I was just reading on another thread about the N.E.W.S. album and what people were thinking about it and one of the comments was what happened to the maxim "It's time for a new direction it's time for jazz to die" from All The Critics Love U In New York (one of my personal faves from that era!)...

Well...I think that a lot of people have always mis-interpereted that lyric. The way I have always heard it is from the perspective of a musician in the early '80s and that Prince felt that the new breed of Elecro-Funk was not considered "serious" music in the same way as jazz was/is. You must also remember that Prince is the son of a jazz pianist.

I personally will draw comparisons with that attitude into the Hip-Hop world as well. Hip-Hop was the other "new" music of the '80s and got treated with absolutely no respect. It only gets respect now that it has made billions of dollars for multi-national corporations but even albums such as ATCQ's "Midnight Marauders" or Gangstarr's "Step In The Arena" are not as revered as, say, a Miles LP. You must also remember that Prince is the son of a jazz pianist.


How do you interpret this lyric?

I see this as the words of a young artist, who wanted to make new and fresh music with the help of the relatively new synthezisers (sp?).
I don't think he really meant that he hated jazz or never wanted to play it himself.

Ahhh. At last a like mind!

It was my comment, blurred, that u have took it upon yourself 2 remark upon. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would have to remind u also of the following lyrical couplet in ATCLUINY - "It's the fourth day of November, We need a purple high, turn it up."

In other words,"Jazz is old news people, electro pop is where it's at now."

But I suppose all the the hypocracy, two-facedness and outright lies remind me of why I love the wee schitzo genius in the first place.

And NEWS is also growing on me like an untamed fungus. I'm enjoying it, then a subconcious thought protrudes to the front of my mind - "23, it's porn music."

Fuck off, evil absorbed fetus twin. I have no need for your negativity today. Good day, sir!
[This message was edited Sun Jun 22 7:08:01 PDT 2003 by Number23]

Number23 said:

Number23, interesting point... what do you think the reference to the specific date of November 4th means?

Haven't got a Scooby Doo. To be honest, I don't think P did either...probably trying to hard to be enigmatic. You know, get us talking about it on internet forums 21 years later. That kind of thing.

As much as I love reading into Prince's lyrics, his career has been so contradictory and unpredictable that I don't know how much we can gather from him singing "it's time for jazz to die" twenty-one years ago...

I agree with your sentiment, and I love this experimentation and expression that he's been showing us recently.

kmc said:

November fourth is election day, I believe. 1999 was recorded during the reagan administration so maybe that has something to with it. it's also my cousin's birthday but I don't think that is what he's refering to.

Number23 said:

what about this lyric then:

Osama Bin Laden gettin' ready to bomb (circa 1998)

I feel obligated to chime in even though it has been said. At that stage in his life/career he was saying that jazz was a thing of the past and it was time to push the boundaries of music in a new direction. Pretty simple actually.
I personally enjoy jazz, rock, and hip-hop but would like to see artists try new sounds and ideas. Most songs that clearly aspire to one of these categories don't interest me too much.
By the way, some of us revere "Step in the Arena", "Midnight Marauders", "Paid in Full", "Illmatic", "No One Can Do It Better", etc. We just don't work for VH1 or Rolling Stone.

I always took that line as meaning that jazz just needed to make way for his msuic, a different kind of music. I don't think he ever had anything against jazz.

4TH DAY OF NOVEMBER . WE PEED A PURPLE HIGH !

NUFF SAID.

Nov. 4, 1984 the Purple Rain Tour kicked off.

Did Prince have this planned while writing All The Critics?
Who knows, if not it's a hell of a coincedence.