Is Prince a
Gen X icon, as Toure claims in his new book I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Is An Icon? To be honest, I had my doubts because
Prince’s significant period was for the most part over by the time Gen X-ers
started to assert themselves culturally in the 90’s. After an astonishing
period of artistic growth, output, and achievement, Prince seemingly lost the
thread and soon found himself in a bitter dispute with his label before
changing his name to an emoticon 20 years too soon and drifting off on his own
into the Internet, also 20 years too soon, and becoming a cult figure to a
profoundly devoted fanbase. No, Prince’s glorious heyday was the 80’s, and what
a heyday it was: Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, Parade, Sign O The Times, The Black Album, and Lovesexy;
Prince fired off a staggering string of spectacular albums, each more
artistically ambitious than the one before, and even his rare misfires had
moments of brilliance. But a Gen X icon? Toure had his work cut out for him.
Toure nails it, pretty quickly in fact, both in his spot on analysis of Gen X
itself and his positioning Prince as a cool older brother to Gen X, slyly sharing
some of that cool information older brother’s share, about the way the world
works, about the way life should be, and about SEX. By homing in on the
formative impact of divorce on Prince and Gen X, Toure captures it, perfectly.
For the first generation to be impacted significantly by divorce, Prince was
the perfect pied piper, having witnessed his parent’s divorce as a child and experienced
its life changing effects to an extent that, in many ways it’s defined his
life. Love, trust, disillusionment, all while waiting for the apocalypse to
come (Would it be nuclear war? AIDS? Y2K? Shit always seemed to be hanging over
our heads)… we didn’t care, we just wanted to hang out, party, and try to find
or create our own little utopias where we could- and of course that Prince and his 80’s
oeuvre in a nutshell.
Thankfully Toure eschews hagiography in I Would Die 4 U, including numerous unsparing tidbits gleaned from interviews from former Prince associates, not for the sake of airing dirty laundry but rather to offer honest personal insights into such a remote and inscrutable figure. I particularly enjoyed Prince's old manager Alan Leeds discussing Prince's legendary/infamous performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" during a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony jam session where he shredded the guitar solo in a way that dwarfed the other rock legends he was jamming with. I remember watching it and thinking that I was seeing something TRULY special, a feeling visibly shared by the other legends watching Prince blow away the Clapton original; it was Prince's moment pure and simple... until he finished and promptly left the stage, leaving the other guys on stage with also visible "WTF?" expressions on their faces. Indeed while he is a musical genius, Prince's social skills are wanting (to be polite).
If I had a quibble with Where I Would Die 4 U, it would be in the home stretch when Toure delves into Prince's spirituality to reveal that for all of his libertine bravado, Prince is in many ways conservatively Christian. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's the section of the book that is the least concerned with Gen X, and the one that strains Toure's Prince as Gen X icon thesis the most. Not to say that it wasn't interesting as Toure's all star cast of scholars (including The Roots' ?uestlove Thompson, a true Prince scholar) breaking down all of the religious code littered throughout Prince's oeuvre, but in didn't serve or help the thesis. Is Gen X that religious? I can't say that we are, and that might be why Prince largely lost his mojo with that demographic.
In fact, that whole section made me simultaneously ponder Prince's journey into the wilderness that began in the early to mid 90's, a journey that in many ways could be traced back to the commercial failure of Prince's 1988 album Lovesexy, one of the most overtly religious albums in his discography, and his absurdly religious Purple Rain sequel, Graffiti Bridge, from 1990. It was at this point that Prince lost the artistic thread and started to wobble, to a certain extent losing much of his Gen X cred before the Gen X-ers came into their own. It would've been great if Prince had been on top of his game throughout the 90's, to continue his dialogue with Gen X in addition to being a formative influence, but it wasn't to be. Prince went his way, and became a Jehovah's Witness, and we went ours.
This is why Toure deserves a medal for his efforts, contextualizing and elevating Prince's art at a time when his great works are in danger of being forgotten by time. I mean, have you seen the Prince section at your local record store? It's depressing. But there is hope. Prince might be getting his nasty back, and in I Would Die 4 You Toure has provided us with a fascinating and keenly insightful (and frequently hilarious) critical analysis of an iconic body of work, the generation that soaked it up, and the artist who made it all possible.
Grade: BThankfully Toure eschews hagiography in I Would Die 4 U, including numerous unsparing tidbits gleaned from interviews from former Prince associates, not for the sake of airing dirty laundry but rather to offer honest personal insights into such a remote and inscrutable figure. I particularly enjoyed Prince's old manager Alan Leeds discussing Prince's legendary/infamous performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" during a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony jam session where he shredded the guitar solo in a way that dwarfed the other rock legends he was jamming with. I remember watching it and thinking that I was seeing something TRULY special, a feeling visibly shared by the other legends watching Prince blow away the Clapton original; it was Prince's moment pure and simple... until he finished and promptly left the stage, leaving the other guys on stage with also visible "WTF?" expressions on their faces. Indeed while he is a musical genius, Prince's social skills are wanting (to be polite).
If I had a quibble with Where I Would Die 4 U, it would be in the home stretch when Toure delves into Prince's spirituality to reveal that for all of his libertine bravado, Prince is in many ways conservatively Christian. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's the section of the book that is the least concerned with Gen X, and the one that strains Toure's Prince as Gen X icon thesis the most. Not to say that it wasn't interesting as Toure's all star cast of scholars (including The Roots' ?uestlove Thompson, a true Prince scholar) breaking down all of the religious code littered throughout Prince's oeuvre, but in didn't serve or help the thesis. Is Gen X that religious? I can't say that we are, and that might be why Prince largely lost his mojo with that demographic.
In fact, that whole section made me simultaneously ponder Prince's journey into the wilderness that began in the early to mid 90's, a journey that in many ways could be traced back to the commercial failure of Prince's 1988 album Lovesexy, one of the most overtly religious albums in his discography, and his absurdly religious Purple Rain sequel, Graffiti Bridge, from 1990. It was at this point that Prince lost the artistic thread and started to wobble, to a certain extent losing much of his Gen X cred before the Gen X-ers came into their own. It would've been great if Prince had been on top of his game throughout the 90's, to continue his dialogue with Gen X in addition to being a formative influence, but it wasn't to be. Prince went his way, and became a Jehovah's Witness, and we went ours.
This is why Toure deserves a medal for his efforts, contextualizing and elevating Prince's art at a time when his great works are in danger of being forgotten by time. I mean, have you seen the Prince section at your local record store? It's depressing. But there is hope. Prince might be getting his nasty back, and in I Would Die 4 You Toure has provided us with a fascinating and keenly insightful (and frequently hilarious) critical analysis of an iconic body of work, the generation that soaked it up, and the artist who made it all possible.
Ordinarily I'd include a clip featuring the artist in question, but because he's got a complicated/wacky relationship with the Internet, that's impossible (note to Prince: that ain't really helping with the Millennial generation, or anybody else for that matter). Hell, I couldn't even find a decent clip of Dave Chappelle as Prince playing basketball against Charlie Murphy. Hence, I have to use a Sheila E clip that's a vintage Prince production. It's the best I could do.
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