New Problem Tuesdays Special Edition: The Gifts of Prince, Part 1

In the days and weeks leading up to the news of the sudden passing of world-renowned singer, musician, producer, writer and overall kick-butt human being Prince, two things took place.  First, Mrs. Scribbler and I were having issues with our home Wi-Fi for over a year and an Xfinity technician finally came out about two weeks ago and fixed the problem: he gave us a brand new modem with two networks, which she named after two of her favorite Prince songs of all time.  Second, I was in a CVS Pharmacy a few days before and "Kiss" was playing overhead.  I stopped what I was doing and said to myself, "Now I've always loved this song, but for whatever reason, it's just jamming a little harder today than normal."  So when the word on the street was that he died, I immediately thought it was a hoax.  No way could we as 80s babies lose Michael Jackson in 2009 and Whitney Houston in 2012, only to turn around and bear the thought of losing another one of our childhood heroes.  Not to mention that in a four-month span of losing the likes of Natalie Cole, Maurice White and Phife Dawg, Prince just seemed like exceptionally cruel and unusual punishment.  However, when more and more news outlets confirmed the initial reports, I was deeply saddened as if I had lost my favorite uncle in the whole wide world as I continued to be in utter disbelief.  So instead of getting into conspiracy theories about his life or death as some have questionably done, I have dedicated this post to outlining what I believe to be some of Prince's most generous and memorable gifts to us as fans of his work and fellow artists...

HE GAVE US THE WATERS OF LAKE MINNETONKA.  Now it's easy to assume that this entire section would be about Purple Rain or, at the very least, the unforgettable scene where he convinced Apollonia to purify herself in the waters of the aforementioned lake--only to later admit that wasn't Lake Minnetonka after she disrobed herself.  However, let's speak historically for a second.  In the 1960s, Motown was the soundtrack for Detroit and Stax provided the sonic backdrop for Memphis while Philadelphia International Records largely represented the Philly sound of the 1970s.  By the time the 1980s rolled around, Motown was still holding on while Stax had become a reissue label and PIR had lost its hold on popular music as well as a lot of its roster and key players.  While building up steam with the success of "I Wanna Be Your Lover" in 1978 and the 1999 album in 1982, Prince was laying down the sonic groundwork with his unique blend of funk, rock, soul and pop.  Add his formation of, influence on and ensuing rivalry with The Time--consisting primarily of Morris Day, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Jesse Johnson, Jellybean Johnson, Monte Moir and Jerome Benton--and the Purple Rain movie and soundtrack would become the climactic unveiling of something much bigger to the rest of the world: the Minneapolis sound.  Between Vanity, Sheila E., Apollonia, Alexander O'Neal (who was actually the original lead singer of The Time before falling out with Prince), The S.O.S. Band, Cherrelle, Janet Jackson and New Edition, that unmistakable sound would benefit so many artists, permeate the radio airwaves and continue to evolve throughout the 80s, the 90s and the millennium as it influenced a new wave of artists.  Even acts who had no direct line to Prince like Michigan R&B groups Ready For The World and Dreamboy either admitted to being or were clearly influenced by the sonic innovation taking place two states away.  So yeah...the waters of Lake Minnetonka run pretty deep.

HE GAVE US THE DEFINITION OF THE 1980s.  Although the word "flamboyant" was often attributed to Prince's style of dress and performance, he added his own stylish stamp to a period of time that was known for unapologetic uniqueness, grandioso extravagance and blurring the lines of what was considered "acceptable".  Whether it was the young urban professional with a brick cell phone in his Mercedes Benz, hustlers rocking Gucci and pushing Saab 900 Turbos with BBS rims or people wearing big and often colorful hairstyles, the 80s were arguably one of the most flashy periods in American history because everybody wanted to be rock stars in their own right.  Along with Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Madonna, Janet Jackson and Run DMC, Prince was one of the main contributors to the trends and standards in 80s pop culture and style.  Not only could I not turn on the radio and hear his voice, but video shows like New York Hot Tracks, Friday Night Videos or Music Video Connection placed his unparalleled sense of style front and center during the decade that manifested the rise of fashionable music videos with the advents of BET, MTV and VH1.  In an interview with The Breakfast Club the day after Prince's passing, comedian Charlie Murphy spoke about Prince's impact:

His presence and his influence was so strong...that it changed fashion.  I don't know if y'all can remember that, but it was a lot of tough guys wearing makeup, wearing spandex and wearing glitter.  And I even one night seen Jim Brown with a glitter jacket on, homie!

Although Prince has long been parodied for the big hair, ruffled shirts, pants with the seats cut out and wearing high heels--the latter of which were necessary accessories as he was only 5'2"--there were a lot of artists and regular people who took their nod from him and respected his boldness because he owned it.  He knew that people probably thought he was weird or crazy, but he looked at weirdness as being "relative", i.e., he didn't view his style or anything that he did that way because it was what made sense to him pursuant to his well-defined sense of identity.  Besides, when you make the type of innovative and revolutionary music that he or any of the other iconic artists of the time did, you can't be basic or regular in any part of your presentation.  That was the beauty of the 80s, baby: go big or go home.

HE GAVE US ARTISTIC LIBERATION AND ALTERNATIVES FOR SUCCESS.  The music business has always been one of producing carbon copies and often leading people away from their artistic identity for the sake of being commercially viable and palatable.  However, the artists who have had the most longevity are those who stuck to their guns and Prince was no exception to that rule.  In addition to fusing multiple genres, Mrs. Scribbler made a salient point about how he took back rock and roll and revamped it in an attractive way to which Black people in particular responded.  Although he was one of the first artists to force the slapping of a parental advisory sticker onto album covers because of his often racy lyrics, his content included but was not limited to love, sex, religion, politics and social issues.  Perhaps more interesting was his storied battle for the rights to his artistic identity, famously writing "SLAVE" on his face in response to his bitter war with Warner Bros. Records.  "When you stop a man from dreaming, he becomes a slave," Prince said in a 1996 interview for Rolling Stone.  "That's where I was.  I don't own Prince's music.  If you don't own your masters, you master owns you."  In an interview with Roland Martin on NewsOne Now, former Paisley Park Records executive Kerry Gordy spoke more on Prince's position, particularly his transition to becoming "The Symbol":

The reason that he changed his name to "The Symbol" is because he felt that Warner Bros. owned him.  Warner Bros. owned quote-unquote "Prince", the word "Prince", the name "Prince".  So he decided that, "Okay, I don't want them to own me, so I am going to change my name and you know what?  All of the albums that they have under the name "Prince", they can have it.  They can do whatever they want to do with it.  I'm not turning in any more records under this name, and from now on, I am going to own anything that I do 100 percent.  The publishing, which is the copyright, and the masters, which are the sound recordings.

On top of all of this, Prince has been huge on artists' rights in the era of modern technology because, in the midst of having a less love/more hate relationship with the Internet, he understands that many of these music services like iTunes do not financially benefit the creators.    Ironically enough, he was one of the first artists to make an album available for online purchase in 1998 and he also created the NPG Music Club website in 2001 that provided subscribers exclusive access to new songs as well as unreleased material.  However, he became less of a fan of the Internet and shut down NPG Music Club in 2006.    Prince began requesting that his music be removed from all music streaming websites except TIDAL almost a year before his death, including most YouTube uploads.  He is firmly from the school of thought that if you want his music that badly, then you're willing to pay for it.  Although the Internet has worked for many artists including Prince, he taught us that being liberated artistically is intrinsic with being liberated contractually or financially.  Whether it's through the Internet or whatever medium, the artist has to be one of the greatest beneficiaries of his or her hard work and figure out what works best for their business.

HE GAVE US THE BLUEPRINT FOR HUMILITY AND KINDHEARTEDNESS WHILE AT THE TOP.  Despite being a consummate performer, Prince lived a veiled existence.  Even in death, that was the case as his remains were cremated and a private ceremony was held instead of some big whoop of a funeral.  Largely attributed to being a Jehovah's Witness much like Michael Jackson, he manifested what is laid out in the Bible as making it one's "ambition to lead a quiet life".  Unlike a lot of celebrities even during his era, being famous and wildly popular was never his goal; he just wanted use his God-given talent to create music at the highest level possible.  Whenever he was interviewed or was a guest on a TV show, he was never bombastic or sought to hijack the interview; he said what was necessary, dropped a few witty lines and went about his business.  Furthermore, this was a man that gave without the need for a press conference or extensive photo ops to validate his generosity.  Very few people had a front row seat to Prince's humanitarian efforts like former White House advisor and close friend Van Jones.  In an interview with CNN's Don Lemon on the day of Prince's passing, Jones spoke specifically about the artist's work with #YesWeCode, an initiative with a "mission to connect 100,000 low-opportunity young adults to high-paying careers in technology"; #GreenForAll, a partnership working to promote a "green economy" for low-income communities and people of color; and assisted Grammy-award winning artist Lauryn Hill when she fell on hard times.  It was Jones' overarching sentiment that drove it home:

He was the kind of friend...he doesn't care if you're having a good day, that's not when he's there.  It's when you're having a bad day, he comes to the rescue...I guarantee you, anybody struggling anywhere in the world, he was sending checks, he was making phone calls.  But he did not want it to be known publicly and he did not want us to say it, but I'm gonna say it 'cause the world needs to know that it wasn't just the music.  The music was just one way that he tried to help the world, but he was helping every single day of his life.

Jones' testimony, which included Prince encouraging him to travel to Jerusalem for prayer  after resigning from the White House and figuring out how he wanted to help the community, is just one of the most telling tributes to Prince as someone who used his undeniable success as an artist to fuel his understated impact as a philanthropist.  As much as that can be attributed to the driving principles of his religion, it also speaks volumes of the man that he was and how his humble, selfless attitude should inspire other people in his position.

HE GAVE US SUPERIOR ARTISTRY AND AN EXTENSIVE CATALOG BY WHICH TO REMEMBER HIM.  In the aforementioned NewsOne Now interview, Kerry Gordy talked about how Prince would go around to each member of the band and be able to play their instruments better than them.  To bolster that point, Prince had mastered at least a dozen instruments by the time he was a teenager, played nearly all of the instruments on his first five albums between 1978 and 1982 and played all 27 instruments on his 1978 debut album, For You.  Despite being a band all on their own, Prince still produced The Time's first three albums and played all of the instruments on their eponymous debut album--which fueled some of the tension between him and the group, but made for a great rivalry as they often sought to show up Prince as his opening act on the Controversy tour.  Although Purple Rain was "quasi-biographical", his contentious relationship with The Revolution regarding band input as depicted in the film was not too far off from real life as he used them sporadically in the beginning before making them more of a staple in the mid-1980s.  At the end of the business day, his artistic genius and unmatched showmanship was arguably more of a gift than a curse because it pushed anyone with whom he was working beyond the limits of their talent, skill and creativity.  Prince was not only one of the greatest students of music, but he is one of the most prolific teachers that the art form has ever witnessed, often giving master classes during his performances.  Whether he was jamming with Larry Graham on a Sly Stone classic at B.B. King's in New York City; performing a wicked guitar solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in a legendary lineup that included Tom Petty, Steve Winwood and Jeff Lynne; paying tribute to the illustrious career of Chaka Khan while also sharing the stage with one of his greatest musical influences in Stevie Wonder; giving one of the greatest Super Bowl halftime shows of all time at a game that was pretty meh because of the inclement weather; or completely taking over a stage that had James Brown and Michael Jackson on it, he was not someone who ever believed in taking off days.  If you came for a show, then you would get so much of your money's worth that you felt like you were in debt to him.

As for his extensive catalog, try to wrap your mind around the fact that Prince has released 39 albums in 40 years of being active in the music business.  Most artists wouldn't have been to able to accomplish that type of feat even if they had another 15-20 years on their careers.  Whether you were more of a fan of his most commercially successful period between 1982's 1999 and 1996's Emancipation or felt like he could do no wrong no matter what he put out, he had at least one or two songs that resonated with you.  Without unveiling too much from the second part to this series, all I will say is that he has been a part of nearly every decade of my life--particularly the 80s and 90s.  My older cousin/big sister used to tote me all around Southeast D.C. with her while "Raspberry Beret" and "Little Red Corvette" were stuck in my head.  I remember riding in the car with Big Dadi Scribbler (his styling, not mine) and Little Brother Scribbler one day and all it took was one good spin of "Let's Go Crazy" to fuel my obsession with the song.  While living in Oxon Hill, Maryland and flipping back and forth between WKYS 93.9 FM and the early days of WPGC 95.5 FM, it was all about the Sign O' The Times album as the socially-conscious title track, "U Got the Look" and "Adore" were in heavy rotation.  For less than a year of living with my aunt and uncle, I remember that same older cousin having the Lovesexy album and absolutely jamming out to "Alphabet St."  When we moved to Halley Terrace, I went from rocking Batman T-shirts in the summer of '89 while "Batdance" and "Scandalous" were on repeat to later sneaking off and chanting some of the jaw-dropping candor of "Sexy MF".  Even later down the line as his dominance on radio began to die down, he would still sneak in dope songs like his impressive remake of "I Can't Make You Love Me", "The One" or "Call My Name" to remind us that he became one of our favorite artists of all time for a reason.  All-in-all, we couldn't turn anywhere and he wasn't there because he just kept making music.  It may not have all been as exceptional or memorable as 1999, Purple Rain or Sign O' The Times, but the gift of music is one that keeps on giving and Prince was one of the most generous musicians of all time.


Much like with Michael Jackson, the thing that makes me sad is that I will never be able to see Prince in concert like many others who have been blessed enough to experience him as up close and personal as the Purple One would allow.  There won't be any more impromptu appearances out of the blue like his appearance on The View where Sherri Shepherd darn near melted all over Prince or when his guest spot on a Season 3 episode of FOX's hit comedy New Girl was like 100 times more interesting than the Super Bowl that it followed.  Despite having enough music on backlog to have an album come out every year into the next century, he won't even be here to even see 40th studio release come to light and I'm sure that his estate will be overly protective of how it's handled.  However, his mark on the world of music, culture and society is inseparable from the annals of history.  Whether you were a performer, writer, producer, musician, engineer, record executive or just the "average Joe", he taught us to always be true to ourselves, keep an intrepid and impenetrable imagination and learn as many aspects tied to our respective crafts as possible in order to be the best.  More important, the legacy he left behind and the blessing that he chose to be was while he was here on Earth has already been recognized by the Most High.  How sure am I?  One of the members from one of my Facebook groups posted a picture on Friday of a purple-tinted overcast with the caption, "Guess he made it through the gates."  Now that's what I call a Purple Reign.  Rest in Paradise, Prince Rogers Nelson...

Wanna keep partying like it's 1999?!?!  Then please do two things: 1) share what you believe are some gifts that Prince left with you and 2) stay tuned for Part 2 of "The Gifts of Prince", which will count down my "Rave & Favorite Five" Prince songs!