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MUSIC


Prince’s purple reign

After years of strange stunts and mediocre recordings, the Prince we all love is back with a pop album that lives up to the legend.

By Rachel Devitt
Friday, May 07, 2004


SINCE BECOMING THE “Artist Formerly Known As” and subsequently the butt of many jokes, Prince has been mired in the abyss of the pop culture dustbin.

In the past decade or so, the Purple One seemed content to let his music be nothing more than a byproduct of his own quirkiness. His albums from that period weren’t bad. They were just too inaccessible to appeal to the mainstream and not nearly radical enough to carry the weight of his own myth and legend.

But all this changed earlier this year, as Prince staged a coup on the pop kingdom with an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, embarked on a hits-driven tour and released a new album. (He will perform at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 12-13.)

Prince might very well be yanking himself out of irrelevance with a dirty little wink toward the funk-saturated pop that made him a superstar in the first place. The title track alone on his new CD, “Musicology,” is a working testament to his legacy. Working a straight-up funk jam like he hasn’t done since “Sexy M.F.,” Prince positions himself as a direct descendant of James Brown, George Clinton, and Maceo Parker.

The video for “Musicology” sets an old-school funk show to the graininess of a Spike Lee film, with a splendidly dandified Prince mopping his brow, shaking his pompadour, and, in short, doing a better impression of himself than Outkast’s Andre has ever done.

PRINCE CREATED, PRODUCED and performed the majority of the new CD tracks, with a little help from Parker and the always-great New Power Generation. But the album contains little of the obtuse isolation of his recent work. He seems to be reaching out again, bridging the gap between the depths of Paisley Park’s catacombs and his adoring public, and inviting us to a communal block party that’s crammed full of many of the fabulous things we remember about the old-school Prince.

“Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance,” for example, is a classic Prince narrative set to a bombastic funk-pop strut. He also still has all the little tricks it takes to make a girl (or guy) weak in the knees. A single, tantalizingly groaned-out line (“That’s when I’m gonna lay her/Across my piano stool and sing to her”) in the futuristic rock of “The Marrying Kind,” is magical.

“Musicology” also contains a bit of the accessible politics Prince has always been so handy with. He works a war protest into the slow soul of a love ballad in “Call My Name.” And “Cinnamon Girl” is an insightful critique of post-911 politics disguised as a vintage, “Little Red Corvette”-era pop song.

“Life of the Party” is where Prince really acknowledges his tenure in near-obscurity. The track itself isn’t all that astounding — a basic party anthem with some funk riffs on horns and keys, and a throbbing, danceable bass line that alternates between hip-hop and funk.

But this is where the Purple One comes clean: “I don’t care what they said/‘He don’t play the hits no more/Plus I thought he was gay.’/It ain’t nothin’ if it ain’t fun/My voice is gettin’ higher/And I ain’t never had my nose done!”

With this line, Prince addresses the enticing mystery that’s always surrounded his unconventional career, his own desire to push boundaries, and the alienation of his fans. But he also concedes, in the middle of a lighthearted party anthem that he wants to have fun.

With “Musicology,” Prince finally seems to be doing just that again.

That was a good review. The review also brought up a point that I think a lot of us hear seem to overlook and it's an important point too. On Musicology, Prince sounds like he's really having fun here and while everyone's worried about him not sounding like himself from 20+ years ago, or all that's wrong with it compared to TRC, he sounds the happiest I've heard him in years on this CD. It's like he believes in what he's singing about and that's why I enjoy it as much as I do. Maybe it isn't 1999 but it not supposed to be. It's Musicology and Prince did a great job with this album. One that has become a new favorite of mine.

TRC was a concept album and Musicology is a pop/party album. NEWS is an instrumental album. So 2 compare them would b stupid and that's where any critic looses credability with me. I don't mind so much if a critic gives me a comparison 2 a recent album by another artist maybe, but what was hot 6 to 8 months ago might not b hot now. It's all subjective!

ELBOOGY said:

Also,i do think that the critic was positive about Musicology but it burns me up when they dismiss his 90's output which i find 2 be a lot better than any of his contemporaries especially if u add the NPG stuff!