Prince

The star who lived twice has found the way of rock again.

A new love and a new cd. And now he's back to the majors he hates.

An artist surrounded by mistery: first the decision to change his name, then the disappearance. Now the star of "Purple Rain", who is now 45, presents himself again to the public.

Malice, this is something that never lacked him. And even if now he has become a Jeowah Witness and has left some sexual excesses to the past, Prince appears on the cover of his new record as if he were appearing at a window, showing his fawn, still a bit infantile, face and his dark eyes looking sidelong as if they were saying: "Yes, I'm back". And this with a grand title: Musicology. Music according to Prince. Or, ever more, music the way it should be.
But where was he? He actually never disappeared completely and his most trained fans know it well (when he answers to someone talking about his coming back he says annoyed :"I never quit palying and making records"), but he certainly has eluded, or at least puzzled, the media circus at least since he went to the 1995 Brit Awards cerimony with the word "slave" written across his face referring to the music industry. Ever since he then started a war with no borders. The old story of The Black Album - a record that Prince would have wanted to release anonymously, with a black cover, without any credits and with absolute forbiddance to use his name; but rumors had already surfaced and the project failed to be realized - was one of the many little stones he wanted to take out of his shoes (--> I'm sorry, I know this sounds awful in English but it's an Italian way of saying <---). This is not all, Prince was especially against those contracts that bound artists to record companies with exaggerated ties, dispossessions and too little freedom. From that moment on Prince released mediocre albums to fulfill his contract as soon as possible; he even dissolved his name and imposed as his exclusive signature first the Love Sign and then the wording "The artist formerly known as Prince", which used to be shortened to Tafkap; then he chose the Internet as his private reign to let his fans listen directly to his music skipping the usual channels. Still for the rest of the world Prince had disappeared and there was the feeling that one of the most extraordinary musical inventors and performers of the last 20 years, and moreover a symbol of a total and definitive crossover among different genres, had been lost.
Just like Jimi Hendrix Prince is black and he has full memory of black music, but still he used to go through rock music with unembarrassment, he used to invent real musicals that left you stunned and enraptured. Could it be possible that that same person who had enchanted the world of music with Purple Rain and Sign O' The Times, just to mention the most famous ones, had now accepted a darker role in the underground? The unhappy news coming from his private life made the situation even more heavy. During his first marriage a very ill child had been born and died shortly after his birth. Then the divorce came and after that another long silence. Then, step by step, the renascence. Finally another beautiful album, Rainbow Children, which circulated in an almost clandestine way, then the new wedding with a Canadian girl with an Italian name who is almost 20 years younger than him (he is now 45) and eventually this year resounding return.
Last February he sang a duet with Beyoncé during the Grammy cerimony reminding the public of how devastatig intense his live perfomances can be, and he went on setting the public who had been waiting for him for many years on fire first accepting the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame investiture -where he stupefied the public with a marvellous guitar solo during the Geroge Harrison song "While my guitar gently weeps", and where he was introduced by OutKast and Alicia Keys who read some heartfelt words ("There are many kings, Herny VIII, King Salomon, King Tut, King James, King Kong, but there's only one Prince")-, then he started touring and today, having re-established the traditional recording channels, he is back with a real and proper record, one of those you can buy in record stores and that for everybody's pleasure has on the front cover one simple and flashing name: Prince.

-written by Gino Castaldo-

***

An open letter to the president

Let's say this immediately: Prince is really back as wonderful and as generous as he used to be. Musicology seems to be more an elegant summary instead of an innovative stage in his career. "Where were we?" Prince seems to ask while undusting his rhythmich genius - that funky that when in his hands looks like the corner-stone of the universe of music, those voices that chase each other among incandescent horns and deep bass-sounds. It's a slow but wonderful awakening, his exuberant musicalness reassembles majestically while the record plays songs that are spaced by voices speaking. During one of this inserts you can hear in the distance the start of Kiss, and in another point there comes a woman's voice expressing in Italian her thoughts about men. Love appears in all its shapes: mystical, sensual, less scandalous and more mature than the past - but the songs don't spare some admonitions for the degrading world.There's also something for the governors of the world in a song, Dear Mr. Man, which is in the structure of a letter addressed to a powerful man, in who one could easily identify Bush, who dreadfully resembles many leaders of the western world.

-written by g.c. (I guess it's still Gino Castaldo)-

lulirom said:

That's very poetic.

I just noticed quite a few typing mistakes: sorry!