Could the show-stealing appearance with Beyoncé at the Grammys signal the return of Prince?

http://www.guardian.co.uk...24,00.html

New purple regeneration

Could the show-stealing appearance with Beyoncé at the Grammys signal the return of Prince, asks a hopeful Sam Delaney
Saturday February 28, 2004

The holy trinity of 1980s pop behemoths were all pretty demented. Jacko dined every evening in the company of a chimpanzee. Madonna released a film of herself fellating a bottle. And then there was Prince.

Prince insisted on everything in his home being purple. He employed his own food taster to test his every meal. Later, he changed his name to an unintelligible squiggle and took to scrawling wild, paranoid messages on his cheeks.

Then there's the more recent tales of bewildered Minneapolis residents answering the door to find him brandishing leaflets on behalf of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Never mind that he released a series of groundbreaking albums, toured constantly and effortlessly traversed an array of musical genres along the way: to the uneducated and those born after 1987, he might as well be Weird Al Yankovich.

Until now. While Michael Jackson, noseless and broke, awaits his fate at the hands of the US legal system and Madonna merrily shoots grouse with Vinnie Jones, Prince has embarked upon a quiet renaissance.

His musical influence has been seeping into the mainstream for some time: from Pharrell's rock-infused funk to Outkast's R&B psychedelia. In recent times Jay-Z and Common have clamoured to collaborate with him, while Basement Jaxx, McKay and even Kylie all released albums last year laced heavily with elements of Dirty Mind and Sign O'The Times. Missy Elliott, Beyoncé and Alicia Keys doffed their trilbies at the Brits with a (somewhat cack-handed) rendition of Kiss.

And now he's gently easing himself back into public life. A few weeks back he took time out of his busy doorstepping schedule to duet at the Grammys with Beyoncé. They stole the show with a version of Purple Rain for which he'd made the diva sweat through hours of rehearsals the day before.

Finally, it seems, Prince is wrenching himself out of the madhouse of pop history and claiming his rightful position as one of music's most influential living artists. He hasn't had much of a chart presence since the early 1990s, when he was seen cavorting around with a gold, pistol-shaped microphone making the ostentatious claim that he was "all alone in a villa on the Riviera".

Standing at little more than three feet and sporting an elaborate quiff, he made an unconvincing gangsta. More recent releases have symbolised an unstoppable ascent up his own arse: last year he knocked out an internet release called NEWS: four tracks, entitled North, East, West and South, each of which lasted precisely 14 minutes.

More convincing evidence of his brilliance is provided by That Skinny Motherfucker With The High Voice by Dump - a folksy American white kid who's stripped a collection of Prince classics down to their bare, beautiful bones.

And if you want physical confirmation of his rehabilitation then the wait shouldn't be long: he's strongly rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury later this year, back on form and without so much as a doodle anywhere near his face.