I Wonder U

How Prince Went beyond Race and Back

Adilifu Nama

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781978805187
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

In 1993, Prince infamously changed his name to a unique, unpronounceable symbol. Yet this was only one of a long string of self-reinventions orchestrated by Prince as he refused to be typecast by the music industry's limiting definitions of masculinity and femininity, of straightness and queerness, of authenticity and artifice, or of black music and white music.Revealing how he continually subverted cultural expectations, I Wonder U examines the entirety of Prince's diverse career as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, record label mogul, movie star, and director. It shows how, by blending elements of R&B, rock, and new wave into an extremely videogenic package, Prince was able to overcome the color barrier that kept black artists off of MTV. Yet even at his greatest crossover success, he still worked hard to retain his credibility among black music fans. In this way, Adilifu Nama suggests, Prince was able to assert a distinctly black political sensibility while still being perceived as a unique musical genius whose appeal transcended racial boundaries.

1

Incognegro

Pino: It’s different. Magic, Eddie, PRINCE … are not niggers. I mean, they’re not black, I mean—let me explain myself. They’re—they’re not really black. I mean, they’re black, but they’re not really black. They’re more than black. It’s different.

—Dialogue from Do the Right Thing (1989)

Now where I come from / We don’t let society tell us how it’s supposed to be / Our clothes, our hair, we don’t care / it’s all about being there …

—Prince, “Uptown” (1980)

Official records declare that Prince Rogers Nelson was the son of Mattie Shaw and John L. Nelson and was born June 7, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I would place the date closer to January 26, 1980, in Los Angeles, California, on a television show called American Bandstand (1952–1989), a program that featured teenagers and young adults dancing to the middle-of-the-road pop hits of the time. Situated between our imagination and Prince’s self-invention rest the music and myth of Prince, an image first presented to mainstream America on American Bandstand. In this sense, the public imagination, as much as his mother and father, created Prince, and the television studio, as much the hospital, marks the venue for where Prince was born.

On American Bandstand Prince played a truncated version of his hit single “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” off his self-titled second album, Prince (1979). Prince had written and played every instrument for every song, but for his performance on the television show Prince brought a band. Dez Dickerson and André Cymone played guitars. Buried in the backdrop, behind the drum set, were Bobby Z and, off to the side, Gayle Chapman, who stood behind her keyboard, a shadowy silhouette that swayed back and forth in the background. Matt Fink was on the synthesizer dressed in a striped prison inmate outfit. Prince stood out front wearing formfitting gold lamé pants, a matching pair of low-cut boots, and an oversized, long-sleeved top unbuttoned down to the navel (more of a woman’s blouse than a man’s shirt), a look that literally promoted navel gazing. After Prince concluded performing, Dick Clark, the maestro of mainstream pop music and host of the show, rushed over to engage Prince and the band in some light banter.

Clark seemed stunned to have heard that such a funky hook–driven midtempo groove was crafted and perfected in Upper Midwest America. He asked Prince, “How did you learn how to do this in Minneapolis? This is not the kind of music that comes from Minneapolis, Minnesota.” Perhaps Clark’s sense of genuine amazement was misinterpreted by Prince as a slight against Prince’s hometown, or maybe Prince froze, like a doe-eyed deer, staring into the bright klieg lights of fame. Either way, Prince responded to Clark’s succession of questions with one-word responses and a string of odd mannerisms. At first, Prince appears genuinely embarrassed, then obstinate, and by the end, Prince looks like he is flirting with Clark and daring Clark not to kiss him right on the stage. Not surprisingly, Prince’s American Bandstand interview acquired varying degrees of lore over the decades as another Prince-created ploy to make a very routine and perfunctory part of a show memorable to those who witnessed it and talked about by those who missed it.¹

This national introduction of Prince to America and the mysterious and strange demeanor of the interviewee would define Prince’s persona for years to come, a mystery wrapped inside a riddle at the center of a maze. In retrospect, Clark’s confusion over the sound and geographical origin of Prince’s music is not that incredible given the conventional wisdom that Minneapolis, Minnesota, does not fit the profile or pattern of various chocolate cities as an epicenter for a specific form of black popular music, cultural expression, and sonic innovation.² For the most part, the migration of millions of African Americans fleeing the stifling racism of the rural South, and/or spurred by the pull of industrial labor opportunities in northeastern cities between the early 1900s and the 1960s, set in place a dramatic increase of black populations in northeastern, midwestern, and western metropolitan areas. These budding black urban communities remixed the soundtrack of rural southern black life, the blues (born of black enslavement and Jim Crow segregation), into signature sonic styles that beget new forms of black music associated with geographically specific places. Chicago begot Chicago blues, and later Chicago house music. New York birthed bebop, straight-ahead jazz, and later hip-hop. Detroit originated the Motown sound and Detroit techno. Dayton, Ohio, furnished the funk, while the Philly soul sound of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff kept America dancing in the mid-1970s and Washington, D.C., popularized the polyrhythms of go-go. Although not exhaustive, these are all notable examples of how particular concentrated black geographical regions are synonymous with a particular form of black music associated with significant black populations in particular urban spaces. According to the 1970 census, just ten years prior to Prince’s debut on American Bandstand, Minnesota’s population was 98 percent Caucasian.

At first blush the statistical facts appear to support Dick Clark’s stunned statement of disbelief about the geographical birthplace of Prince’s funky pop dance ditty. Common sense dictated that Minneapolis, Minnesota, was too white and too square for anything black and hip to emerge. Moreover, before Prince, the most notable musician from the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” was the popular white folk artist Bob Dylan, a suitable match for the prairie lands and pioneer spirit of Minnesota. Perhaps Clark could only recall how Minneapolis was the setting for the groundbreaking but virtually all-white Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977). As a result, Clark’s stunned reaction seems quite reasonable after his having seen three black men fronting a multiracial band from Minnesota, crooning about unrequited sexual desire over a lean, bluesy, bass hook–laden track. Nevertheless, black racial formation dynamics did impact Minneapolis, Minnesota, in such a way as to shape a particular soundscape.³

Purple Snow, a minibook-length liner note analysis for a two-disc set compilation of demos and one-off releases of local Minneapolis black bands, chronicles the racial dynamics of the Minneapolis music scene, up to and around the breakout music success of Prince. The liner notes are a tour de force for matching names, faces, places, and venues with musical output and capture the social alchemy of the Minneapolis music scene covering a ten-year period from 1972 until early 1982. The extraordinary exposé covers the truncated experience of notable local bands, the unfulfilled potential of remarkable talent, the Rubik’s Cube–like configurations of band personnel that played together and details a litany of false starts and musical dreams denied and deferred before Prince became a singular musical force. Most importantly, Purple Snow’s liner notes reveal that the bandstand and the dance floor were contested spaces in Minneapolis when it came to racial issues. In Minneapolis black bands needed to include a few white (or at least white looking) members to get booked for a gig, a recurring subtext touched on by several musicians in the book.⁴ For the Minneapolis music scene white inclusion in a black enterprise was necessary for a black band to gain employment. This regional quirk was in stark contrast to the general Black Power on wax era that overlapped with the Minneapolis music scene covered in Purple Snow.

Black Power politics began in the mid-1960s and by 1972 had reached mainstream pop status when Rolling Stone magazine, a premier music periodical, placed Huey P. Newton, the cofounder of the Black Panther Party, on its cover. Although, by the early 1970s, the Black Power movement was waning as a presence in the halls of political power the black revolution was making its mark in the ranks of R&B and soul music. In fact, during this brief period several successful black artists became troubadours of black pride and black cultural awareness. Songs such as the Impressions’ “We’re a Winner” (1968), James Brown’s “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1969), and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” (1971) raised a range of racial and urban issues Black Power advocates had previously voiced concern over. Concept albums like Aretha Franklin’s Young, Gifted and Black (1972), Stevie Wonder’s Innervision (1973), and to a lesser extent Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly (1972) also tackled the challenges and triumphs of the black experience.⁵ Even jazz giant Miles Davis released On the Corner (1972), a fusion-funk experimental album designed to reach black youth. Consequently, for the Minneapolis music scene, the inclusion of whites in black music projects was strikingly out of step with the political and cultural trends informing early to mid-1970s black music. It would take the rise of disco music in the mid-1970s to blunt the strident racial politics of Black Power on the bandstand and dance floor.

By 1976 not only did a variety of disco bands include white members, a white band named Wild Cherry even endeared themselves to black audiences with the disco hit “Play that Funky Music (white boy).” With disco the political imprint found in the sophisticated sonic constructions of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, and Curtis Mayfield faded away to the pulse of monotonous beats and brain-dead lyrics. Across dance floors, from New York to Los Angeles, disco music was a rhythmic diatribe that perfectly fit the frenetic domain of clubs like Studio 54, where the combination of cocaine and a driving beat helped unleash repressed sexual energy and marshaled the latent hedonistic excesses of young Americans on the make. By 1978, the year Prince released his first album, titled For You, disco dominated the airwaves and the type of overt black racial and social awareness present in R&B during the early to mid-1970s was, for the most part, abandoned.

As a Minneapolis native Prince developed in a black music scene where whiteness was not displaced, and with For You, like the disco sensibility of the period, white band members had a prominent place in Prince’s plans for his first touring band.⁶ In terms of his sound, Prince did deviate from the disco craze sweeping across the recording industry and the American pop landscape. For You rejected the blaring horns and driving disco beats that dominated the dance floors and commercial radio of the time. For You was a midtempo, ballad-laden LP, a collection of syrupy sweet melodies and falsetto pining over lost lovers and fledgling declarations of devotion. The lyrics sounded like mediocre poetry delivered with all the sincerity found in a high school teenager’s love letters. Although the vulnerability Prince shared on the various tracks was convincing, without a doubt, the most compelling element of Prince’s debut was the musicianship (Prince wrote, played, and produced nearly all the music).

For You contained tracks with multiple bridges, breaks, and so many tempo shifts that the release bordered on a manic display of musical virtuosity. Rather than an album that offered one signature sound, For You was a sonic smorgasbord. The variety of changes, just on one track alone, demonstrated Prince was a very talented but unsure musician searching for a sound, afraid to commit to a singular groove. The track “My Love Is Forever” displayed not just versatility but also a preview of how Prince could construct beautiful arrangements and seamlessly incorporate rock-styled guitar solos, a preview of the type of genre-shattering musicianship that later becomes a signature element of his sound. “My Love Is Forever” also signaled that Prince was an artist who not only went against the grain but also had the musical mechanics to make hook-centric hits, a point most clearly articulated with the song “Soft and Wet,” a modest hit single on the For You release. “Soft and Wet,” was the standout track on the LP and almost cracked the top ten of Billboard R&B singles with its #12 ranking. Most importantly, “Soft and Wet,” demonstrated Prince could construct an upbeat and tightly arranged pop tune that resonated with a black music-buying public. But too many tracks like “As Long as We’re Together,” “Baby,” “So Blue,” and “I’m Yours” sounded as fresh as two-day-old doughnuts.

In the final analysis, For You was a release that promised something big rather than being something big. But just as important as the music on the For You LP was for marking Prince’s sonic potential the cover image of the LP is central to evaluating the racial politics Prince represented. Admittedly, the status of the cover image/art of an album has significantly diminished in our download and digital age of music consumption. All the same, before the dramatic shift in the distribution and purchasing of music, the cover art of a new release for a new artist was a cornerstone feature of the overall music project.⁷ Music scholar Evan Eisenberg makes this astute analysis concerning the significance of the cover LP image: “Every mode of record listening leaves us with a need for something, if not someone, to see and touch. The adoration of the disc itself is one response (though this, as we have seen, answers other needs as well). But as records tend to look alike and one doesn’t want fingerprints on them, in practice one adores the album cover, and this impulse (together with the science of marketing) is behind the importance of cover design in the record business.” Certainly, the music from For You was the centerpiece of Prince’s debut album. Yet, given Eisenberg’s conceptual framing, reason also dictates the cover image of Prince’s first release was of paramount significance. Consequently, the cover art image of the For You LP is a significant source of meaning and image construction because it marks the beginning of the various modes of black racial identity Prince adopted in the wake of his first release. What does the For You cover convey about Prince? Interestingly, both the cover and the photographs inside work intensely to promote Prince as an ethereal, otherworldly entity.

The front cover consists of a headshot of Prince sporting an oversized Afro filling the frame and eerily backlit. Prince’s head is placed slightly off-centered, and his eyes are askance yet peering forward, as if daring the observer to make direct eye contact and stare back at him. The confrontational characteristic of the pose is somewhat subverted by photographic special effects. Light trails streak across the picture, creating a dissonant illusion of movement, a head in motion that is motionless. The only other image of Prince related to the LP is found on the inside LP sleeve jacket. The photo on the inside sleeve has three identical pictures of a nude Prince sitting beside himself on a bed hovering in space. Prince is holding a guitar strategically placed to block his genitals. A less adventurous reading of the reproduction of three exact images of Prince positioned next to the other is that the manipulated photograph denotes the multiple roles Prince had in creating, writing, and producing the album. Both the “blurred movement” headshot and the image of Prince sitting on a floating bed marked a literal decontextualization of Prince and signified he was a figure that transcends time and geography (Prince is literally floating in space sitting on a bed!). Despite these mediated artistic productions the For You pictures may arguably be the most honest representations of Prince.

Ronin Ro, in the rigorously detailed book Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks (2011), asserts that Prince rejected having an art director for the cover and decided to just pose for photographer Joe Giannetti. In my email correspondence with Joe Giannetti he recounts the photo shoots and highlights the tension between industry practices and the “as-is” aesthetic Prince embodied on For You:

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