]

I continue to enjoy this podcast series. It is a fantastic story, and it's being really well told.

Strive said:

LoveGalore said:

LoveGalore said:

Strive said:

Prince didn't fit into any partisan box. Trying to cram him into one is a fool's errand by people that want to co-opt him.

Partisanship isn't being debated. It's Prince's approach to racism - which he was outspoken about for decades. Prince DID believe in systemic racism AND he believed he was the target of it from radio play to CONtracts. The only reason Prince didn't mention race more overtly in the 80s is because the landscape never would've forgiven him for it. But you'll see as his courting of the airwaves cooled, so did his inhibitions.

The man who broke race barriers and covered the JB song "I don't want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, I'll get it myself" for like 15 years in his later life believed in systemic racism and that the game was forever rigged against minorities?

Ok. His actions say otherwise. He approached every day like nothing was impossible. And he accomplished so many great things because of the way he approached life.

And again, he was a JW so he didn't want to be thought of in partisan terms. Even Van Jones, the guy who outed a number of his charity works, said he was purple politically. He pulled ideas from everywhere. He also wanted to open opportunities for his community and tear down stereotypes.

But honestly, there's probably a correlation between Prince's depression/drug use and his "wokeness". It's an interesting thought. FIXURLIFEUP was a drastic departure from his previous belief that only God could lead and heal the world. That has nothing to do with Sign but it's still an interesting thought.

My main point is to say that trying to bend Prince's past art to fit modern lines of thought is beyond fucking stupid. And the more the Estate attempts to do that, the more they're going to alienate portions of the audience.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:16pm]

RJOrion said:

laytonian said:

Prince favored Rudolph's because he lived across the street at one time...and cashed his checks there. Early days checks, obviously.

Later, he went through vegetarian, vegan, back to vegetarian and then pescatarian with added daily eggs.

now that you mention it, i do remember reading Owen Husney say he set up P in his first apt on Franklin Ave and bought him some instruments...didint know it was on the Uptown End of Franklin Ave though...i lived there from 93 - 96, well after P lived in the neighborhood... i think at that time Jellybean was part owner of Rudolph's if im not mistaken.

Got the word: Jellybean was not a part owner BUT ate there so often he should have owned the place

Strive said:

LoveGalore said:

Strive said: Partisanship isn't being debated. It's Prince's approach to racism - which he was outspoken about for decades. Prince DID believe in systemic racism AND he believed he was the target of it from radio play to CONtracts. The only reason Prince didn't mention race more overtly in the 80s is because the landscape never would've forgiven him for it. But you'll see as his courting of the airwaves cooled, so did his inhibitions.

The man who broke race barriers and covered the JB song "I don't want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, I'll get it myself" for like 15 years in his later life believed in systemic racism and that the game was forever rigged against minorities?

Ok. His actions say otherwise. He approached every day like nothing was impossible. And he accomplished so many great things because of the way he approached life.

And again, he was a JW so he didn't want to be thought of in partisan terms. Even Van Jones, the guy who outed a number of his charity works, said he was purple politically. He pulled ideas from everywhere. He also wanted to open opportunities for his community and tear down stereotypes.

But honestly, there's probably a correlation between Prince's depression/drug use and his "wokeness". It's an interesting thought. FIXURLIFEUP was a drastic departure from his previous belief that only God could lead and heal the world. That has nothing to do with Sign but it's still an interesting thought.

My main point is to say that trying to bend Prince's past art to fit modern lines of thought is beyond fucking stupid. And the more the Estate attempts to do that, the more they're going to alienate portions of the audience.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:16pm]

This is slander and a cheap shot of the worst kind to try to marginalize his beliefs on racism by linking them to his medical condition. Listen to Exodus, Right the Wrong, Da, Da, Da, Family Name, Avalanche, 2045: Radical Man, United States of Division, Judas Smile, Dear Mr. Man, Colonized Mind, Black Muse, etc. No one is bending anything. Prince was clear on the issue. I think it is others that now want to bend things.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:46pm]

LoveGalore said:

Strive said:

Prince didn't fit into any partisan box. Trying to cram him into one is a fool's errand by people that want to co-opt him.

Partisanship isn't being debated. It's Prince's approach to racism - which he was outspoken about for decades. Prince DID believe in systemic racism AND he believed he was the target of it from radio play to CONtracts. The only reason Prince didn't mention race more overtly in the 80s is because the landscape never would've forgiven him for it. But you'll see as his courting of the airwaves cooled, so did his inhibitions.

I agree with this. Racial conflict and oppression definitely moved to the forefront of Prince's landscape during the 90's and 2000's - I think beginning with the song Race, and moving on from there. He still covered a myriad of subjects and life experiences with his songs, but no question he became a supporter of BLM and the racial injustices happening in the years before he passed.

*

His cover of the song "When will we Be paid" was played in shows from '99 on, and was also the first song played at his last P&M show in Atlanta.

donnyenglish said:

Strive said:

The man who broke race barriers and covered the JB song "I don't want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, I'll get it myself" for like 15 years in his later life believed in systemic racism and that the game was forever rigged against minorities?

Ok. His actions say otherwise. He approached every day like nothing was impossible. And he accomplished so many great things because of the way he approached life.

And again, he was a JW so he didn't want to be thought of in partisan terms. Even Van Jones, the guy who outed a number of his charity works, said he was purple politically. He pulled ideas from everywhere. He also wanted to open opportunities for his community and tear down stereotypes.

But honestly, there's probably a correlation between Prince's depression/drug use and his "wokeness". It's an interesting thought. FIXURLIFEUP was a drastic departure from his previous belief that only God could lead and heal the world. That has nothing to do with Sign but it's still an interesting thought.

My main point is to say that trying to bend Prince's past art to fit modern lines of thought is beyond fucking stupid. And the more the Estate attempts to do that, the more they're going to alienate portions of the audience.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:16pm]

This is slander and a cheap shot of the worst kind to try to marginalize his beliefs on racism by linking them to his medical condition. Listen to Exodus, Right the Wrong, Da, Da, Da, Family Name, Avalanche, 2045: Radical Man, United States of Division, Judas Smile, Dear Mr. Man, Colonized Mind, Black Muse, etc. No one is bending anything. Prince was clear on the issue. I think it is others that now want to bend things.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:46pm]

Agreed. He had been writing and singing about racism for years and years. His song Race was recorded in 1991.

*

Addiction to pain meds due to trying to control severe physical pain happens to any and every race around the world. Opioid addiction has become one of the leading causes of death in this country.

I always knew that Prince was pulling events of the day into his SOTT song, but it's very interesting to hear that pretty much ALL of the topics he covered in the song came straight from the LA and MN newspaper headlines. He really was an amazing lyricist!!

*

They really are taking this one small step at a time They've only covered up to July and the UTCM premiere. Next is the Parade tour and the breakup of The Revolution.

Strive said:

donnyenglish said:

This is slander and a cheap shot of the worst kind to try to marginalize his beliefs on racism by linking them to his medical condition. Listen to Exodus, Right the Wrong, Da, Da, Da, Family Name, Avalanche, 2045: Radical Man, United States of Division, Judas Smile, Dear Mr. Man, Colonized Mind, Black Muse, etc. No one is bending anything. Prince was clear on the issue. I think it is others that now want to bend things.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:46pm]

It's not a cheap shot. The more you buy into leftist philosophies, the less empowered and more hopeless you become. You give all the power to external forces that seem impossible to change.

He went from singing that the coming of God's Kingdom and that only God can lead humanity, to saying that the people need to lead and seemingly resigning himself to the idea that the hope he held wasn't coming in his life time.

And that shift came with his change in associates and his pill addiction growing out of control. And it's not much of a surprise that nearly all the songs you mention also come out of dark eras he was going through.

"No one is bending anything"

Ok, please tell me how any of the horseshit below is relevant to Sign O The Times?

_________

Daphne Brooks: It's ironic to call '86 and the '80s "simpler times," but given the twin pandemics that we're living through right now, it was just a different way in which all sorts of, you know, diseases permeating the American body politic were manifesting themselves. So, you know, Ronald Reagan takes office in 1980. We now have the tapes in which he refers to African leaders as "monkeys," so if there was ever any question of Ronald Reagan's racism, which anyone who's African American and Latinx and Asian American and indigenous from California, and like myself, being African American from California, knew it very well. But the Reagan/Bush regime was very much designed to restructure the Republican party, finally and resolutely, around racial polarization and anti-black structural reform, eviscerating the advances made by the Civil Rights Freedom movement. And then, of course, in Prince's opening lines to "Sign 'O' the Times," he reminds of the fact that we were in a pandemic then. The AIDS epidemic, which disproportionately — and again it's eerie to use these words: disproportionately affecting black and brown neighborhoods as well as queer communities — it's very present in the universe. The strangeness of the '80s though — and this is kind of the world that we've inherited, too — is that on the one hand you have all of these very pronounced violences towards marginalized peoples, but the gains in civil rights representation lead to a cultural revolution such that you have, for the first time, a multiplicity of "crossover" African American pop superstars. Of course, the Purple One would've also, you know, the trifecta of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, and then there's also Lionel Richie who's hanging out there, which people forget that. That was a big and very controversial move for him to transition out of the Commodores into "Lady." There's the boom in Black independent cinema. So it's a very dizzying kind of moment, and in some ways, you know, culture is both possibility, right? On the other hand, it can actually distract you from seeing the ways that the police state is designed to forever repress black and brown peoples. I think that Prince really was so mindful of the nuances of those kinds of the paradoxical ways that Black life was unfolding at that moment.

laytonian said:

RJOrion said:

laytonian said:

Got the word: Jellybean was not a part owner BUT ate there so often he should have owned the place

word... him and Monte both... Mr. Moir is super cool and humble .

AND...Monte wrote Janet's Pleasure Principle. Very cool!!! Summer of '86 was one of the best!!

Strive said:

donnyenglish said:

This is slander and a cheap shot of the worst kind to try to marginalize his beliefs on racism by linking them to his medical condition. Listen to Exodus, Right the Wrong, Da, Da, Da, Family Name, Avalanche, 2045: Radical Man, United States of Division, Judas Smile, Dear Mr. Man, Colonized Mind, Black Muse, etc. No one is bending anything. Prince was clear on the issue. I think it is others that now want to bend things.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:46pm]

It's not a cheap shot. The more you buy into leftist philosophies, the less empowered and more hopeless you become. You give all the power to external forces that seem impossible to change.

He went from singing that the coming of God's Kingdom and that only God can lead humanity, to saying that the people need to lead and seemingly resigning himself to the idea that the hope he held wasn't coming in his life time.

And that shift came with his change in associates and his pill addiction growing out of control. And it's not much of a surprise that nearly all the songs you mention also come out of dark eras he was going through.

"No one is bending anything"

Ok, please tell me how any of the horseshit below is relevant to Sign O The Times?

_________

Daphne Brooks: It's ironic to call '86 and the '80s "simpler times," but given the twin pandemics that we're living through right now, it was just a different way in which all sorts of, you know, diseases permeating the American body politic were manifesting themselves. So, you know, Ronald Reagan takes office in 1980. We now have the tapes in which he refers to African leaders as "monkeys," so if there was ever any question of Ronald Reagan's racism, which anyone who's African American and Latinx and Asian American and indigenous from California, and like myself, being African American from California, knew it very well. But the Reagan/Bush regime was very much designed to restructure the Republican party, finally and resolutely, around racial polarization and anti-black structural reform, eviscerating the advances made by the Civil Rights Freedom movement. And then, of course, in Prince's opening lines to "Sign 'O' the Times," he reminds of the fact that we were in a pandemic then. The AIDS epidemic, which disproportionately — and again it's eerie to use these words: disproportionately affecting black and brown neighborhoods as well as queer communities — it's very present in the universe. The strangeness of the '80s though — and this is kind of the world that we've inherited, too — is that on the one hand you have all of these very pronounced violences towards marginalized peoples, but the gains in civil rights representation lead to a cultural revolution such that you have, for the first time, a multiplicity of "crossover" African American pop superstars. Of course, the Purple One would've also, you know, the trifecta of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, and then there's also Lionel Richie who's hanging out there, which people forget that. That was a big and very controversial move for him to transition out of the Commodores into "Lady." There's the boom in Black independent cinema. So it's a very dizzying kind of moment, and in some ways, you know, culture is both possibility, right? On the other hand, it can actually distract you from seeing the ways that the police state is designed to forever repress black and brown peoples. I think that Prince really was so mindful of the nuances of those kinds of the paradoxical ways that Black life was unfolding at that moment.

"The more you buy into leftisit policies" ah that explains why you don't see anything of what Prince was speaking on. If you bothered to read the lyrics, what Daphne talks about is still going on today. The racial tension is thicker than ever, we have a new pandemic, COVID, which is killing people. The racial tension is a pandemic, the racism in this country is a disease, innocent people die, the marginalized are victims. The LGBTQ community has been attacked, many Trans Men and Women have been attacked this year, specifically Black Trans Women. So what's happening in the 80s is happening now, in similar ways. If you look at Prince's discography and read the lyrics, you would see he spoke on racism and such you just have to bother researching and taking the time. Don't know why you're so hard headed and lack the understanding that most of the other people in this thread have. Prince spoke on Racism often, I don't know why you act blind to it, and act blind to the things happening now in the world and how they have a correlation to what Prince wrote about.

LoveGalore said:

Strive said:

The man who broke race barriers and covered the JB song "I don't want nobody to give me nothing, open up the door, I'll get it myself" for like 15 years in his later life believed in systemic racism and that the game was forever rigged against minorities?

Ok. His actions say otherwise. He approached every day like nothing was impossible. And he accomplished so many great things because of the way he approached life.

And again, he was a JW so he didn't want to be thought of in partisan terms. Even Van Jones, the guy who outed a number of his charity works, said he was purple politically. He pulled ideas from everywhere. He also wanted to open opportunities for his community and tear down stereotypes.

But honestly, there's probably a correlation between Prince's depression/drug use and his "wokeness". It's an interesting thought. FIXURLIFEUP was a drastic departure from his previous belief that only God could lead and heal the world. That has nothing to do with Sign but it's still an interesting thought.

My main point is to say that trying to bend Prince's past art to fit modern lines of thought is beyond fucking stupid. And the more the Estate attempts to do that, the more they're going to alienate portions of the audience.

[Edited 9/10/20 13:16pm]

The whitest post ever posted on the org. If racial topics alienate you, then I have not a single clue why you like Prince. [Edited 9/10/20 14:28pm]

After their latest reply, I just laughed. It explains everything.

haveaglamslam said:

The LGBTQ community has been attacked, many Trans Men and Women have been attacked this year, specifically Black Trans Women.

Who's attacking them? (spoiler: ashamed/homophobic people of color)

Strive said:

Ugh, that professor. Please fuck off with that nonsense.

Indeed stupid talk. These are the folks that are teaching our kids. Terrible. I will never get that time back.

PLEASE NEXT TIME WARN ME THAT STUPID CRAP LIKE THIS IS ON THE PODCAST AND I WILL SKIP IT.

[Edited 9/10/20 15:36pm]

this was a good one.

ok so while i enjoyed the professores personal recall of when SOTT came out, i didnt enjoy her academic, collegiate analysis of it so much. but then i am not a huge fan of academic analysis of popular culture on the whole. they often have their own axes and theories to grind. but it was interesting to hear an academic perspective. whether SOTT quite fits into that lens she was trying to apply to it, i am not so sure.

the most interesting part for me was hearing susan rogers say SOTT (and i guess, it and other skeletal tracks) were prince's response to that bare bones drum machine and not much else style of mid - late 80s hip hop.just shows princes response to rap was better and more imaginative in the earlier part of his career than later.

i find susannah scarily articulate lol.

LOL @ these people bending over backwards to convince themselves that their favorite artist would never believe in leftist positions or schools of thinking.

i've never seen anything so sad. read a book, travel the world, put a little thought into something for once in your life.

haveaglamslam said:

Strive said:

It's not a cheap shot. The more you buy into leftist philosophies, the less empowered and more hopeless you become. You give all the power to external forces that seem impossible to change.

He went from singing that the coming of God's Kingdom and that only God can lead humanity, to saying that the people need to lead and seemingly resigning himself to the idea that the hope he held wasn't coming in his life time.

And that shift came with his change in associates and his pill addiction growing out of control. And it's not much of a surprise that nearly all the songs you mention also come out of dark eras he was going through.

"No one is bending anything"

Ok, please tell me how any of the horseshit below is relevant to Sign O The Times?

_________

Daphne Brooks: It's ironic to call '86 and the '80s "simpler times," but given the twin pandemics that we're living through right now, it was just a different way in which all sorts of, you know, diseases permeating the American body politic were manifesting themselves. So, you know, Ronald Reagan takes office in 1980. We now have the tapes in which he refers to African leaders as "monkeys," so if there was ever any question of Ronald Reagan's racism, which anyone who's African American and Latinx and Asian American and indigenous from California, and like myself, being African American from California, knew it very well. But the Reagan/Bush regime was very much designed to restructure the Republican party, finally and resolutely, around racial polarization and anti-black structural reform, eviscerating the advances made by the Civil Rights Freedom movement. And then, of course, in Prince's opening lines to "Sign 'O' the Times," he reminds of the fact that we were in a pandemic then. The AIDS epidemic, which disproportionately — and again it's eerie to use these words: disproportionately affecting black and brown neighborhoods as well as queer communities — it's very present in the universe. The strangeness of the '80s though — and this is kind of the world that we've inherited, too — is that on the one hand you have all of these very pronounced violences towards marginalized peoples, but the gains in civil rights representation lead to a cultural revolution such that you have, for the first time, a multiplicity of "crossover" African American pop superstars. Of course, the Purple One would've also, you know, the trifecta of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, and then there's also Lionel Richie who's hanging out there, which people forget that. That was a big and very controversial move for him to transition out of the Commodores into "Lady." There's the boom in Black independent cinema. So it's a very dizzying kind of moment, and in some ways, you know, culture is both possibility, right? On the other hand, it can actually distract you from seeing the ways that the police state is designed to forever repress black and brown peoples. I think that Prince really was so mindful of the nuances of those kinds of the paradoxical ways that Black life was unfolding at that moment.

"The more you buy into leftisit policies" ah that explains why you don't see anything of what Prince was speaking on. If you bothered to read the lyrics, what Daphne talks about is still going on today. The racial tension is thicker than ever, we have a new pandemic, COVID, which is killing people. The racial tension is a pandemic, the racism in this country is a disease, innocent people die, the marginalized are victims. The LGBTQ community has been attacked, many Trans Men and Women have been attacked this year, specifically Black Trans Women. So what's happening in the 80s is happening now, in similar ways. If you look at Prince's discography and read the lyrics, you would see he spoke on racism and such you just have to bother researching and taking the time. Don't know why you're so hard headed and lack the understanding that most of the other people in this thread have. Prince spoke on Racism often, I don't know why you act blind to it, and act blind to the things happening now in the world and how they have a correlation to what Prince wrote about.

its like with hendrix. a lot of people used to say things like 'i didnt see him as black', i guess as he, like prince, didnt always appear like the popular black music artists of the day (you can hear hendrix mocking soul singer routines on some of his live shows). obv prince kinda did some of that himself, by never being clear, but hey, hes allowed to create his own mystique.

but i think its that in the 80s, princes politics was more easily read as being centrist, or even conservative becuase of songs like ronnie talk to russia, free, or america. and he wasnt making big, explicit statements on race.

later on in his career, that changed, and prince decided he wanted to make sure people knew where he stood, so recorded songs like when will we be paid, black muse, black sweat, etc etc, songs that were a lot more insistent on his racial identity. he wasnt so keen on any kind of ambiguity at this point (partly as the tide of pop culture, and black pop culture wasnt really leaning towards that).

so there are two princes really. the one who wanted to build something like a post racial utopia (uptown, etc) but who was also pretty conservative in many ways, and the one who 'came out' later on, who was more forthright in wanting to be seen as a black artist, and as a black public figure. as a matter of taste, i hated princes preachier material (whether its the war or whatever), and thought many of his attempts at serious commentary werent esp deep, became too heavy handed, and musically just werent particularly interesting or original, but each to their own.

prince, like many 60s and 70s soul artists, also wanted to preach love, rather than division, sometimes this was beautiful, sometimes it was sappy pap. to say he was forced by white music industry ppl to play his politics down but carry some weight, but just as he didnt much like horns in his own music for years, prince also wanted to do things his own way. he prob didnt want to sound like a typical 'socially conscious' artist in the 80s. as he embraced his 70s golden era more as he got older, it seemed predictable that he would emulate the messages of that era too.

[Edited 9/10/20 16:01pm]

[Edited 9/10/20 16:02pm]

[Edited 9/10/20 16:13pm]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

RJOrion said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

this was a good one.

ok so while i enjoyed the professores personal recall of when SOTT came out, i didnt enjoy her academic, collegiate analysis of it so much. but then i am not a huge fan of academic analysis of popular culture on the whole. they often have their own axes and theories to grind. but it was interesting to hear an academic perspective. whether SOTT quite fits into that lens she was trying to apply to it, i am not so sure.

the most interesting part for me was hearing susan rogers say SOTT (and i guess, it and other skeletal tracks) were prince's response to that bare bones drum machine and not much else style of mid - late 80s hip hop.just shows princes response to rap was better and more imaginative in the earlier part of his career than later.

i find susannah scarily articulate lol.

yo, off topic but i love your acct name Funkbaby & The Babysitters would be a dope band name

haha

i stole it from the band huey and the babysitters who were signed IIRC to curtis mayfields label for a while

haveaglamslam said:

Strive said:

haveaglamslam said:

The LGBTQ community has been attacked, many Trans Men and Women have been attacked this year, specifically Black Trans Women.

Who's attacking them? (spoiler: ashamed/homophobic people of color)

What does that have to do with anything, it's also homophobic white people as well, so just to point out POC is irrelevant.

I'n not sure why the estate dropped some random woman's commentary on this.

SOTT isn't a politiccal album. It doesn't have a single political song on it. The title track is social commentary and the rest of the album is made up of 5 love songs, 4 sex songs, 2 flirting songs, 2 party songs, 1 school tale and 1 religious track.

SquirrelMeat said:

I'n not sure why the estate dropped some random woman's commentary on this.

SOTT isn't a politiccal album. It doesn't have a single political song on it. The title track is social commentary and the rest of the album is made up of 5 love songs, 4 sex songs, 2 flirting songs, 2 party songs, 1 school tale and 1 religious track.

uhh SOTT the title track is political, surely?

the professor does seem forced in, and she does kinda go off on a tangent that isnt related to this particular song, but hey, they are discussing the social climate of the day, so...