Prince Rogers Nelson

This paper is an attempt to redress a critical imbalance in studies of Prince's religious and theological outlook and is structured in three parts. In the first part I wish to contextualise Prince’s reception of the Bible against the principal exegetical tendencies of the Seventh-Day Adventist church, which Prince was raised in. In the second part, I focus on Prince’s appropriation of the Genesis’ creation accounts, noting that he finds in these texts a quasi-divinisation of human sexuality. In the final part of the paper, I look at the depiction of Jesus we find encoded within Prince’s music. Prince is overwhelmingly interested in the Jesus of the second coming, and his engagement with biblical texts reflects an enthusiasm and yearning for the eschaton. In the conclusion I seek to draw together these strands of Prince’s engagement with the Bible, arguing that Prince symbolises humanity’s relationship with God ultimately as a sexual relationship, culminating in a climactic eschatological event.

Abstract:

À travers la figure du chanteur Prince, Roger Nelson, LoveSymbol, nous entrevoyons des rapports complexes entre l’artiste et le jeu de la célébrité. Le fait de devenir populaire et d’être un chanteur connu à l’échelle mondiale entraîne automatiquement et systématiquement une volonté de contrôler son image, de rentrer en conflit avec sa maison de disque et de proposer de nouvelles formules marketing pour vendre sa musique. Ce chanteur avant-gardiste dans sa façon de communiquer et de s’exprimer sur scène offre aux générations futures un large éventail de recherche académique dans de multiples domaines. Il propose une pérennité de son art musical à travers Paisley Park et le tourisme culturel.

Key words: Prince, Minneapolis, Paisley Park, fame, popular music, celebrity, globalization, heritage, tourism.

Abstract: Prince, the artist who wanted to be popular? Creativity, independent artist and tourism marketing
Through the figure of the singer Prince, Roger Nelson (1958 – 2016), LoveSymbol, we glimpse complex relationships between the artist and the game of celebrity. The fact of becoming popular, of being a known singer on a world scale, involved automatically and systematically a desire to control his image, to come into conflict with his record company and to propose new marketing formulas to sell his music. Now, the tourism and the visit of Paisley Park (Minneapolis – Chanhassen) become a new stage of the memory’s construction and of this popularity. This avant-garde singer in his way of communicating and expressing himself on stage offers future generations a wide range of academic research in multiple fields. He proposes a continuation of his musical art through Paisley Park and cultural tourism.

Key words: Prince, Minneapolis, Paisley Park, fame, popular music, celebrity, globalization, heritage, tourism.

BALLESTER, Patrice (2017), « Prince, l'artiste qui voulait être populaire ? Créativité, artiste indépendant et marketing touristique », Musicologica olomucensia,  UNIVERSITAS PALACKIANA OLOMUCENSIS, n° 25, Vol. 1, Olomouc, pp. 5-21.

Prince's few references to politics revolve around explicit—and cryptic—references to Communism and the Cold War in his lyrics ("1999", "America," etc.). This paper traces those references, showing how they track trends in his own theological conceptions of technology, nature, the just social order, and the possible dystopia. In Prince's corpus, dualisms of politics and theology are related, but fail to adequately resolve themselves. This paper also suggests that concepts from Jewish thought can help illuminate a resolution of the theological-political tensions in Prince, as well as reframe Prince's own play with letters, names, and transformative visions.

The aim of this paper is to show how Prince Rogers Nelson’s lewd on stage antics and perverse song lyrics were not the only factors that contributed to his sexually charged compositions. By examining the use of anthropomorphism (the ascription of human characteristics to what is not human), in the analysis of several of Prince’s early works between the years 1980-1984, the researcher makes the argument that his musical arrangements taken from this earlier musical cannon embody the stages of Masters and Johnson’s human sexual response cycle. Ultimately, the researcher views Prince’s musical arrangements and improvisations to be metaphors for his own genitalia having intercourse with his public.

The political climate in the U.S. was rife with tension at the outset of the 1980s. The Cold War with the Soviet Union was still raging, and President Ronald Reagan was developing a nuclear satellite platform, codenamed “Star Wars.”  The threat of nuclear war was real; everyone felt it, including young Minneapolis musician, Prince Rogers Nelson.  A song on his 1981 album Controversy stood out as a punk-rock plea for diplomacy. “Ronnie, talk to Russia before it’s too late / Before they blow up the world.”

Out of this political tension, a spiritual struggle was born in Prince’s psyche.  He had been raised a Seventh Day Adventist.  If the end was near, it meant the impending return of the Messiah.  In the short term, it meant seizing the day, making the most of whatever time was left on Earth.  Prince was thus moved to express both spiritual and sexual freedom in his work. “If I gotta die, I’m gonna listen to my body tonight.”

This paper will explore a three-year period in Prince’s career that is saturated with eschatological images and themes. This eschatology, which is heightened by the political zeitgeist, is marked by both spiritual and sexual undertones, illustrating Prince’s personal belief that sex and faith are not (and should not be treated as) mutually exclusive concepts.  Through a thorough examination of two of his albums, 1982’s 1999 and 1984’s Purple Rain (as well as a few other songs that were recorded during this period, ultimately released on a subsequent album), I will attempt to paint a clearer picture of Prince’s personal vision of Eschaton, or the End of Days.

This thesis evaluates the musical and cultural components of singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe's 2018 album and “emotion picture” Dirty Computer. I argue that Monáe engages audience members from all walks of life through her Afrofuturistic plotline, imagery, sounds, and statements. I situate understandings of voice and vocality as discussed by Weidman, Meizel, and Malawey within scholarly frameworks of race, gender, and sexuality, particularly “naming” impositions discussed by Hortense Spillers and “figures of sound” described by Nina Sun Eidsheim. I apply these frameworks to Monáe’s album, which follows protagonist Jane 57821 through her escape from white supremacist captors and explores her many life experiences as her captors work to erase her memories. In the case of Janelle Monáe, who, like Jane 57821, identifies as Black, queer, and female, these identities co-exist and are explicitly thematized throughout her album. I argue Monáe’s direct incorporations of these identities in Dirty Computer’s plotline hold even deeper meaning through her musical choices. I analyze three tracks from Dirty Computer—“Crazy, Classic, Life,” “Pynk,” and “Make Me Feel”—in a manner that considers multiplicity of meaning and nuances of characterization and representation not only in the album as a whole, but within each track. I propose that listeners, particularly white listeners, consider their own processes of listening. Through my analyses, I demonstrate the need for listeners to “pause” and account for their own biases, as recommended by Eidsheim.

Prince's unparalleled, innovative musical style remains widely revered by his worldwide audience in the wake of his death less than two years ago. Since the late twentieth century, many scholars have used European critical theory to examine Prince's musical multidimensionality. These important analyses help us understand Prince's music and performativity in new ways but repeatedly ignore the cultural roots of his music. Indeed, many critical discussions focus on his performance of ambiguous sexualities and sartorial strategies without addressing how Prince's understanding of his Blackness played a crucial role in his creative practice and theatricality. I contend that exploring Prince's dynamic oeuvre through interpretive lenses of radical black theory is a productive space for understanding his performance of lyrical and musical liminality, his self-determination in the music business, and his commitment to using his music for racial uplift. Prince's creative practices were linked to his covert, but avid, support of social justice initiatives that support black humanity. Framing my analysis through Prince's composition "Black Muse" from his final studio album, I explain how "Black Muse" provides lyrical and musical evidence of Prince's political thought and deployment of counter narratives. I put "Black Muse" in conversation with "Baltimore," "Resolution," and "Planet Earth," unapologetically activist songs written by Prince that discuss police brutality, warmongering, and climate change. I discuss how Prince's strategic use of musical liminality in "Lady Cabdriver" obscures his political diatribes through a layer of sonic salacity. Combining close musical analysis with Black theoretical thought that explores Prince's definitions of Black Muse, I explore Prince's performances of blues hybridity, his tireless effort in repositioning his relationship with the music industry, and his mission to uplift his people. While Prince had muses, who were both Black and white, Prince's ultimate creative muse was the Black community and the black experience itself. Prince scholars can benefit from exploring and utilizing