Before you ask... nope, there were no Wonka tickets in my copy of
Prince's 3121.
You've all heard the deal, right? The customer who finds the golden ticket inside his latest CD wins a personal live performance in Prince's own home, which I initially misread the first time to be a performance in
our home (to which I thought, great, Prince can help unpack boxes). As if His Royal Badass would deign to let us unwashed serfs sully his magnificent purple fortress 'o solitude. Although therein lies the Wonka analogy, I reckon. I think Joe once did get accosted by one of his Oompah Loompahs at the gate of his Minneapolis mansion about 18 years ago.
At Joe's behest as well as financial backing I bought
3121 home from the store today, but sadly for maybe the first time ever neither of us seem to be as excited about it as most folks would normally expect from us. Although
Musicology had its occasional mildly diverting moments, I've really grown increasingly less anticipatory of each new Prince release over the last few years. I've heard four tracks off this new release and nothing has come close to wowing me so far, with the drearily dull "Te Amo Corazon" and "Black Sweat", which I refer to as "Kiss pt. 2" with its identically minimalistic staccato funk riff and nearly copycat accompanying video, all of which smacks of "Lookit me, kids! Remember when I used to make hits that sounded just like
this? Um... 20 years ago?" And here is where I'm thinking a large part of where Prince's problems lie these days.
Prince may be close to one of those very, very few artists that I might actually consider a "genius" with a straight face, and I don't often bandy that word about with any serious attachment to anything unless I really mean it. A teenage musical prodigy who borrowed equally from the likes of Little Richard and Sly Stone as well as Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell (but then again who hasn't) and knew how to manipulate and combine these pre-existing elements to make himself into something so original, so idiosyncratic, with creativity so distinctly his own that even when he wrote music for other artists from Chaka Khan to The Bangles, we still
knew somehow -- lyrically, structurally -- that it was penned by Prince. He puts his own ornate, curly-q'ed signature on everything he touches with a style that's unmistakably his alone.
In other words Prince used to be an innovator. And now, um, not so much. I sense him retreading over what's already come and gone in the mainstream, and...
arrgghh... that's not what Prince
does. Green Day can keep on sounding just like The Clash without ever expanding on that, and nobody expects them to. But Prince, he doesn't... I mean, he
used to not do that. And that's what I'm finding a little bit frustrating.
During the 1980's, Prince's innovative ideas with sound and instruments, keyboard and guitar fusions, helped define the sound of that decade and make him one of the leading flagships of pop music. I remember when I first heard "When Doves Cry", or heck, even when I first heard "Kiss" on the radio. There wasn't anything,
anything like that being played on pop radio at the time. When was the last time you heard a Prince song on the radio that made you think like that, if it ever did at all?
And I think that is what's come to be expected of Prince over the years. Expecting innovation every time. Knowing what he's capable of, and not seeing it being applied to his work.
Prince can be a purist sometimes about the music he respects and how he goes about his own music-making process. Joe offered the concept of Prince "Going back to his roots, to his own detriment." Perhaps having the likes of Larry Graham and Maceo Parker in his rotating bands, working so closely with his beloved mentors, touting the "old school" ways in the manner that he did on
Musicology, that he's gone too far back to his origins that he's uninterested in trying to move forward in his career right now.
Or maybe, like most artists that have reached his level of longevity and success, he's lost that edge to his life that keeps the creative juices in circulation. At this stage in his life he appears to be a happily married Jehovah's Witness with more money than he'll ever need in his lifetime. He's no longer pining away for one of those elusive beauties in his most sensuous pieces. He's no longer searching for spirituality like he does in some of his most lyrically moving work. He's no longer starving. No longer struggling. Perhaps these elements also drove his inspiration in the past. But what inspires him now? That's just it. In his new work, his passions no longer seem so well defined.
Or maybe, like all geniuses, even the most creative human mind runs out of ideas sooner or later. Like Dylan. Like Springsteen. Maybe it was Prince's turn to sit at his desk, stare at the blank page in front of him and say, "Eh... I got nuthin'." I think it happens to all of us at some point or another.
Anyway, I'll check it out and see how it sounds. I always give Prince a chance. And besides, nobody who sounds that abso-fucking-lutely
phenomenal live on the stage, even when I last saw him at the Staples Center in L.A. two years ago, can be that completely out of new ideas.
