by Matt Thorne
I flew to Los Angeles anyway, using secondary sites to get tickets for the second and third shows. On the way over, I considered the new album(s), hoping that my initial disappointment might be tempered by hearing the songs in performance. The best of Lotusflow3r appears to have come from the 3121 sessions, but there’s too little stretched out over the album – indicating that 3121 could have been a truly phenomenal double-CD set. There are lyrical connections between several songs on both albums, as well as the presence of Támar, Sonny T and Michael B. The songs that appear to have come from this session (or sessions) are the instrumentals ‘From the Lotus …’ and ‘… Back 2 the Lotus’. There is also a third instrumental on the record named ‘77 Beverly Park’ after one of Prince’s homes, as well as the syrupy ballads ‘4Ever’ (this only features Támar, not Sonny or Michael), ‘Love Like Jazz’ and ‘Wall of Berlin’.
The most explicit statement of the ‘new galaxies’ theme in the record comes in ‘Boom’, which also indicates that the idea of creating a new galaxy is really a restatement of Prince’s long-cherished concept of each new love returning him to the Garden of Eden (which he also sings about on ‘Love Like Jazz’), only in this instance given a sci-fi twist, something also investigated in ‘Wall of Berlin’. ‘Feel Better, Feel Good, Feel Wonderful’ is an intriguing example of Prince making his working processes public, as he’d placed an unfinished version of the song on his previous website for visitors to comment on. It is also his last released collaboration with the late Dr Clare Fischer, and when they heard it Brent Fischer noticed that ‘none of the orchestra got used, and it was a lot different from what he sent us. There was a lot more organ on it. I can see with the organ on there why he would not feel the need for strings at that point.’
As with much of Prince’s later work, the record features a couple of bitter, angry songs. ‘$’ is another money song, criticising the pursuit of cash as meaningless and suggesting that rich folks rarely know where the action is. ‘Dreamer’ has similarities with ‘The Sacrifice of Victor’, another pseudo-autobiography that flashes through Prince’s life from birth until now, but this time focusing on his ethnicity. Suggesting that he was born into ‘a slave plantation’, he implies he only became aware of his race with the assassination of Martin Luther King (which happened when he was nine), talks of fear of being harassed by policemen while out in his car, and perhaps most controversially, sings about how chemicals are being sprayed over the city while he sleeps. Prince expanded on his belief in the ‘chemtrails’ conspiracy – that the US Air Force is clandestinely spraying cities with chemicals for nefarious controlling purposes – on The Tavis Smiley Show, talking about being inspired by the activist and comedian Dick Gregory and the annual black-interest gathering the State of the Black Union.
MPLSound is a solo record, with everything recorded by Prince aside from a rap by Q-Tip (a rapper Prince had been friends with for some time). There are four true standouts on the album – (‘There’ll Never B) Another Like Me’, ‘Chocolate Box’, ‘Ol’ Skool Company’ and ‘No More Candy 4 U’ – and five less distinguished (but mostly still worthwhile) ballads – ‘Dance 4 Me’, ‘U’re Gonna C Me’, ‘Here’, ‘Valentina’ and ‘Better with Time’.
All four standouts owe something to hip hop, with Prince hitting on a more confident form of sing-rapping and a defiantly past-caring directness of keyboard accompaniment that is his true achievement of this era. ‘Ol’ Skool Company’ and ‘No More Candy 4 U’ are just as bitter as anything on Lotusflow3r, but somehow they’re funnier and more appealing when sung in a squeaky voice with squelches in the background. Prince suggested to Tavis Smiley that ‘Ol’ Skool Company’ was an exercise in nostalgia, celebrating his home town and the music that came from Minneapolis. When playing it live, Prince would often begin by playing a few bars of ‘Purple Rain’ as a tease before switching into the song, and occasionally also work in sections from his classical fave, Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. ‘No More Candy 4 U’ is among Prince’s funniest songs, his occasional pettiness and petulance in full effect as he attacks Internet trolls.
The ballads are largely notable in that Prince sounds (lyrically, if not vocally) middle-aged for the first time, addressing ageing and love later in life with a new explicitness. ‘Dance 4 Me’ is a watered-down version of his earlier voyeuristic tracks, like ‘Alphabet St.’ and ‘319’, but feels impotent compared to past expressions of this theme. It was subject to a number of remixes, including several that wouldn’t officially emerge until after Prince had released a subsequent album. ‘U’re Gonna C Me’, a dated song about Prince paging his lover, had already appeared in an alternative version on One Nite Alone … ‘Here’ has lyrics about wine not tasting as good when you’re older and Prince using Donny Hathaway songs to seduce, but the two most significant songs in this vein both feature him singing about Hollywood actresses. ‘Valentina’ is addressed to Salma Hayek’s daughter (Hayek had directed the video for ‘Te Amo Corazón’) and is an extraordinary song, in which Prince sings about the possibility of love (or partying at least) in a time of ‘late-night feedings’; probably not one to play within earshot of any woman raising young children. ‘Better with Time’, which was inspired by Kristin Scott Thomas, is sweeter, an act of homage to his former screen co-star.
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While the albums were disappointing, three shows with three different bands seemed exactly what Prince needed to do next. He promoted them with three consecutive appearances on The Tonight Show. At the time I assumed that this was the next stage in Prince’s career – a stage show that complemented the album and website. Standing in the pit in front of 7,100 fans at the Nokia Theatre, I couldn’t help being struck by the amateurishness of the set design, which looked like kids at an infant school had been handed the covers of Lotusflow3r and MPLSound and instructed to do their worst, the disco-ball jellyfish especially unconvincing. Suddenly the Jumbotrons flickered into life and Prince played us a new video that was a more sure-footed attempt to throw us into a new galaxy. The director of the ‘Chocolate Box’ video, P. R. Brown, claimed he was bringing Prince’s vision to the screen in presenting him, according to the promo’s press release, as ‘an all-seeing Orwellian figure’ with an ‘omnipotent visage’ projected onto the sides of skyscrapers and a ‘psychedelic airship’. Given Prince’s criticism of violent Hollywood product in songs like ‘One Song’ and ‘Silicon’, it seems surprising that among the credited inspirations for the video was Frank Miller’s violent retro-noir Sin City. The video also indicated Prince’s lasting interest in sci-fi film The Matrix.4 And when the show started with ‘Ol’ Skool Company’ and ‘Dreamer’, I thought that this might be the beginning of a run that would stand with his best tours. Soon, though, the show was beset by sound problems, and Prince began playing a listless mix of covers and old chestnuts.
The sound remained off all night, the problems so irritating to Prince and his audience that he halted the third set to complain at length, but the other two shows (in smaller, more exclusive venues) had many highlights. The Conga Room show (where Prince was backed with original New Power Trio members Sonny T and Michael B) featured several songs he had played with his New Power Trio in London, but began with a complete surprise – ‘I’m Yours’, from his first album For You, a song he had never played live before. For the third show Prince revisited songs from Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic and played the much-loved unreleased track ‘In a Large Room with No Light’, with Renato Neto and John Blackwell. It was a wonderful show, but it had little to do with the new albums.
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And there was no Lotusflow3r tour. Prince performed two well-received shows at the Montreux Jazz Festival, three in Monaco, four in Paris and a show at Paisley Park, and that was almost it for the album. A few songs from a performance for France’s RTL radio channel were made available on the site – ‘Feel Better, Feel Good, Feel Wonderful’, ‘Mountains’ and ‘Shake Your Body’ – plus a rehearsal version of ‘Why You Wanna Treat Me So
Bad?’ and some live performances from recent shows. But it never became the conduit for fans that they so desired. At some point during the process, whether it was because he fell out with the web masters or because he just grew tired of the Internet, he gave up on the experiment. In some respects, it’s hard to blame him: the Internet brings out the worst in his fans, and with the mass move away from websites to Facebook and Twitter, the site had become irrelevant. But at the same time, it’s hard not to see this as a fatal schism between Prince and his audience. Hundreds of thousands still attend his shows around the world, but a lot of the excitement associated with following Prince seems to have dissipated in the last few years.
The end of the Lotusflow3r era arguably came with the ignominy surrounding the demise of the website and some fans’ outrage at being charged for a second year’s subscription without warning (although they were quickly refunded). As always with Prince, it’s hard to say when one period ended and the next began, but the most obvious conclusion to this period is a short performance at the Village Underground in New York in May 2010 when Prince performed with his back to the audience. Many suggested this was a move inspired by Miles Davis, but it seems more likely that he was making a protest at the fact that the show was being recorded. Either way, it seemed proof of something fans had known for a while: Prince was moving into a position where he no longer needed us.
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ENDING ENDLESSLY
Speaking to an interviewer from the Daily Mirror in an interview to promote the 20Ten giveaway, Prince confirmed that he had lost interest in the Internet, stating that it was ‘completely over’ and comparing it to a form of promotion – MTV – that had helped him earlier in his career. ‘The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.’1 There may be something to Prince’s argument, particularly for a musician who has always prided himself on being ahead of the game, but elsewhere in the interview he reveals that his concerns about the Internet are largely mercenary. ‘I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.’
Predictably, Prince’s dissing of the Internet prompted much media comment, especially on Internet news sites. Milo Yiannopoulos of the Daily Telegraph had a more in-depth response, arguing that his album giveaway was a huge commercial blunder, but also analysing Prince’s relationship with the Internet, detailing the Lotusflow3r.com debacle and describing it as ‘a complicated relationship that began with utopian enthusiasm’ and ended with ‘contemptuous dismissal’. While the latter seems accurate, the argument that it was a commercial blunder, one that occurred because Prince ‘doesn’t understand the internet’, suggested the author didn’t fully understand Prince’s motivations.2 It seems that there is a very clear business decision behind this form of distribution, but there is also an artistically inspired one. On a business level, Prince presumably gets paid as much from the distribution deal as he could expect from a record label, and gets the album to a much wider audience than he would if it wasn’t a giveaway. The release also promotes the shows (although in this instance, as he wasn’t playing in the UK, it was no doubt less of a consideration). But it also takes Prince out of the review pages and into the rest of the newspaper, an effective way of cutting down the power of reviewers. By distributing his album in this way he ensured the first reviews (by Mirror-employed writers and sanctioned celebrities) were positive, and freed himself from the promotion cycle. It also fitted with his ongoing desire to hide in plain sight: his album got to a bigger audience than he’d had for years, although only hard-core fans had the passion to keep playing it.
Nonetheless, former confidant and publicist Howard Bloom believes this schism with his digital past is another terrible career mistake. ‘Oh my god, not another extremist move. You cannot expunge pieces of life. You have to learn from every one of them. Even if they are adventures that you would never repeat again.’
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I attended the third show of what fans were calling the 20Ten festival tour at Arras in northern France. It was the first time I’d seen Prince live since the three shows in Los Angeles the year before, and I went there with low expectations. It was important to make allowances for the fact that this was a festival tour, and consequently would be hits-heavy, but it still seemed that Prince had retreated from the potentially interesting directions that he’d failed to explore fully when promoting the Lotusflow3r set and had headed back to Europe with a brutally stripped-down band to pick up some easy money. And for the first half hour or so of the set, there was nothing to suggest this wasn’t the case. But then ‘Guitar’ lifted the performance, and a feint at ‘Hot Summer’ suggested that this throwaway song might develop into something purposeful live. The rest of the set returned to tedium, enlivened only by the mixed pleasure of watching Prince and Larry Graham jam together, two great musicians who in spite of their close friendship never really gel onstage.
But then, having dispatched the hits, he returned with more unexpected material that made up for everything that had come before. In recent years, Prince seems to have become increasingly open about his influences, but nevertheless, his decision to add Sylvester’s ‘Dance (Disco Heat)’ to his set for this tour was still a surprise. Watching him tear into it at Arras reminded me of how Barney Hoskyns suggested Prince’s croon was distilled from Sylvester, Michael Jackson (who Prince referred to in his set frequently now, calling him ‘a friend’) and Philip Bailey from Earth, Wind and Fire. Covering a song by a gay drag performer known as the Queen of Disco also seemed a neat riposte to anyone who suggested Prince had become more judgemental since becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. It also seemed fun that he should (almost) end a rock show with a disco song, and I enjoyed hearing him debut lines from ‘Everybody Loves Me’ in this jam, a song from the new album I’d yet to obtain.
Before he returned for a third encore, the intro for ‘Forever in My Life’ started up with such sound and clarity that I assumed someone was DJing with the studio version. But Prince came back out to deliver a more heartfelt version of this track than I’d heard in years, inviting speculation that the lyric about settling down with someone had become pertinent to his personal situation again (Bria Valente was sitting at the side of the stage). Then, he played just a short burst of ‘7’, before leading the audience in a chant of the phrase ‘Let go, let God’ as he played his guitar, Prince’s most unobtrusive onstage sermonising in years.
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Back in England, I absorbed the album. 20Ten, the third (or fifth, if you count Lotusflow3r and MPLSound as separate albums) of Prince’s post-record-label releases, is the most coherent. Any worries created by the seeming low quality of the songs (and the terrible cover art) he’d already made public in 2010 – the dire ‘Purple and Gold’ and ‘Cause and Effect’, and the lightweight ‘Hot Summer’ – were quickly put to rest by the confidence of the album, a record given its own sonic identity by the number of songs (seven out of ten) in which Prince relies on his trio of female backing vocalists – Liv Warfield, Shelby J and Elisa Dease.
After an abrasively robotic opening track, ‘Compassion’, where he’s backed by a horn section of Maceo Parker, Greg Boyer and Ray Monteiro, the majority of the record features Prince playing everything again. It’s typical of him that what he currently claims will be his last album sounds more like a debut. ‘Beginning Endlessly’ is Prince returning to one of his favourite themes – his desire to start again (in a new relationship or in a new creative direction), and his desire to erase his lover’s past (with a symbolic change of name). H. M. Buff told me that ‘Future Soul Song’ was a Vault item from when he worked with Prince. If this is true, then presumably it was reworked for the record, as it has vocals from the female backing vocalists, who weren’t working with Prince at the time. Certainly it seems more accomplishe
d than anything else on the record.
The rest of the album seems comically minimalist, both in lyrical content and style. ‘Sticky Like Glue’ doesn’t make much of the obvious innuendo, instead focusing once again on Prince being separated from his lover by air travel. The record’s one political song – ‘Act of God’ – continues the outrage of the previous album’s ‘Ol’ Skool Company’, attacking bankers and once again suggesting the answer to everything is monotheism. ‘Lavaux’, ‘Walk in Sand’ and ‘Sea of Everything’ all seem responses to global travel, suggesting that Prince had finally taken criticism that his songs had become too insular on board. Of the three, only ‘Sea of Everything’ has real resonance, a sort of fan letter, it seems, to an equally successful female musician. ‘Everybody Loves Me’ is a hilarious song for Prince to put out after such a tempestuous few years, even more of a rebuke to his fans than ‘F.U.N.K.’. But the most enjoyable track is hidden at the end: ‘Laydown’, most notable for Prince referring to himself as the ‘purple Yoda’.
Out-takes have yet to emerge, but there is an unreleased (sort of) song connected to the album, ‘Rich Friends’, which Prince allowed a radio station to broadcast at the end of 2010, with the announcement that it would appear on 20Ten Deluxe, an expanded version of the album (presumably for the US market, as the record has yet to appear there, an extraordinary situation for an artist of Prince’s stature) which has failed to materialise, and seems likely to have been lost for ever. The song is dull musically, but the lyric, a straightforward rant against those who live off others, intrigues, reminiscent of ‘Everybody Want What They Don’t Got’. It fits well with a suite of songs that feature Prince seeming to separate himself off from the rest of the world: even the private parties are over now, as Prince sings of his global citizenship and fumes equally at bankers and freeloaders.