Just to show you how big of a Prince fan I was in high school:
On Class Night — the annual party where the outgoing seniors ripped the teachers, and the teachers roasted us back — the faculty sketch ended when Principal Chestnut came out dressed as yours truly, holding a framed portrait of the Purple One.
“Prince and I are here,” he exclaimed, closing the show.
By the time I left college four years later, Prince and I were through.
Why? I think Jon Hein had it right: Prince jumped the shark at “Sign O’ The Times.” Until that album, Prince was an innovator. As popular as he became with mainstream audiences, he was always doing something bold. A new album from Prince was like a musical middle finger to everyone, even to some of his fans.
But “Sign O’ The Times” was different. If, as Alfred Hitchcock once said, the definition of style is self-plagiarism, then Prince was becoming very stylish indeed. He began repeating himself. As much as I liked “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” I couldn’t help hearing his re-use of the stutter-step riff from The Time’s “Get It Up.” As much as I liked “Dorothy Parker,” I couldn’t listen to Prince drone on about things like taking a bubble bath with his pants on, not when another group, Public Enemy, was just starting to talk about some really important things. Songs like “Hot Thing” and “It” seemed like self-indulgent double-album filler. That year, during the sultry summer of 1987, was the last time I really heard Black radio play a Prince song to death. “Adore” was his swan song, the last grind.
Don’t get me wrong: I think Black people will always, always love Prince. But that doesn’t mean they’ll listen to him. Ironic indeed that, in 1988, the bootleg “Black Album” surfaced, a meandering collection of mediocre songs that were rumored to be a meditation on Blackness but, if anything, showed how Prince felt about being upstaged by hip-hop during its Golden Age:
“Riding in my Thunderbird on the freeway
I turned on my radio 2 hear some music play
I got a silly rapper talking silly shit instead
And the only good rapper is one that’s dead.”
And I was like, “Fuck that.” I’d much rather listen to Nice and Smooth rip “Starfish and Coffee” over the Lafayette Afro-Rock Band than Prince’s pretty, precious original any day of the week.
Prince entered his jingle phase in the 1990s, nice, easy-listening pop confections like “Diamonds and Pearls” and “Cream.” And what do you do, a few years later, after putting out garbage like “My Name is Prince” and “Sexy MF,” when nobody gives a shit about your music anymore? Blame your record company.
I was at Warner Bros. during his ugly split with the company. Russ Thyret, the chairman of Warner, the man who had found Prince and signed him in the 1970s, had just invested millions in Prince’s new label deal when The Kid announced that he would no longer record for Warner. Russ felt completely betrayed. One time, Rick Rubin began to ask Russ about it, and Russ pointed a finger at him: “Don’t – You – Say – That – Word.” The “P” word, he meant.
In the post-Warner years, I must admit to a hope that Prince would somehow find a renaissance in the opening of his vaults. But I listened to all three CDs of “Emancipation” — I remember because it absorbed an entire road trip from LA to San Fran — and the only songs I liked were the ones he didn’t write: “Betcha By Golly Wow,” and the Bonnie Raitt song, “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” The album was as boring as the Central Valley landscape rolling by my window.
Still, Prince was one of the first artists to try to tap the power of the Internet. Even if I didn’t care for his music anymore, I developed a new kind of admiration for him: Damn, he can really do this himself. An artist can make a living, even remain a star, without the help of a major record company.
I hadn’t much considered Prince until 2004, when my college roommate invited me to see Prince at Meadowlands, a stop on his “Musicology” tour. As expected, his mode of distribution was ingenious: Everyone who bought one of the pricey concert tickets walked away with a free album. What I didn’t expect was how the show would move me.
For a guy in his 40s, dude looked, played and moved spectacularly. Entering my late 30s, that was inspiration enough. But at mid-show, he started doing this tune, “Prince Is The Name” (unrecorded, I guess, because I can’t find it anywhere). He said:
“Warner Bros. used to be a friend of mine/
Now they’re just a motherfucking waste of time”
…and by 2004, Warner had become the exact same thing to me. He continued:
“If you cant do it on your own/
It ain’t worth the fame/
Everyone gets older/
But I remain the same/
Prince is the name”
Hot damn. People cheered, the confetti came down, and damned if I don’t still have a few pieces of that sacred paper on my altar.
As a performer, as a human being who does “himself,” Prince is a renewed inspiration. His performance earlier this year during the Superbowl half-time deluge was a modern day miracle: How did he keep from tripping on the rain-slicked stage? How did his hair stay up? How could he move his fingers so accurately over those wet guitar strings (I can’t even do it well dry)? How did he keep from electrocuting himself? Dude is blessed.
Even so, I wouldn’t go as far as Jon Pareles did in his recent article in the New York Times, in anticipation of Prince’s new album, “Planet Earth.” In “The Once And Future Prince,” Pareles intimates that Prince gets that, in the 21st century, it’s not about CD sales, it’s about the music. I wouldn’t even be as nice as my pal J. Freedom DuLac was, when he pronounced in the Washington Post that the new album was “30 percent bad, 40 percent mediocre and 30 percent really, really good.”
As much as I admire Prince, I want to like his music more than I actually do. The truth is, even with Prince’s independence and brilliance as a performer, I can’t remember a single song he’s done in the past decade. And when it comes to being culturally relevant and resonant, it’s not about the music. It’s about the songs.
The fact is, R. Kelly
God help us all, but it’s the sad, sad truth.