Prince RIP

(also The Future and Lemon Crush)

Also I agree with Brad, those three albums are very, very strong, particularly Come which is IMO the most underrated album in his catalog

Fantastic piece by Penman. Presumably, his recent (ridiculously) strong run of short biographies will be collected at some point? I count James Brown, Frank Sinatra, Patti Smith, Elvis, Kate Bush, Charlie Parker but I'm sure there have been others - not to mention his amazing essay in the Zer0 book on Michael Jackson. All brilliant. (Here's the link for the James Brown essay: https://www.city-journal.org/html/did-he-feel-good-9717.html)

i find this ian penman piece extremely frustrating

like it's fine but did i really need to read a paragraph about how "darling nikki" isn't that good, he sure is wrong about that

Penman can be as 'wrong' as the rest of us but I'd read him being wrong all day over most critics.

xps they’re being published in a collection by fitzcarraldo editions shortly!

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? (Plus: two dozen prison-tat-sporting young rappers could do that stuff better in their sleep.)

i feel v weird about this sequence of sentences also

Eye Hate U
The Question of U
Joy in Repetition
Sleep Around

These are all as good as anything he’s ever done

Yeah the "Darling Nikki" comments are... surprising !
And I'm also uncomfortable with his idea that Prince's music from the 90s on doesn't have soul, creativity, etc.
I'm totally fine with people not liking that period (I'm not a big fan myself) but to say that it's because it's "bad" music as opposed to the "good" music of the previous decade is... I don't know, a bit annoying.

xps they’re being published in a collection by fitzcarraldo editions shortly!

Happy days!

I mean we should all be protected from people thinking songs we like are not good but for a disappointment-inflected piece this articulates the appeal of Prince better than most, and grapples with elements of his life that others are determined not to address (with credit to the books he’s reviewing of course!)

unfortunately the moments where he's full of shit are getting in the way of my appreciation of those qualities

Like I don’t agree with IP’s assessment of Kate Bush’s career AT ALL but it’s a really good piece

(Do not read the bush essay brad lol)

don't worry i won't!

The upcoming Sign O The Times fancy reissue seems a bit rubbish, no extra footage or live stuff at all just some new docu. Thought we'd get a 'proper' reissue of the album with all of the stuff that was meant to be on Dream Factory but maybe that's coming, as the film was nowt to do with the Prince estate?

A song like ‘My Name Is Prince’, from 1992, is the sort of ego-bomb manifesto most artists drop early on, when they are still young enough that the arrogance can seem winning. 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

i'm out, tab closed forever

"my name is prince" is a very funny song imo

Eye Hate U
The Question of U
Joy in Repetition
Sleep Around

These are all as good as anything he’s ever done

― zama roma ding dong (Eric H.), Thursday, June 13, 2019 10:32 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

question of u and joy in repetition date back to the mid 80s, joy was listed in some version of dream factory which got retooled to be sign o the times

Oddly, just at the time when he claimed to be returning to realer than real blackness, you’d swear he got two or three shades lighter for his publicity shots.

ok, last thing, but what the fuck is this

34 is "middle-aged" now?

A middle-aged man screaming that he’s the one and only doesn’t sound so sweet.

I can't read this line without it immediately and involuntarily being followed in my head by "Ice Cube and the Lench Mob/are jacking for beats"

xxp: I am now torn between reading this to see if there's any possible context that wouldn't make this racist bullshit and saying "fuck this dude and fuck everyone who read this and didn't have a problem with it"

"what an amazing piece of writing, the racism is just *kisses fingers*"

i'm... pretty sure this piece is racist

yeah i'm just gonna reread hilton als's prince piece instead

In those glory years Prince was, alongside Madonna, the most fascinating pop star alive. A black R’n’B artist who juggled shiny white pop signifiers

I mean what the fuck is this

I'm late to this party, but I discovered Prince in the Graffiti Bridge era, so I love "Joy in Repetition" and most of Emancipation.

Carry on.

"The Morning Papers" is one of his masterpieces.

On the Purple Rain soundtrack, ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ is, like the film itself, a spunky celebration of familiar tropes: ‘Kids! Don’t listen to those ugly straights! They’re just jealous of us cool kids!’

I'm just going to assume this dude doesn't actually know what the lyrics to "Let's Go Crazy" are?

you can stop reading tbh

like, it doesn't get better and I find all the stuff about his personal life gross and speculative

piece is lousy with bullshit asides like that, it undermines all of the authority he believes he has on prince's personality

i felt crazy reading it

also thrilled that many people will read this racist piece and not mayte garcia's book

you can stop reading tbh

I was thinking that prejudging excerpts and condemning from a place of assumption wasn't necessarily the best look.

I do think I've read enough to know that, on the subject of Prince, this dude is a fucking idiot and I have no idea how anyone could read this and not be struck by the blatantly racist assumptions/assertions/preconceived notions permeating the entire thing.

The entire bit about early Prince iconography making him look like a street hustler, yet somehow also the boy next door that you'd just see around the neighborhood, in comparison with the implied fakeness of his later imagery, should really tell you all you need to know about what this dude thinks is "authentic" when it comes to looking at black people and how he expects them to intersect with his "ordinary" life.

Prince released one of the best songs of his career less than a year before he died: "Baltimore." No I am not biased - that guitar just stuns me. What could have been cloying or condescending is a genuinely moving song in the spirit of "Imagine" and "One Love."

i liked baltimore a lot, the guitar is great, but eryn allen kane's harmonies are the key

yes. it is a triumph. not so closed off like so much of his work.

"The Morning Papers" is one of his masterpieces.
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

A song like ‘My Name Is Prince’, from 1992, is the sort of ego-bomb manifesto most artists drop early on, when they are still young enough that the arrogance can seem winning. 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

"My Name is Prince" is a stupid song, but to write these sentences in 2019 when Trump sits in the Oval Office should embarrass him. Also, what younger artists have dropped ego-bomb manifestos like "My Name is Prince"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNPnbI1arSE

my name is prince owns imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03wTAFIBmGs

^^^ good song, recorded before 1992

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2soGJXQAQec

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