Prince RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8abYLA5zEkM

are you Turrican?

if only I could remember my name

The underlying thesis here is "people shouldn't rap once they hit their mid-30s"

Which, as we all know, is fucking stupid

dying @ all the ILXORs dogpiling in to "wow great piece" this bullshit

https://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/55/2018/08/GettyImages-155589911_PRINCE_2000-1620x1029.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8USE09S_dAQ

loooool

dude's name is penman, maybe a case of nominative determinism by proxy?

A middle-aged man screaming that he’s the one and only doesn’t sound so sweet. On the contrary, such macho theatrics have a Trumpish effect: the more you insist on your uniqueness and invulnerability, the more it sounds like you’re struggling.

here's the end of the sentence. i still think it's dumb

i was a bit taken aback by some of the phrases in question upon first reading it, and now going back, am finding more and more to dislike (and yes, find racist) about this piece.

the problem is that he goes with a convenient and oft-repeated trope that Prince's later work isn't as good as his run in the 80's. while objectively true, that he attaches all these racist assumptions onto Prince's motives is really telling. he basically writes, "Prince stopped making music that was as good as it was in the 80s, and it's because his music got more black!" which is obviously totally racist horse shit.

i'll say, though, that while the writing surrounding "My Name Is Prince" is pretty bad, that song is also fucking terrible. probably my least favorite single of his.

table otm

also regardless of whether i finally closed the tab on this article when i reached "trumpish effect":

the paragraph about "pussy control" is absolutely. vile.

cool, I'm glad my computer never did allow me to open it

to interrupt for just a second: call me taken aback, but i'm still scandalized and kind of grossed out that having sex is referred to as "ramming" in "U Got the Look." like, it's one of my favorite Prince tracks, but jesus, "ramming?"

https://66.media.tumblr.com/6f9fb0d7f3cacfcc00a99ddd1d90c26b/tumblr_o6ove65w5d1uoiitoo3_1280.jpg

Be thankful it wasn't "cramming."

If love is good
Let's get to smangin'

This thing reads like Ian Penman's understanding of black culture came from Chris Rock routines

Prince was having big fun with the play of appearances, abandoning strict reverence to any supposedly ‘authentic’ truth of what it is to be black, or male, or soulful.

Funkadelic literally had a guitarist who played in a fuckin diaper!

I feel like a right bell end for my gushing Penman post upthread. I've always enjoyed his writing. Anyway, I feel well out of my depth discussing this and the 'fucking racist piece of shit and anyone who reads it etc' doesn't really leave much room for anything else so, in light of the response here, I'm going to have a re-read (by which I mean a proper read, not a half-distracted internet read) and a re-think.

Funkadelic literally had a guitarist who played in a fuckin diaper!

PLUS he namechecks Funkadelic in the piece yet somehow seems to have not grasped what they were about OR the fact that they had a black audience

Chinaski, I realize I am being extremely aggressive here and I sort of apologize for that but... I feel like there is a lot of bullshit in this piece that is being glossed over because of the rhythms of the prose. A lot of the piece scans well as written word but the actual content is terrible IMO.

We should have another Prince tracks poll; it was fully 8 years since the first one.

yeah basically what Chinask said : (

Likewise - I grew up in a very white part of Australia and regrettably there was little black culture visible. I think the piece articulates how I felt at the time very well, but I’m ready to learn why I was wrong.

the "graffiti bridge" version of "joy in repetition" was recorded in '86

wasn't "my name is prince" originally written for bart simpson?

PLUS he namechecks Funkadelic in the piece yet somehow seems to have not grasped what they were about OR the fact that they had a black audience

I feel like critics almost always missed this/got it wrong re: Prince and Funkadelic. Most of the time you'd get them namechecking Hendrix instead of Hazel, so it's extra-disappointing to see Penman correctly cite "Maggot Brain" while falling down on the job elsewhere.

I feel the need to say that when (skim) reading this piece earlier today I focused on - what jumped out at me - was the Amiir stuff. I "glossed" over the racism, or dire racial views presented as fact or conclusion. And I'm glad Dan pointed this out.

A lot of the piece scans well as written word but the actual content is terrible IMO.

this happens so often with much-praised online writing

This article where an old British white man treats the New Power Generation era like its a scene from Menace II Society is the new Federalist Papers

have you even read the Federalist Papers

get on my level, Οὖτις

is that a Bushwick Bill (RIP) ref

The piece is long enough that there would have been space aplenty for him to flesh out any of his bullshit pronouncements with actual examples to bolster his argument; instead, he slings some clever phrases and rests on preconceived notions to fill in the blanks of his arguments for him. I could t even get halfway through it before my level of anger at the non-arguments presented reached a level where it was unhealthy for me to continue reading. Like, it should be very easy to construct an argument against “My Name Is Prince” and dude failed at every possible level; his entire argument is “middle-aged people shouldn’t rap” filtered through some bizarre respectability politics that fundamentally misunderstand everything about what was happening in music at the time and what hip-hop not only was, but still is.

In general, non-black people pontificating on the black experience are talking out of their asses; this piece is multiplied y the confounding factors of the author not being American and Prince being Minnesotan.

lol Whiney condensed my objections into a pithy comedy sentence

As an aside, this piece is a spectacular failure of editing in that no one seems to have pushed dude to actually provide examples to back up his sweeping pronouncements on black American culture.

In general, non-black people pontificating on the black experience are talking out of their asses

A lot of music-writing these days swings the other way: out-of-their-depths whiteys wokely pontificating on "black bodies" and "black love." No one calls em on it because it would make you a bad ally or probably just because nothing matters

As an aside, this piece is a spectacular failure of editing in that no one seems to have pushed dude to actually provide examples to back up his sweeping pronouncements on black American culture.

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, June 14, 2019 12:22 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is more than a mere aside though, it's not just a failure of editing. There seems to have been no-one around to even ask him questions about this, let alone say "this is wrong".

kind of can't believe no one's mentioned this sentence:

Black showbiz maintains a tradition not unlike that of European royalty, in which you always present yourself to your public in character and at your very best.

i read it two or three times to make sure i hadn't missed some kind of qualifier. i read everything around it to make sure i wasn't missing something that could serve as mitigation. because nobody would actually write that, would they? and feel good about themselves?

it's a shame because parade IS his best album

The very thing that many of us thought was Prince’s greatest achievement – that he became one of the biggest mainstream stars of his day without hiding or diluting his blackness, producing instead something you couldn’t confidently call black or white – was now ditched in favour of songs with titles like ‘Pussy Control’: ‘I wanna hip y’all/2 the reason I’m known as the player of the year.’ His new ‘black’ vision had arrived, and it turned out to be a schoolboy caricature of shiny jewellery, fast cars and scantily clad models. Prince trying to act ‘gangsta’ felt not merely silly and self-defeating, but almost a form of betrayal. Who ever said we looked to him for something ‘real’ or ‘authentic’, anyway?

i mean what

i've read a lot of penman's writing. basically he is (or was) a very talented writer w/ major blind spots, most of which involve being too lazy to think through his own kneejerk reactions to things. i remember liking his piece on bowie from a while back, but i've read enough annoying/problematic things written by him that i don't much want to read him on prince.

As an aside, this piece is a spectacular failure of editing in that no one seems to have pushed dude to actually provide examples to back up his sweeping pronouncements on black American culture.

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Thursday, June 13, 2019 6:22 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so you're saying someone should have been around to ... control this pussy?

our story begins in a schoolyard

sometimes it #clicks in June

feel like critics almost always missed this/got it wrong re: Prince and Funkadelic. Most of the time you'd get them namechecking Hendrix instead of Hazel, so it's extra-disappointing to see Penman correctly cite "Maggot Brain" while falling down on the job elsewhere.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, June 13, 2019

Also, critics miss how much Santana influenced him, which is obvious from a cursory listen to, say, Caravanserai, but white critics go for the Hendrix analogies for obvious reasons.

His new ‘black’ vision had arrived, and it turned out to be a schoolboy caricature of shiny jewellery, fast cars and scantily clad models

Little Red Corvette was 1983

I don't know if - being honest with oneself - you could come up with a 2CD comp oh genuinely great songs out of everything he did post Lovesexy and I'd bet half of those were stuff written in his peak

There's two CDs worth of great songs on Emancipation alone! I was listening to it last week to commemorate Prince's birthday, and it's still amazing 180 minutes of music. IMO a lot of people overlook it cos it sounds too "contemporary" (mid-90s R'n'B), but on a pure songwriting level it's amazing how many great tunes he still had in him. If he had released those tunes in the '80s with his '80s sound, people would be praising them to high heaven.

i call nostalgia bullshit on "prince stopped making great music in 1989"