Prince RIP

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.

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?