THE PHILISTINE’S GUIDE TO HIP HOP AND R&B
Prince: A Study in Purple
by the Philistine
NineVolt Magazine May 2004

I woke up in LA one morning near the end of March. That night I would witness Prince kick off his Musicology tour at LA’s Staples Center, though in order to do so I had to drive a good 300 miles north to Oakland. In his relentless quest for new ways to deliver the funk, Prince had hit on a daring scheme: for $15 you could attend a simulcast of the show at a movie theatre near you, plus he’d hook you up with a copy of the cd from which the tour derives its name. I felt both that this plan was splendid and that I was rather defeating its purpose by being in LA that morning. Shortly before 8 that night, a somewhat baked and dusty Philistine found himself in an Oakland theatre watching a live feed of an audience in the city he’d spent the day driving away from. The camera hunted celebrities; we watched Eddie Murphy issue a prodigious series of one-armed handshake-hugs, and we tittered uneasily when Jack Black produced a sheaf of bills from an enormous billfold and forked them over to his female companion. Then darkness drew a discreet veil over such mysteries, and after a disconcerting jolt of montage, we were face-to-screen with the biggest little man on earth.
On his last US tour, documented on the awesome 3 disc One Night Alone... Live! (2002), Prince trimmed his band down to a supertight trio augmented by 2-3 horns, so I was surprised to see he’d since added a second keyboard and a guitarist, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Even royalty has felt the pinch in this economy, but the luxury of an expanded retinue freed him to perform non-instrumentally to an extent he hasn’t indulged in in years; at 45, with his dancing days largely behind him, he can still light up the screen with a few improvised yet precisely-executed maneuvers. While the pressures of broadcast doubtless increased his need for mobility—for once he eschewed his accustomed piano interlude—Prince was clearly in the mood to reach out to his audiences sprinkled across the country. Perhaps the combination of his recent election to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the 20th anniversary of his epoch-making Purple Rain film/album/tour has afforded His Royal Badness a rare moment of satisfaction with his considerable legacy. Prince has long oscillated between two personae, the uncompromising avant-gardist and the crowd-pleasing populist, and it was definitely the latter who delivered that night’s 2 & 1/2 hour set drawn largely from his prodigious store of hits.
This is not to suggest Prince ever plays it safe, however, at least by mortal standards. Few pop performers would risk squandering the tremendous crowd energy at the start of such a show by playing a tune no one’s ever heard, but this is precisely what Prince did, as he ripped into the title track of Musicology. Tactically, it was brilliant; everyone in the audience was holding a copy of the album and this made you burn to hear the rest of it. The song’s thick, JBs-style funk was seemingly accentuated by his coif of soul brother curls, his glitter pumps, and his asymmetrical cherry-red coat; he looked as much like James as a guy like Prince can. Then suddenly, bathed in blue light, the coat turned a familiar purple, and an extended organ chord announced the “dearly beloved” intro of “Let’s Go Crazy,” which was followed, in turn, by versions of “I Would Die 4 U,” “When Doves Cry,” and “Baby, I’m a Star.” Nearly half of Purple Rain right off the bat, and throughout the evening Prince would return to the album that’s been both the blessing and the curse of his artistic career, playing “The Beautiful Ones” and “Take Me With You,” as well as ending the show with an impassioned rendition of the title track itself. It’s been awhile since he approached this music with anything like the enthusiasm with which he laid it down that night. In between, he treated the audience to revamped versions of familiar favorites like “Controversy” and “Kiss,” as well as songs he wrote for other artists, like “Shhh” and “Nothing Compares 2 U.” His transformation of “Sign O’ the Times” from late ’80s computer funk to something resembling “Mother Popcorn” was particularly astonishing, and while he mainly avoided the obscurer depths of his catalogue, he did dust off a few surprises—including a spectacular medley of “The Question of U” and “The One”—and even smuggled in a couple more tracks from Musicology. His penultimate acoustic set drove the crowd so wild even he, for a few moments, was visibly overwhelmed. I found the scene quite touching, which is not the type of adjective that generally springs to mind in relation to Prince. Considering how indebted this years’ top grammy winner, Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, is to Prince’s music, such props are, in any case, much overdue.
Whether the mutual good vibes between Prince and the public will translate into chart action remains to be seen as Musicology hits the stores, distributed, this time, by Sony. (You can also download it, for $10, through his NPGMusicClub.com.) Certainly it’s his most pop-oriented effort in recent years, following the all-instrumental N.E.W.S. (2003) and the brilliantly inscrutable Rainbow Children (2001). Granted Prince’s attempts to be accessible can result in the abstruse—represented here by the lyrics to “Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance”—but on the whole Musicology is a bizarrely compelling blend of serious funk and bubblegum pop, something like he was aiming for with Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999), whose exuberant title couldn’t conceal the underlying bitterness of the break-up of his marriage to dancer Mayte Garcia. But where Rave might be epitomized by the track “I Love You, But I Don’t Trust You Anymore,” the bulk of Musicology is in a “What Do U Want Me 2 Do?” vein, and this altered tone lends itself considerably more to the pop agenda Prince has once again set for himself. The album’s consistently upbeat feel is all the more astonishing, given that he also works in a scathing election-year critique of George W. Bush, clearly the titular addressee of “Dear Mr. Man.” Regrettably few pop stars have had the courage to denounce the “war on terror” as a “mass-illusion alibi” for repression at home and abroad, as Prince does here on “Cinnamon Girl.” This aspect of Musicology suggests that, for all of his reawakened eagerness to please, Prince remains an artist defined by his willingness to take risks and his ability to weather the consequences.

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Watch for the new book “The Philistine’s Guide: A Year in the Life of Hip Hop” coming in 2004 from NineVolt Magazine. The Philistine is based in Oakland, CA.


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