Prince RIP

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

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.