Theology and Prince (Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture) 9781978704176, 9781978704183, 1978704178

Citation preview

Theology and Prince

Theology and Pop Culture Series Editor: Matthew Brake The Theology and Pop Culture series examines the intersection of theology, religion, and popular culture, including, but not limited to, television, movies, sequential art, and genre fiction. In a world plagued by rampant polarization of every kind and the decline of religious literacy in the public square, Theology and Pop Culture is uniquely poised to educate and entertain a diverse audience utilizing one of the few things society at large still holds in common: love for popular culture.

Titles in the Series Theology and Prince, edited by Jonathan H. Harwell and Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson

Theology and Prince Edited by Jonathan H. Harwell and Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Harwell, Jonathan H., 1972- editor. | Jenkins, Katrina E., 1969- editor. Title: Theology and Prince / edited by Jonathan H. Harwell and Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2019. | Series: Theology and pop culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Theology and Prince explores theology and the life, music, and films of Prince Rogers Nelson. Topics include Prince’s ideas of the afterlife; race and social justice activism; eroticism; veganism; spiritual alter egos; a queer listening of the Purple Rain album, and the theology of the Graffiti Bridge film”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043133 (print) | LCCN 2019043134 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978704176 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978704183 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Prince—Religion. | Prince—Criticism and interpretation. | Popular music—Religious aspects. Classification: LCC ML420.P974 T43 2019 (print) | LCC ML420.P974 (ebook) | DDC 781.66092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043133 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043134 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Foreword vii Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins Acknowledgments xi 1 “Could Have Sworn It Was Judgment Day”: Prince, Eschatology, and Afterlife Racheal Harris 2 “Dear Mr. Man”: The Socially Conscious Music of Prince as Black Prophetic Fire Zada Johnson

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3 “I Am Something That You’ll Never Comprehend”: A Queer Theological Reading of Purple Rain 45 Joseph Trullinger 4 “Flesh of My Flesh”: Prince’s Theology of Eros Emily McAvan

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5 Parables from the (Animal) Kingdom Will Stockton

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6 “Dance with the Devil”: The Paradox of Prince’s Spooky Songs Stefan Sereda 7 Graffiti Bridge: Prince’s Sacred Triumph over the Profane Erica Thompson v

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8 When God Appears, Everything Changes: Prince and Pentecost Rev. Suzanne Castle Epilogue: Continuing Revelations Jonathan H. Harwell

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Index 157 About the Editors and Contributors

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Foreword Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here.” As a college chaplain I do many weddings. It never ceases to amaze me how this simple phrase can hush a room. People quiet down, and for the most part turn their attention to the couple before them. “Dearly beloved” invokes some type of reverence which is intertwined with some communal hope that the couple will live “their happily ever after.” This is where the sacred meets the secular. “To get through this thing called life.” This book is a celebration of Prince’s life. But most importantly it is a journey into one of the most important parts of it—his relationship with faith. This is where it gets complicated. Prince was a complex man. He didn’t try to hide this fact. Rather, he embraced it. And he expected all those around him to follow suit. And if you didn’t? Let’s just say that your time in his kingdom would be brief. That was what happened when you entered the “Purple Army.” To be a Prince fan means that you have signed on with an artist who produced the most beautiful music. But it was music meticulously layered with meaning. Just when you thought you were successful at “reading between the notes,” Prince would throw you a curve. Then there were days when we would shake our heads in amazement and ask, “How the heck did he pull that off?” Hence, the chaos and complexity. It should come as no surprise that spiritual themes were ever-present in Prince’s music. It is well known that Prince spent most of his life searching for spiritual truth. He was highly intelligent, an avid reader, and very inquisitive. He was known to have marathon conversations into the wee hours of the morning about faith. In 2001, Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness. It was

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at this juncture that his faith would begin to reshape all aspects of his career and life. When my colleague Jonathan Harwell asked in April 2018 whether I would be interested in coediting a book on Prince and theology, I said, “Sure.” Jonathan and I bonded in friendship over music, books, and theology. We both shared a love for Prince, so his request made sense to me. I read over the proposal and sent over the requested information. I did not expect to hear back from the publisher for months. Honestly, I figured there would be so much competition regarding Prince that our proposal would not make it in. Oh, ye of little faith! Imagine my shock when an elated Jonathan shared with me two weeks later that our proposal was accepted. I was stunned. I began to wonder, “What did I just sign up for?” This was followed with becoming overwhelmed with the scope of this project. I took a breath and prayed my usual mantra: “God please give me grace and space.” My first encounter with Prince’s music came through my older brother Bill, who seemed to be keen about shaping my musical tastes. I was ten at the time. I remember staring at his self-titled album cover and wondering how his hair could look prettier than mine. Every Saturday, I watched “Soul Train,” followed by “American Bandstand.” I remember Prince’s first interview with Dick Clark. Prince was a man of very few words, which seemed to frustrate Dick Clark no end. I liked that. Fast forward to the Purple Rain era. My brother took me and a friend of mine to see the movie. We were mesmerized. My brother and I even split the cost of the soundtrack with our allowance money. It was the only album we ever owned jointly. When the video came out on VHS (remember those?), we purchased it with glee. I remember when we got our seventy-five-year-old grandpa to watch it prior to Thanksgiving dinner. You must understand, my late grandfather was the head deacon in a Baptist church. He loved it! During Christmas 2018, my brother gave his fifteen-year-old son a turntable, with six albums. Of course, one was the soundtrack from Purple Rain. Let the circle be unbroken! As with everything in life, my relationship with Prince was on and off again. I would listen to his music, keep up with the news regarding him, etc. But I kept my distance. Prince reentered my life around 2004. I was fortunate to see him in concert when he came to Boston. I had such an amazing time! I was taken by the fact that he had a “slamming bass player” by the name of Rhonda Smith. I shared with my then-boyfriend how Prince always seemed to find the best musicians. My relationship was on again. I continued to “flirt” with Prince—until April 21, 2016. “Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down? Oh, no, let’s go!” People often recall where they were when certain life events happened. That was the case for me concerning Prince’s death. I was the chaplain at

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Illinois College. I sat around chatting with some students and colleagues about music. One of my students came into the office and said, “Speaking of music, it’s being reported that Prince is dead.” I held up my hand, laughed nervously, and asked, “Wait, what did you just say?” And he looked at me. Others nodded at the news in agreement. I was thinking that this had to be some cruel joke. I pulled out my phone to check the headlines, and sure enough, it was being reported. I scurried back to my own office in the chapel. I had read a few weeks before about Prince’s airplane making an emergency stop in Moline, Illinois. I hadn’t thought too much of it. The report said that he basically had pneumonia. I found myself needing to be in community with people who understood. I wrote a Facebook post and changed the cover photo on my page to purple. I began streaming a station in Chicago, because my town only had a few radio stations. The tributes were flowing. I found myself singing along to the lyrics of “Little Red Corvette” and “Controversy.” I danced deliriously to “Lady Cab Driver.” I tried singing a clean version of “Erotic City.” That didn’t quite work. I figured God would give me grace over a few cuss words. “Sometimes It Snows in April” made me pause. Then I found myself weeping as “Purple Rain” came on and played in the background. I asked God how this could have happened. Sadly, the reality for me and others was that Prince was gone. I am not sure that any book, tribute concert, website, or Facebook page will do justice to the magnitude of what Prince accomplished during his lifetime. But I understand the need for us to try. Sometimes I wonder whether he is looking down and laughing about all this fuss we are making over him. I hope that this book will be a starting point for many discussions. I have the feeling we have only touched the tip of the iceberg. I am sure that there is more to come as Prince’s legacy continues to unfold and take shape. Of course, the one common denominator that binds us all together is our love for the purple one. Prince had a funny way of bringing people together from all walks of life. He still does, even in death. In the first chapter, Racheal Harris examines the trajectory of Prince’s theology from the beginning of his career until the end of his life. Included is a look into Prince’s views with reference to the afterlife, tying his eschatology to a contrast of his and Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl shows. Zada Johnson explains Prince’s views on social justice via the lens of liberation theology, and how in some subtle way the Black Prophetic voice may have influenced his activism. Next, Joseph Trullinger explores the intersection of the religion and sexuality of Prince against the backdrop of queer theology—with particular emphasis on the Purple Rain album. Through the lens of “indecent theology,” Emily McAvan argues that Prince’s thoughts on sexuality and gender were more fluid than one might think. Will Stockton then reflects on Prince’s

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relationship with food and theology, emphasizing how they were combined in his music. Stefan Sereda delves into Prince’s “shadow side” by exploring his usage of the devil, good vs. evil, and various shady personas found in his lyrics. Erica Thompson examines how Prince’s views on spirituality influenced the production of Graffiti Bridge, including notes from her interview with co-star Ingrid Chavez. Through a description of lived theology, Suzanne Castle’s chapter takes us through a Pentecost-themed worship service dedicated to Prince following his death. Finally, Jonathan Harwell looks at Prince’s stillevolving legacy and what Prince fans/fams can look forward to in the future. Each contributor brings their own authentic voice to the table. I am excited about how every article featured in this edition reflects some aspect of Prince’s theology—complexity and all.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the series editor, Matthew Brake, for his advice and support throughout the process of producing this volume; and each contributing author for sharing their fascinating insights, personal reflections, and careful research. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Prince Rogers Nelson, whose artistic and spiritual legacy continues to inspire and challenge us.

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Chapter 1

“Could Have Sworn It Was Judgment Day” Prince, Eschatology, and Afterlife Racheal Harris

In every stage of his life, Prince was a divisive artist. Early in his career, even those closest to him sometimes mistook his titillating and often explicit references to sex and religion as strategies to provoke media attention, while in his later life his shifting beliefs ostracized collaborators and fans alike.1 Though his artistic genius has rarely been in dispute, the sexual and spiritual messages of Prince’s lyrics are central to the criticism his output attracts. Primary to the concerns of worried parents, dubious critics, and fans grown weary in their attempt to decipher his intent is the back and forth that Prince displayed in his ideas about sex and its relation to the divine. His lyrical legacy is indicative of a developing theology in which God exists alongside love, with sex being an ultimate expression of God’s plan for men and women fulfilled through their divine and loving union. In addition to love and sex, his earliest output, released long prior to the spiritual awakening that defined his later years, contained lyrics that—while dripping with innuendo—confronted listeners with a narrative about the end of days or the resurrected Christ. This secondary focal point expresses the importance of “now” within the theological rhetoric which Prince took as the framework in developing his own belief system. It owes much to the Millenarian ideas present in the faith communities he interacted with as a child. In the mind of Prince, the return of the Lord was imminent, Judgment Day loomed on the horizon, and thus a focus on atonement and love was his message. Like many individuals exposed to religious environments that place a great deal of importance on proselytizing, Prince took it upon himself to preach his unique gospel to the world. In doing so, he was being of service to his God and his fans. To be of service, however, is to sometimes provoke conflict and negativity from your audience. With regard 1

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to the relationship that Prince shared with his fans, this was evident. In life, his attempt to control and mediate his artistic output found him in constant conflict with fan groups, particularly after the advent of the internet. In his death, this issue continues to be contentious. Although not immediately evident, when we view the theological message of Prince, as expressed through his lyrical output, in conjunction with his views about the control of his celebrity image, what becomes clear is how his specific beliefs have come to play a role in his posthumous and digital legacies. Within the broader scope of his theological concerns, it is important to consider these elements in relation to each other. In doing so, we gain a deeper understanding of Prince as both entertainer and individual. Such understanding is essential to the development of ongoing discussion of Prince’s historic and cultural legacy. This chapter will be divided into two parts. The first section examines the lyrical content of Prince’s work, particularly his early albums. Its aim is to establish a theological framework for how Prince understood, sermonized, and lived out his unique interpretation of the religious beliefs that had dominated his childhood. His exposure to the apocalyptic narratives of the Seventh Day Adventist Church were integral to the way that Prince experienced religion and the lens through which he interpreted society. For the casual listener or secular fan of the artist, these ideas might be lost or misconstrued and thus, in looking at Prince’s specific religious influences in greater detail, this chapter begins to explain why Prince wrote of the end of the world as frequently as he did and in the context that he did. This discussion will lead into a consideration of how Prince’s conversion into the Jehovah’s Witness faith, which became official in 2001, was responsible for solidifying many of the themes that had been present since his youth, but that took a more pronounced form in his later musical output. It was during these later years that Prince became more pronounced in his religious ideas, for which he was unapologetic when they drew criticism. Such criticism suggests a lack of understanding of how and why Prince might have expressed theological themes in the manner that he did. Thus it is the purpose of this chapter to explore the context and importance of eschatology to millennial groups like the Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness faith communities. In doing so, my aim is to provide a new lens through which we might view the message that Prince expressed to his fans or to any listener that has “ears to hear.” Developing this understanding in relation to the metaphorical content of Prince’s work is essential to the ongoing scholarship of Prince as artist, musician, and celebrity figure. In addition to the criticism he attracted in the press, Prince also had a turbulent relationship with his fans. At the core of this conflict was his desire to curate and control his artistic output and the use of his image. The growth of the internet and subsequent increase in online piracy and, eventually, content streaming sites were difficult for Prince to accept. In an effort to mediate how

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fans used and appropriated his art, Prince was often litigious with regard to what he understood as copyright infringement and theft.2 His behavior saw a dramatic downturn in fan-run web platforms and, eventually, the removal of his work from YouTube and other streaming sites. In relation to fandom, particularly as it applies to Prince’s posthumous legacy, the second part of the chapter goes beyond the theoretical framework of Prince’s beliefs. Here I consider the conflict that now exists around how Prince’s theology influences the way his image is used and read by fans who continue to mourn his passing. As a case study, I draw upon the 2018 Super Bowl performance in which Justin Timberlake intended to use a hologram of Prince as part of his tribute to the musician. This episode significantly highlights the importance of accounting for religious beliefs of individual celebrities when tribute shows are performed posthumously. Timberlake, also a celebrity figure, counts himself as a fan of Prince and thus occupies a curious space between fellow musician and everyday fan. In this instance the backlash Timberlake experienced in trying to artistically honor Prince’s memory highlights the increasingly difficult relationship between celebrity figures and their fan bases. In the case of Prince, the same religious ideas that attracted so much public ire once again come to the fore when we approach his memorialization. They prompt us to consider what role faith, spirituality, and belief play in the posthumous legacy of the artist, and how we, as fans, honor the wishes of the celebrity figure even when they are in conflict with our desire to mourn publicly. PRINCE AND THEOLOGY Millenarianism is a foundational element of many political and social ideas, although it is perhaps best recognized as a major component in the theological doctrines of a range of religious groups, Christian and otherwise. Among its core concepts, Millenarianism has a strong focus on a literal and transformational event that will result in the death and rebirth of humanity. This is frequently understood as a cleansing of sin or impurity, so that new and perfect rebirth can occur. In a Christian context this is understood as the return of Christ and the commencement of Judgment Day. These events are usually framed in apocalyptic imagery, with fire, war and suffering being among their primary motifs. The account of the final judgment, as described in Revelation, takes a strong focus on the return of Christ as an event drenched in fear and turmoil, during which the souls of the living and the dead will be held to account for their actions and judged in accordance with the tenets of the Christian faith. Fire rains from the sky (Revelation 13:13), as humanity suffers through pestilence and torment, imagery that is echoed in the opening

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verse of Prince’s hit “1999.” This event marks the literal end of human life as it is currently understood. After a cleansing through fire and judgment, humanity will be reborn into a spiritual life with God. In most Christian traditions, the event is understood to be a literal point in time and one that cannot be subverted. In recent history Millenarian concepts have become synonymous with New Religious Movements such as the Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness traditions. Millennial beliefs played a central role in highprofile events such as the Waco Siege, where a group of Branch Davidians (an offshoot of Seventh Day Adventism) died in a fire after a seventy-two-day standoff with American authorities. In the aftermath of that event, Davidian doctrines, rooted in the ideas put forth in Seventh Day Adventism, became a prime topic of conversation in relation to why the siege had ended so violently. Specifically, the antagonistic response of government agents to those inside the compound was thought to have agitated their already apocalyptic beliefs.3 As a result, the display of force exhibited by tactical response teams from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) was met with equal force from inside the compound. To resolve the standoff, BATF agents employed tactical entry techniques, and a fire ensued. With fire being a major motif in many examples of apocalyptic millennial prophecy, members of the Davidian group interpreted the blaze as confirmation of the coming judgment and perished. In the aftermath, academic discussion of the event focused heavily on how ignorance of the significance of the millennial or apocalyptic doctrine was detrimental to secular attempts to halt the siege.4 The actions of the government created a self-fulfilling prophecy in which members of the group chose to perish in what they understood to be a redemptive fire and one from which they would be reborn anew. This moment, while representing an extreme interpretation of apocalyptic doctrine, is important to consider when looking at the way that millennial religions approach their faith. I do not suggest that Prince held the same or similar beliefs as the Davidians, but would suggest that his staunch moral and religious stance might be explained by a careful consideration of the importance he placed upon the core tenets of his faith. Like members of the Davidian group and adherents of Adventism more broadly, at several points throughout his life, Prince did demonstrate that he could not and would not be shifted from his belief in the core teachings of his faith. His belief in the importance and inerrancy of scripture,5 despite often being detrimental to his public image, was of primary importance to his life; and with it, the apocalyptic concepts on which these beliefs were founded would be paramount to his artistic output. Similarly, the Jehovah’s Witness faith centers its beliefs in an apocalyptic doctrine, although historically this church has been associated with few violent acts. Specific to the faith is the idea that the End of Days will bring on a new era of Heaven on Earth. It is in this time that 144,000 disciples will be

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raised from the dead to walk with God. What may not always be immediately apparent when we examine the lyrical content of Prince’s songs is how these religious ideas, particularly as they relate to apocalyptic visions and resurrection, are essential to understanding the broad theological concepts that Prince expressed in his music. The influence of Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness scripture was foundational in Prince’s interpretation of the Apocalypse and is essential to understanding the extensive religious dialogue he undertook with his audience. While this evolved over his lifetime, the apocalyptic narrative of Christ’s return and the new world was a cornerstone of Prince’s spiritual outlook. In Revelation, Jesus says to John that he is “coming soon” (Revelation 22:12), and millennial doctrines approach this element of scripture as though it will take place within this lifetime. In the case of Prince, it is necessary to consider this fact in light of how he approached resurrection and redemptive narratives specifically. This is particularly important when we look at his role as a messenger of biblical teaching. While it is true that after becoming a Jehovah’s Witness Prince would knock on doors to share the teachings of this faith, he had been prophesying to his fans long before. In line with his beliefs, Prince understood that through his role as a musician he had the ability to discuss religion and religious themes with his audience. While at times these discussions were focused on the return of Christ, at other times they were occupied by a discussion on morality and the importance of embracing peace and love over war and hatred. The albums Dirty Mind (1980) and Controversy (1981) are also important to consider when we look at Prince as a prophet. While Dirty Mind is focused more explicitly on sex and explorations of sexuality and love, the final tracks on each side of the album, “Uptown” and “Partyup,” represent political ideologies. Specifically, they express the idea that political influence is having a negative impact on society, leading to its decline. In “Uptown” Prince describes an idyllic social setting in which people are more concerned with having a good time than with gender dynamics or political agendas. His discussion is of a place where it’s “all about being free.” “Partyup” similarly extols the virtues of making love instead of war. In this song, Prince discusses the idea that society is being used to fight a political war, one which is in service to corporate greed and from which the ordinary citizen will not benefit. In a form of peaceful protest, he suggests that it is better to just “party up.” The song closes with a chorus of chanting voices, stating, “You gonna have to fight your own damn war, Cause we don’t wanna fight no more.” In the case of each example, Prince preaches a gospel of love and acceptance over violence. The selection of “up” rather than “down,” which would have worked as an alternative in both titles, can also be interpreted as an allusion to Heaven, particularly when considered in conjunction with the elevator metaphor present in “Let’s Go Crazy.” In contrast, Controversy, while also

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employing some discussion on sex and sexuality, was more explicitly focused on the influence of politics on society and the subsequent negative impact it was having on how people relate to each other. These themes were interwoven with apocalyptic narrative, but at their core was commentary on the dangers of using sexuality and religion as tools to judge people. In the title track, Prince incorporates the use of the Lord’s Prayer into the second half of the song, before fading out with the chant “People call me rude, I wish we all were nude, I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules.” At face value, this can be seen as a statement designed to court media controversy, but it is also a direct reflection of the Edenic existence of Adam and Eve prior to their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. What Prince is actually calling for is a return to this existence, in which both men and women were not only closer to each other, but in harmony with God. “Annie Christian” is one of the most controversial songs on the album. When it was released, its allusions to political unrest and use of the term Anti-Christ made it one of the most complex songs on the album.6 References to the lyrics also appear in the album artwork, which uses a montage of newspaper headlines that describe the murderous Annie Christian. “Ronnie Talk to Russia” was also a direct slur against the Reagan government, specifically in relation to American relationships with the Eastern Bloc. At the height of the Cold War, Prince was attempting to enact a call for peace. This was a call that would go unheeded for nearly a decade. The criticism that Prince leveled against America in his lyrics warned them of the danger in veering away from the path of love and enlightenment. The division between greed and morality would continue to play a primary role in Prince’s theological dialogue. “Free,” from the album 1999, released only a year later, takes a slightly different perspective and highlights some of the contradictions in Prince’s narrative. Rather than criticizing America, the song is a warning about how easily freedom can be lost. Prince discusses how he is free to live life as he sees fit, but he also understands that there is “many a man who’s not.” The song speaks of fighting “together for the most important cause . . . the right to be free.” Prince returns to politics in his later work, notably “America” from Around the World in a Day (1985) which is critical of poverty under the Reagan administration, and “Sign o’ the Times,” which is a negative comment on American society and its moral decline. In contrast, Diamonds and Pearls (1991) returns to a focus on war and greed, although this time it has to do with the conflict in Iraq and the Middle East (“Money Don’t Matter 2 Night”). Much later, in Musicology (2004), he takes aim at the government for similar reasons. In the tracks “Cinnamon Girl” and “Dear Mr. Man,” he addresses terrorism and the presence of American troops in the Middle East. “Dear Mr. Man” is also critical of the George W. Bush administration in its discussion of the poverty being experienced within America at the time. Within the song,

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Prince quotes Matthew 5:5 to state that the meek shall inherit the earth. He goes on to describe a list of ideologies that Americans believe (such as that working hard will see them prosper) before outlining all the ways that these ideas are false and that rather than being prosperous, the average American is living in poverty, while the government oppresses its own people while also starting wars with other countries. The song is ultimately a call to action, in which Prince is pleading with his listeners to return to a moral and right way of living. While politics might seem to be at odds with his religious agenda when we think of Prince’s understanding of apocalyptic theologies, it becomes evident that politics is closely interwoven with a social failure to live as outlined in the teachings of Christ. An example would be the message of Jesus when he overturns the table of the money changers (John 2:13–16), warning those in the Temple that one cannot serve two masters (God and Money). “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” echoes this sentiment and can be interpreted as Prince warning of the dangers of becoming drawn into the consumer society, which places too much importance on material wealth.7 “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” also reminds the audience that they are better off making sure their souls are alright, because money will ultimately have no impact on how we are remembered or judged after death. On the same album, “Thunder” exhorts listeners to save their souls by seeing Jesus. In this instance the title of the song and the sound effects are used to illustrate the setting, while the lyrical refrain which describes thunder throughout the night and the promise to see Jesus at dawn recalls again the literal idea of the apocalypse. In this instance, Prince is met by “love,” a character who appears as some form of female angel, or manifestation of biblical teaching, instructing him on the word of God and leading him toward redemption. The apocalypse, resurrection, and return of Christ were key elements in Prince’s understanding of religious teaching and the message of the Bible. Hence they are featured, although not always overtly, throughout much of his early work, specifically his output from the 1980s. When in “1999” he discusses being unable to “run from Revelation,” he is talking about the event as both a literal moment and one that will take place within the present era. Similar themes are present in “Let’s Go Crazy,” where he uses the metaphor of an elevator taking us (the listeners) down (away from God). While there are conflicting accounts of the specific meaning of the lyric, in a theological context, “De-Elevator” is generally understood as Satan. Thus, when we consider it in relation to sin and damnation, the song is challenging listeners by asking whether they are willing to be taken down or are going to rebel against the demonic.8 It is a call to turn away from the temptation presented in the world (which will only take us down to Hell) in favor of punching a higher floor (or taking a higher path) which is the road to Heaven. From the same

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album, “I Would Die 4 U” is perhaps the most clearly religious song. Here, Prince sings from the perspective of Jesus,9 with the entire narrative of the song preoccupied with the sacrificial death of Jesus to fulfill God’s promise of salvation, the key element of the Passion story. Throughout the song, Prince refers to himself as a dove (a major symbol of peace in Biblical narrative), the listener’s conscience and the embodiment of love. The most powerful refrain in the song is where he reminds listeners that “all I really need, is to know that you believe.” Read within the context of the film Purple Rain (1984), in which the song is performed, audiences can mistake the intent as being a comment on the relationship between the Kid and his father. However, when viewed in relation to the religious overtones present across much of the album, it becomes clear that the song is a clever example of Prince entwining his religious doctrine with the romantic and dramatic elements of the film. This multilayering allows for a wider reception to his message. A more overt example, “The Cross” remains one of Prince’s most explicitly religious songs, and again, its content is specifically concerned with the triumphant return of Jesus. This idea, as Prince describes it, is deeply rooted in his eschatological beliefs, and clear Seventh Day Adventist influences are present in the resurrection imagery. The song commences with a black day, followed by a stormy night. While weather appears in later songs (such as the lead track “Thunder” on 1992’s Diamonds and Pearls), this imagery might also be read as social unease or turbulence. In its use of this metaphor, the song is both a warning and a beacon of hope. Although in the lead up to spiritual cleansing and rebirth there must be some discomfort, described as “no love, no hope in sight,” after the return of Jesus these things will be restored. In order to benefit from this gift of His divine love, however, the listener must follow Prince in his worship of the cross (the ultimate metaphor for death and rebirth). After his conversion, Prince changed the lyrics to “the Christ” so as to more closely mirror his new beliefs. Still, the song remained part of his live shows, unlike many of his more sexually focused hits. The transition from sex into spirituality was a directional shift which has been difficult for many fans to follow, though it also highlights the mercurial nature of Prince’s theological attitudes. Prince’s message of religious adherence and tolerance was never without contradiction. As Joseph Vogel explores, there were various examples of contradictory viewpoints evident in Prince’s work, and these paradoxes reflected his theological beliefs.10 Added to these, his varied life experiences and his relationships—with his wives, his bandmates, and his record company—were major influences on his religious theologies. All found an outlet in his work, which shifted frequently in its interpretation of faith and description of the Judgment. All of this turbulence would play a role in how he understood the purpose of religion and how he preached to his funky congregation.

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Perhaps the most infamous incident in the development of Prince’s theological perspective and artistic outlook is the Black Album controversy. While some saw the Black Album as Prince behaving petulantly in protest of his treatment by Warner Bros.,11 it also represents the turmoil of his transition away from the sexually centered work of his early career in order to deliver an album that was focused on his transformation into a spiritual seeker. This transition is exemplified in LoveSexy (1988), which was released commercially in place of the Black Album. Although the LoveSexy album contains an abundance of allusions to sex and sexuality (personified in the cover art in which Prince poses naked, seated in the center of a flower), overall the content is a joyous celebration of how spirituality and the quest to find fulfilment is changing his life. Later, he would go on to express the deep unease that the Black Album had caused him, stating that he had pulled it from release out of fear for the negative energies that it would put out into the world. If we look at the album and Prince’s response to it in relation to his ambition to find “the ladder” (also the name of a song on the 1985 album Around the World in a Day), we can view the Black Album as an attempt to perhaps purge himself of the final remnants of those elements of his life that were impeding his spiritual journey. As Christian religion teaches, there can be no redemption without sin, and that part of finding the way to God involves taking missteps on the path toward enlightenment. Prince might have felt negatively about the danger that the Black Album posed to his listeners, but then again, perhaps it was also a gift to them. By taking the intangible fears and negative thoughts that impeded him and turning them into music, he presents the moral reflection of the LoveSexy album. In the duality that each of these illustrates, there is no better representation of the human character and indeed, no better illustration of the internal struggles that were present in Prince and his approach to life throughout his career. As he had discussed in so many of his lyrics, the true path to spiritual enlightenment or fulfilment could only be achieved in loving harmony with a woman. These two genders create one complete soul that might transcend from this world into the spiritual. THE DEATH OF PRINCE Although Prince took an attitude toward death that might have seemed cavalier,12 when he did die in 2016 the world was in shock. Rather than the Judgment and triumphant return of Jesus, it was an accidental overdose of prescription medication that took his life. In the immediate wake of his death, dozens of artists and celebrities paid tribute to his memory, not only highlighting the impact that his music had on their own development as artists and on their personal lives but also the unique relationships that many had shared

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with him outside of the spotlight. One of these artists was Justin Timberlake, who left an emotional post on his Instagram page, outlining how much Prince meant to him and what an inspiration his music had been. At the time, the world was awash with similarly heartfelt tributes, and little was made of Timberlake’s words—he was just one in a sea of grieving fans. From the fan perspective, the death of Prince challenged his fans to question how to honor the memory of the deceased musician/celebrity/artist while also being respectful of his beliefs. While there are certainly a number of celebrities who are not shy in professing belief in various faiths, what made Prince unique was his vehemence in the way in which he felt his faith should be applied to his posthumous image. In a now infamous interview with Guitar World, Prince spoke at length about his dislike for the use of the holographic image and his negativity toward the remastering of vocal performances of deceased artists.13 Prince was adamant that, after his own death, he did not want his image to be utilized in this way, specifically because he felt it went against the natural order. In his estimation, Prince felt that if he were intended to live and perform in a certain time or place and with specific artists, then this would take place naturally. To have his image manipulated through digital technology, allowing him to appear outside of the scope of his natural life, was something he felt to be demonic. In part, this attitude reflects a long-held dislike of the internet, which Prince also discussed in a 2010 interview in which he stated that the internet was full of too many numbers, which could only be bad for people.14 Read in relation to his theological convictions, it is clear that Prince also saw certain technological developments, such as those that employ holograms, as a challenge to the finality of death. In attempting to resurrect the dead through the use of these technologies, humans are in fact challenging the law of God. This ideology has biblical roots in the Old Testament, when Saul summons the spirit of Samuel (1 Samuel 28). Samuel is displeased at having been called up from the world of the dead, and Saul is punished for his defiance of God. Although Saul uses a medium in this story, the act of resurrecting Samuel is seen by some theologians as a form of witchcraft. In the landscape of the modern world, the use of technology can be viewed in the same sense. Owing to the biblical studies that he conducted throughout much of his adult life, particularly in the lead up to his conversion, Prince often deferred to the Bible in his discussion of modern society. Although he received more attention from the press when discussing divisive issues such as homosexuality, a strong belief in not challenging the natural law or God was present in many of the convictions he held. Another example is the long-running rumor around the chronic pain he suffered in his hips. This ailment was understood to be the result of decades of performing in high-heeled shoes. Jehovah’s Witness faith dictates that members of the congregation cannot accept blood transfusions, and thus after his conversion, Prince was unable to undergo surgery to correct the problems he was

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experiencing. (Some sources have indicated that he finally had double hip replacement surgery in 2010, but that he kept this decision private.) That he declined the intervention of medical science is not only testament to the seriousness with which he viewed the doctrines of his church, but echoes the sentiment expressed earlier in the chapter, when I discussed the disinclination of Millenarian faith groups to sway from the teachings of the Bible. It is one thing for Prince to view his own faith with such reverence. It is quite another for a fan to respect this sentiment, particularly after the death of Prince, when conflicting attitudes about theology come into play. As many people who saw Prince perform would attest, he was almost unequalled in the field of musical talent, stamina and showmanship. His death brought with it, for his fans, a deep and profound loss. The suddenness of it, in particular, was difficult to accept. In absence of a public funeral or memorial ceremony, Paisley Park, his home outside of Minneapolis, became the shrine at which fans were able to mourn the impact of his loss and also to reflect on the positive influence that he had on their lives. Almost immediately, tribute shows for the artist began to appear across the globe, a fact that speaks to the desire of people to see Prince one more time. While impersonators are one way for fans to grieve through the loss of a much-loved celebrity figure, at no point do they seek to resurrect the person they seek to embody. In performing a tribute, what the artist hopes to do is emulate the most positive aspects of the celebrity they are impersonating. It is difficult to say how Prince would have responded to this outpouring of emotion. He was protective in guarding his image and his music, and prevented certain tribute recordings from being released during his lifetime. However after his death, without a will, much of his intellectual and artistic empire and legacy fell into the hands of his family and friends, attorneys, and banks. Prince was cremated in a private ceremony not long after an autopsy was performed on his body. This was in line with his religious wishes. As a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince was convinced of a bodily resurrection, in which he would be raised from the dead to face Judgment, and after which he would be received into the Kingdom of God. However, this was not expected until the second coming of Christ. Until that time, Prince wanted to remain dead, free of having his image used and manipulated by technology, free from the “demonic” influences of technology.15 Justin Timberlake’s 2018 Super Bowl performance stood out specifically because it seemed to go against the explicit wishes expressed by Prince, whose views of death and the afterlife (and images of the dead) were tied inextricably to his eschatology. THE 2018 SUPER BOWL Justin Timberlake is not only a self-confessed Prince fan, but as a musician, also a professional peer. Although Timberlake makes reference to spending

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time with Prince in an Instagram post from April 22, 2016, it is unclear as to how well the pair was personally acquainted. In any event, Timberlake’s status as a fellow celebrity gives him a unique platform in comparison with other members of the fan community. After the death of Prince, a range of celebrity figures shared their encounters with and thoughts about him through social media. Similarly, many musicians who had collaborated with Prince over the course of his career recounted the experience, but overwhelmingly, these memories spoke to a short-lived, professional relationship rather than a long-term, enduring friendship. In his Instagram tribute to Prince, Timberlake stated that “he’s [Prince] somewhere within every song I’ve ever written.”16 However there is evidence to suggest that he and Prince had a contentious relationship.17 Many Prince fans felt that it was inappropriate for Timberlake to memorialize the singer because of an alleged disagreement that took place in 2006. The run-in between the pair was thought to have stemmed from Timberlake’s song “SexyBack” (2006) in which he discusses bringing sexy back into the mainstream. It is alleged that Prince did not understand the song or its popularity and was heard to quip that someone should tell whomever was responsible for singing it that “sexy” never left.18 Timberlake’s response came in the form of an obtuse slight in one of the tracks he recorded with long-time collaborator Timbaland, which featured on Timbaland’s album Shock Value (2007). In the song “Give it To Me” (2007), Timberlake references artists who don’t appear on the top of the charts despite their mockery of his work. While there is no proof that he is directly referencing Prince, it has long been suspected that the lyric was a direct response to the “SexyBack” incident. Timberlake has since gone on the record in an attempt to try to clear the air,19 but fans seem disinclined to believe his statements about the love and respect he had for Prince.20 To use the Super Bowl as a platform to pay tribute to Prince was a controversial move for Timberlake for two reasons. The first was that Prince is generally thought to have performed one of the best (if not the best) halftime shows of all time in 2007.21 Various online articles that rank Super Bowl performances place him at number one; otherwise he is always in the top five. The second, and more prominent, problem with Timberlake’s action was the fact that it sought to use a public forum to pay tribute to Prince in a way that was in direct contradiction to Prince’s wishes about the posthumous use of his image. Prince had opened his own Super Bowl halftime show with a chant from Queen’s “We Will Rock You” before bursting into “Let’s Go Crazy” from his 1984 album Purple Rain. While this is one of his best-known party songs, it is also one of the most religiously overt and represents a literal call to communion for his audience, when he tells them, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life!” His introduction

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was followed by the opening bars of “1999,” which again recalls an overtly religious imagery. Although Prince did not perform the song in its entirety, the opening bars are enough to conjure the opening verse in the minds of audience members, particularly Prince fans, who recognize it immediately. Throughout the performance, Prince interwove songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival (“Proud Mary”), Bob Dylan (“All Along the Watchtower”), and the Foo Fighters (“The Best of You”) into a medley of his own greatest hits. While these songs showcase the diversity of his own ability to play across a broad spectrum of musical genres, they’re also popular with a wide audience demographic. In this respect, Prince was demonstrating that his intention was to appeal to a wide viewing audience and not purely to focus on his own songs. Less obvious was the fact that in the case of two of the songs that were chosen (“All Along the Watchtower” and “The Best of You”), Prince chose to perform verses in which there was a clear allusion to religion. In “All Along the Watchtower,” he places himself in the position of the omniscient figure, watching over the world around him. In contrast, in “The Best of You,” he focuses on the idea of confession. Viewed from the perspective of Prince proselytizing, the inclusion of these songs amid those of his own creation was a clever way of drawing in listeners who might otherwise have tuned out of the performance. In doing so, he was able to share the message of his work, condensed into a neat 14-minute package. As with all of his performances, the goal was to spread the word as he understood it. The pinnacle of the performance was undoubtedly the closing rendition of “Purple Rain,” during which Prince had his silhouette projected onto a white sheet, which billowed up from the stage. On the telecast, Prince was shown almost exclusively as a looming shadow, the billowing, rippling effect of the sheet giving his enormous shape an ethereal quality, as the sound of his guitar solo echoed out across the stadium. A torrential rain storm was also taking place during Prince’s performance. The selection of the song, combined with the natural elements and the purple lighting, seemed to throw the entire event into an otherworldly hue. No pre-planned performance could have achieved this result without the weather conditions. Justin Timberlake would draw upon this triumphant finale in his homage to Prince, eleven years later. Unlike Prince’s 2007 performance, Timberlake’s halftime show was primarily a medley of his own songs, with the exception of his segue into “I Would Die 4 U.” During this interlude the image of Prince was projected onto a silk screen, which mirrored the technique used by Prince in his own performance. Timberlake placed himself in front of the image, seated at a piano. His vocal was inter-spliced with Prince’s, giving the impression of a duet. This was similar to what Prince had described with regard to the digital manipulation of John Lennon in a Beatles song that was released after his death. Prince had been very clear that this was a technique that he disagreed with,

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and as such, many fans still felt that it was disrespectful. On the telecast, the end of this segment took place outside of the stadium, where purple lighting was used throughout the Minneapolis landscape, to light up the symbol that had, for a time, been Prince’s name and become synonymous with his image. The use of the image of Prince himself, holographic or otherwise, was controversial because Prince was so well-known for his stance that it was demonic to use it in such a way. If Timberlake had not known of this, once he had learned of it, many fans felt that he should have immediately pulled the segment from his performance, in accordance with Prince’s stated wishes and the religious motivations behind those statements. The fact that the performance was also taking place within a larger showcase of Timberlake’s work, specifically to promote his latest album, seemed to make Prince and his legacy into props for Timberlake. Prince had spent much of his career trying to break free from the publicity machine that he felt entrapped him and stifled his creative talent. To use his image in such a way, many felt, would be to ignore his core principles. When viewed in relation to the apparent contention between the two artists, we can also see the staging of the tribute at the middle of the performance as a further insult. Had it been at the end, it would have presented not only the end of the halftime show, but expressed a finality related to Prince’s career and acted as a tribute to his enduring legacy. By sandwiching it as an interlude between his own songs, the moment is lost and can be read as a final comment from Timberlake in relation to his own popularity as a musician, which had escalated as Prince’s own career was thought to be receding. Timberlake’s last-minute choice to abandon the use of the hologram in favor of projecting scenes from the film onto a white sheet recalls Prince’s finale at the 2007 Super Bowl. For a brief moment, a segment from this performance was spliced amid the “Purple Rain” footage. In recalling the performance and using it, even momentarily, within his own, Timberlake instigated fan ire. Rather than the tribute being a homage to Prince, in which the audience was left to recall his impact and importance, it was subsumed into Timberlake’s show and identity. Timberlake had faced criticism for similar behavior based on his Super Bowl performance with Janet Jackson, during which he tore her costume, exposing her breast on television. What was only intended as a cameo within Jackson’s halftime show eclipsed the entire performance, and while Jackson faced heavy backlash in the media, Timberlake is thought to have benefitted from the moment. Timberlake justified his approach to the final version of his performance (the one which was telecast) by stating that he had spoken to and received approval from Questlove and from Prince’s long-time collaborator Sheila E. prior to the performance. Questlove was a close friend and protégé of Prince, but he is also the bandleader for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the same show on which Timberlake addressed the criticism around

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his performance. This fact was seen to tarnish the sincerity of Timberlake’s statement, as it once again prompted audiences to question his motivations for the tribute and his sincerity in respecting Prince. Over all, Timberlake’s Prince tribute ran for less than 90 seconds of a performance that spanned close to 15 minutes. That it became the focal point of so much furor and criticism is telling. While there are a number of elements at play when considering why fans were so outraged, such as Timberlake’s prior history with Prince, issues of digital legacy and ownership of the posthumous celebrity image also resound. Prince wanted to be in control of his celebrity persona. This was evidenced throughout his life, but most firmly in his battle with music labels and his contentious relationship with his fans. Prince wanted to decide how his image and work were shared in the world; he wanted to curate his own legacy, and this desire extended into his death. In using the image of Prince, Timberlake took it upon himself to become a curator of this legacy, even if only momentarily. This action is problematic because of the issue it highlights around artistic agency and the agency of the dead. The performance takes Prince and rewrites him into Timberlake’s output. Prince was firm in his belief that deceased performers should not perform with the living. Regardless of how his image appeared, Timberlake’s inclusion of Prince in his Super Bowl performance was a contradiction of these wishes. CONCLUSION Of course, Prince was not the first musician to openly discuss religion in his work. Nor was he the first celebrity to take a strong stance on the importance of living a faithful and virtuous life. What makes Prince such a fascinating subject for sustained academic study is the breadth and depth of his musical output. Since his death, the true extent of his artistic “vault” has only begun to reveal itself, while his albums (only a few of which are well known by the general public) have yet to be completely subjected to the range of academic viewpoints to which they lend themselves. Prince invested time in discussing religious ideologies and prophesizing the return of Christ—through his lyrics and his conversations. In his imagining of the Judgment, the only way to salvation was through the love of Christ and the love of each other. This was the central message of his work and was present throughout his artistic output. Prince was a believer in God and the Christian faith. His mode of evangelism was one of gentle suggestion, focusing on messages of love and warnings against wrongdoing, set amid erotically charged lyrics and performances. In some ways, Prince will forever remain something of a mystery to fans and scholars alike. His attitudes

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toward religion, while seemingly confusing, represent the lifelong journey he undertook in search of his individual belief system. This search was manifested in his music. NOTES 1. Matt Thorne, Prince (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 115. 2. “Prince ‘Not Suing Fans,’” NME, November 9, 2007, https​://ww​w.nme​.com/​ news/​music​/prin​ce-27​0-134​1613;​ Sean Michaels, “Prince Sues Internet Users for Total of $22m over Alleged Bootleg Recordings,” The Guardian, January 27, 2014, https​://ww​w.the​guard​ian.c​om/mu​sic/2​014/j​an/27​/prin​ce-su​es-in​terne​t-use​rs-al​leged​ -boot​leg-r​ecord​ings.​ 3. Catherine Wessinger, “Deaths in the Fire at the Branch Davidians’ Mount Carmel: Who Bears the Responsibility?” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternate and Emergent Religions 13, no. 2 (November 2009): 32. 4. James Tabor, Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 170–73. 5. Claire Hoffman, “Soup with Prince,” The New Yorker, November 24, 2008, https​://ww​w.new​yorke​r.com​/maga​zine/​2008/​11/24​/soup​-with​-prin​ce. 6. Vincent Caruso, “When ‘Annie Christian’ Haunted Prince’s Seedy, Art-Punk Fever Dream: 365 Prince Songs in a Year,” Diffuser, October 5, 2017, https​://di​ffuse​ r.fm/​princ​e-ann​ie-ch​risti​an/. 7. Ben Greenman, Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God, and Genius in the Music of Prince (London: Bloomsbury House, 2017), 150. 8. Alan Light, Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain (New York: Atria Books, 2014), 99. 9. Brian Morton, Prince: A Thief in the Temple (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2007), 94. 10. Joseph Vogel, This Thing Called Life. Prince, Race, Sex, Religion, and Music (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). 11. C. Leigh McInnes, The Lyrics of Prince Rogers Nelson: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller (Clinton: Psychedelic Press, 2007), 279. 12. Niel Karlen, “Letters from Prince: A Minneapolis Writer Remembers His Relationship with a Lost Star,” StarTribune, April 29, 2016, http:​//www​.star​tribu​ ne.co​m/let​ters-​from-​princ​e-a-m​innea​polis​-writ​er-re​membe​rs-hi​s-rel​ation​ship-​with-​ a-los​t-sta​r/377​55595​1/. 13. Sergei Simonart, “The Artist,” Guitar World, October 1998, https​://si​tes.g​ oogle​.com/​site/​themu​sicin​tervi​ewarc​hive/​princ​e/pri​nce-1​998-g​uitar​-worl​d-int​ervie​w. 14. Peter Willis, “Inside Prince’s Bizarre Life at Paisley Park: This Is What Happened When We Visited the Music Icon,” Mirror, April 21, 2016, https​://ww​w.mir​ ror.c​o.uk/​3am/c​elebr​ity-n​ews/i​nside​-prin​ces-b​izarr​e-lif​e-pai​sley-​23322​0. 15. Simonart, “The Artist.”

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16. Justin Timberlake, “It Was ‘Raspberry Beret’ . . . ,” Instagram photo, April 21, 2016, https​://ww​w.ins​tagra​m.com​/p/BE​eMG89​SdoM/​?hl=e​n. 17. Emma Stefansky, “Super Bowl: Justin Timberlake’s Halftime Gig Upsets Prince, Janet Jackson Fans,” Vanity Fair, February 4, 2018, https​://ww​w.van​ityfa​ir.co​ m/sty​le/20​18/02​/just​in-ti​mberl​ake-p​rince​-jane​t-jac​kson-​super​-bowl​. 18. Jennifer Calfas, “People Are Not Happy with Justin Timberlake’s Tribute to Prince at the Super Bowl Halftime Show,” Time, February 5, 2018, http:​//tim​e.com​ /5132​821/j​ustin​-timb​erlak​e-pri​nce-h​alfti​me-sh​ow/. 19. Hilary Weaver, “Justin Timberlake Attempts to Clear the Air on Prince Controversy,” Vanity Fair, February 5, 2018, https​://ww​w.van​ityfa​ir.co​m/sty​le/20​18/02​/ just​in-ti​mberl​ake-a​ttemp​ts-to​-clea​r-the​-air-​on-pr​ince-​super​-bowl​-cont​rover​sy. 20. Lia Beck, “Did Prince Hate Justin Timberlake? Fans Are Saying the Late Singer Had Beef with JT,” Bustle, February 4, 2018, https​://ww​w.bus​tle.c​om/p/​ did-p​rince​-hate​-just​in-ti​mberl​ake-f​ans-a​re-sa​ying-​the-l​ate-s​inger​-had-​beef-​with-​jt-81​ 17592​. 21. Ronin Ro, Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 350; Jason Fraley, “Every Super Bowl Halftime Show Ranked,” WTOP, January 29, 2019, https​://wt​op.co​m/ent​ertai​nment​/2019​/01/m​emora​ble-s​uper-​bowl-​ halft​ime-s​hows/​slide​/37/;​ Brian Moylon, “Every Super Bowl Halftime Show Since 1993, Ranked from Worst to Best,” Vulture, February 4, 2019, https​://ww​w.vul​ture.​ com/2​018/0​2/bes​t-sup​er-bo​wl-ha​lftim​e-sho​ws-ra​nked.​html.​

BIBLIOGRAPHY Greenman, Ben. Dig If You Will The Picture: Funk, Sex and God in the Music of Prince. London: Bloomsbury House, 2017. Light, Alan. Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain. New York: Atria Books, 2014. McInnes, C. Leigh. The Lyrics of Prince Rogers Nelson: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller. Clinton: Psychedelic Press, 2007. Morton, Brian. Prince: A Thief in the Temple. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2007. Ro, Ronin. Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2011. Tabor, James. Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vogel, Joseph. This Thing Called Life: Prince, Race, Sex, Religion, and Music. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Wessinger, Catherine. “Deaths in the Fire at the Branch Davidians’ Mount Carmel: Who Bears the Responsibility?” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternate and Emergent Religions 13, no. 2 (November 2009): 25–60.

Chapter 2

“Dear Mr. Man” The Socially Conscious Music of Prince as Black Prophetic Fire Zada Johnson

In 2007, Prince teamed up with philosopher and activist Cornel West in a remix of his previously released “Dear Mr. Man” for one of his career’s most pointed social critiques. Featured on West’s album Never Forget: A Journey of Revelation, the collaborative version of “Dear Mr. Man” opens with a spoken word intro from West, urging the listener to speak out against social inequality. After he soulfully cries out, “What’s wrong with the world today, things just got to get better,” Prince lists a number of society’s injustices, from poverty and war to racism and environmental decline. Along with its social commentary, the song also cites biblical scripture, particularly Matthew 5:5 (“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”), to underscore the importance of advocating for the least powerful in society. With its combined themes of religious faith and social commentary, “Dear Mr. Man” illustrates what Cornel West defines as the Black Prophetic tradition, a form of prophetic practice that operationalizes religious ideology to advocate for social change. While “Dear Mr. Man” is a prime example of Prince’s musical connection with the Black Prophetic tradition, it would not be the first time that he explored these themes in his work. From the new wave rude-boyinspired commentary of his early works, to the bluesy rock-prophet critique that underscored the height of his career and later works, Prince’s music has long reflected the Black Prophetic tradition. This chapter examines Prince’s uses of religious ideology and social commentary through the lens of the Black Prophetic tradition. Following Cornel West’s (1999 and 2014) model of the Black Prophetic tradition as a critical space for social justice and empowerment, I argue that Prince’s work establishes a unique space to understand the role that popular music can play in 19

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this type of prophetic practice. In his 2014 book Black Prophetic Fire, where he discusses various aspects of the Black Prophetic tradition with fellow philosopher Christa Buschendorf, West offers several examples of leaders or “prophetic figures” who serve as an active counterforce to the injustices of racism, sexism, greed, and corruption, especially as they are enacted upon the poor and working-class strata of society. For West, these prophetic figures don’t just emerge from the church; they can be traditional religious leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., but they could also be secular leaders or leaders from other faiths like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Malcolm X. According to West (2014), the Black Prophetic tradition unapologetically “bears witness to other people’s suffering” as it boldly speaks out against the social inequalities that marginalize various segments of society. West also notes that the Black Prophetic tradition actively speaks out against injustices of the larger American context including imperialism and corporate greed. Although West regularly cites the critical role that music, particularly African American music, has played in American cultural expression, it is not often that we think of music alone as a leading voice in the Black Prophetic tradition. Along these lines, it is even less often that we think of the music of a pop culture icon such as Prince. However, as unconventional as Prince may seem in this context, the lyrical content and visual representation of many of his songs speak to the very radical religious consciousness and empowerment that the Black Prophetic tradition advocates. The first section of this chapter, “‘Let Your Body Be Free’: Sex, Race, Democracy, and the Black Prophetic Voice in Prince’s Early Work,” examines the development of prophetic voice in Prince’s early works, beginning with Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999. Largely inspired by 1980s punk and new wave, these songs feature a budding social commentary in Prince’s work that would later merge with the expression of religious faith in his music. The second section of this chapter, “‘Punch a Higher Floor’: Prophetic Voice and Social Commentary from Purple Rain to the Album,” explores Prince’s use of the Black Prophetic tradition at the height of his career during the 1980s and early 1990s. This section connects the strong religious themes of Purple Rain with Prince’s increasing attention to social issues as illustrated in the albums Sign o’ the Times and Diamonds and Pearls. The final section of this chapter, “‘Welcome 2 the Dawn’: Prince and Black Prophetic Fire from Emancipation to HitNRun Phase 2,” focuses on Prince’s later work, particularly “Family Name” from Rainbow Children, “Dear Mr. Man” from Musicology, as well as the special releases that he did for Hurricane Katrina (“S.S.T.”) and the 2015 Baltimore riots (“Baltimore”). These songs offer a glimpse into what is arguably Prince’s deepest reflection of the Black Prophetic tradition, where he speaks directly to the social injustices of our contemporary times with an urgent prophetic voice steeped in his religious faith.

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“LET YOUR BODY BE FREE”: SEX, RACE, DEMOCRACY, AND THE BLACK PROPHETIC VOICE IN PRINCE’S EARLY WORK Prince’s foray into expressions of social commentary in his music began with his third and fourth albums, Dirty Mind and Controversy respectively. During the time of his 1978 For You debut, Prince emerged as primarily a writer of songs that focused on romantic love and desire, including the album’s lead single “Soft and Wet.” This was also the case for his 1979 follow-up to For You, the self-titled Prince with its lead single “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” In Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God, and Genius in the Music of Prince, music writer Ben Greenman notes that during these early years, Prince “had a talent for innocence, especially in his love songs” (Greenman 2017, 264). Though this talent for innocence was often coupled with underlying sexual innuendo, Prince’s overall persona on his first two projects was that of a disco/R&B balladeer. By the early 1980s, Prince shifted his disco/R&B persona more toward the punk and new wave trends that were crossing over into the United States from the United Kingdom. Visually, he transformed his long, permed hair into a blunt, punk-inspired short cut and wore facial makeup in the style of British glam rock artists. He also traded in his fly collars and bell-bottom slacks for a much racier ensemble of bikini briefs, thigh-high boots, and a studded full-length trench coat. His musical sound was also changing from the discoinfused sound of “Soft and Wet”/“I Wanna Be Your Lover” to a more new wave/punk sound with synth-pop and rock guitar–led tracks. This shift was also reflected in the name he chose for his new backing band, The Revolution, and his lyrical content which transformed from themes of love and courtship to lyrics that began to address the social issues of the time. Along with calls for freedom of individuality and sexual expression, his lyrics also pushed back against the status quo as well as the prejudices of social inequality. Among the songs that featured this new sound was “Uptown,” the funkdriven ode to the Uptown district in Minneapolis which was known then as a bohemian artist hangout. In the song, Prince meets an attractive young woman on the streets of Minneapolis but is immediately put off by her rigid social perceptions (“she said ‘Are you gay?’ Kinda took me by surprise, I didn’t know what to do, I just looked her in her eyes and I said ‘No, are you?’”). From their exchange, he concludes that she’s a “crazy little mixed up dame” who is a “victim of society and all its games.” In the subsequent lines of the song, he describes Uptown as a place that embraces individual expression and freedom from societal judgment (“Now where I come from, we don’t let society tell us how it’s supposed to be, our clothes, our hair, we don’t care, it’s all about being there”). These lines lead into the song’s chorus

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which further describes Uptown as a space for free thinking and free sexual expression (Uptown, that’s where I want to be, Uptown, set your mind free, Uptown, got my body hot, get down, I don’t want to stop”). In the second verse of the song, Prince convinces the attractive woman to go with him to Uptown where he describes the scene as both racially harmonious and sexually stimulating (“As soon as we got there, good times were rolling, white, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a-freakin’, good times were rolling”). As a result of these good times, Prince’s companion begins to engage in her own free expression through dance and sexual relations (“she started dancing in the streets . . . she even made love to me”). Prince closes out the second verse with another description of Uptown’s environment of liberated thinking (“Now where I come from, we don’t give a damn, we do whatever we please, it ain’t about no downtown, nowhere-bound, narrowminded drag, it’s all about being free”). Although the lyrics of “Uptown” don’t quite fit into the religious context of the Black Prophetic tradition, they do reflect the themes of freedom and democracy that often accompany Black Prophetic practice. In his conversation with Christa Buschendorf about Martin Luther King, Jr., West notes the critical role of Black Prophetic practice in the “renewal and regeneration of American democracy” (2014, 74). According to West, the religious faith of Black Prophetic practice is always rooted in the context of democracy and social change. In “Uptown,” Prince portrays a need for democratic renewal and social change through the rigid social perceptions of his female counterpart. His description of her as a “victim of society and all its games” points to an absence of the democratic ideals of free expression and individualism. Conversely, his description of Uptown as a space where people rail against societal constraints also serves as a call for a renewal and regeneration of social acceptance in society as a whole. It should be noted that Prince’s use of sexual expression in Uptown is also linked to broader themes of freedom and democracy. Once his female counterpart experiences the accepting environment of Uptown, she engages in her own free expression which includes dancing in the streets and sexual relations. Here, sexual expression acts as a metaphor for social freedom. Through the experience of Uptown, the female counterpart is transformed from the constraints of social prejudices to an elevated consciousness of free expression, including her own sexual agency. In turn, the socially accepting environment of Uptown is Prince’s creative construct of an ideal democratic society where individuals are free to express their racial and sexual identities. Following “Uptown” and the Dirty Mind album, the social commentary of Prince’s Controversy album not only continued to address the issues of the day, but also began to incorporate themes of religious faith. Similar to “Uptown,” the title track from Controversy addresses social injustices,

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particularly those related to race and gender orientation. “I just can’t believe all of the things people say,” the song opens. “Am I black or white, am I straight or gay?” The song continues with a listing of other probing questions that society would ask of a nonconforming artist such as Prince (“Do you get high, does your daddy cry?”). At the chorus of the song, Prince returns to the theme of freedom against societal constraints, but this time adds a more somber note regarding the toll these constraints can take—“Some people want to die, so they can be free”. To this, he responds that “life is just a game, we’re all just the same,” speaking again to democratic ideals of social equality and acceptance. At the end of the 7-minute album version, “Controversy” closes with the repeated chant, “People call me rude, I wish we all were nude, I wish there was no black or white, I wish there were no rules.” “Controversy” also appears to be one of the earliest moments where Prince merges social commentary with religious ideology. In the bridge of the seven-minute album version, Prince recites the Lord’s Prayer over a stripped-down bass line and lead guitar licks. Along the same lines, the music video for “Controversy” is performed on a soundstage that features a cathedral-sized stained-glass window in the backdrop. At the beginning of the song, Prince emerges from the shadows of the stained-glass window like a messianic figure and then leaps on to an amplifier for the opening licks of the song. Similar to his look from Dirty Mind, he is still dressed in a punk/newwave inspired style with a long, studded trench coat, tuxedo vest, long-tailed shirt, and bikini briefs with thigh-high boots. The contrast between Prince’s unorthodox dress and religious imagery further speaks to his overall message about social constraints and social freedom. In addition, the inclusion of religious themes in “Controversy” reflects a broader message of the relationship between religious faith and social change. For Prince it appears that religious faith is integral to the types of social change that he suggests in his lyrics. However, the contrast between the song’s religious imagery and Prince’s sexual expression (in both his stage attire and lyrics) suggests that he is also calling for a broadened understanding of religious faith itself. In this case, it seems Prince is constructing an alternate space of creative expression where sexual agency and religious faith operate together to effect social change. Also on the Controversy album, “Ronnie Talk to Russia” pushes themes of social commentary a bit further with direct reference to the 1980s Cold War crisis between the United States/President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union. Opening with distortion and a rock guitar solo and then moving into upbeat synth-pop, the instrumentation of “Ronnie Talk to Russia” resembles a fast-paced church hymn. “Ronnie talk to Russia before it’s too late, before it’s too late, before it’s too late . . . before they blow up the world,” the first verse repeats, referring to President Ronald Reagan and the impending threat of the 1980s nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet

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Union. In the second verse Prince sings, “You can go to the zoo but you can’t feed guerillas, left-wing guerillas . . . who want to blow up the world,” using the play on words between gorillas at the zoo and guerilla armies to criticize the role that the United States played in the exacerbation of foreign conflict. After chiding the president with “Ronnie if you’re dead before I get to meet you, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the song ends with ringing gun shots as reference to the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life in March 1981. Over the gunshots, the chorus repeats with the ad lib, “Don’t you blow up my world.” The politically critical tone that Prince takes in “Ronnie Talk to Russia” reflects what West terms as the “countervailing force” and “counterhegemonic voice against the powers that be” that serve as a driving force within the Black Prophetic tradition (West and Buschendorf 2014). In this case, the lyrics of “Ronnie Talk to Russia” serve as a countervailing force to the impending threat of nuclear war. At a time when open criticism of a sitting president was not a popular content for mainstream music, Prince singles out President Reagan (and subverts his power as president by addressing him as “Ronnie”), urging him to make wiser foreign policy decisions. The song’s repeated lyrics about “blowing up the world”/“blowing up my world” also suggest the overall injustice of the innocent casualties that suffer when nations go to war. While “Ronnie Talk to Russia” would primarily be considered a song of social protest, there are also threads of the prophetic voice in the song’s repetition and resemblance to a church hymn. As in “Controversy,” Prince merges religious tropes to further underscore the counterhegemonic stance against the social issues that the song protests. Returning to themes of sexual freedom, the song “Sexuality” from the Controversy album also deploys themes of religious faith and activism that often drive Black Prophetic practice. In “Sexuality,” Prince implores his listeners to stand up (“Stand up everybody, this is your life”) and join him in a journey to “another world” that is not determined by material possessions (“You don’t need no money, you don’t need no clothes”) or racial inequality (“We don’t need no segregation, we don’t need no race”). Similar to the alternate space he creates in “Uptown,” Prince describes the alternate world of “Sexuality” as “the Second Coming” where “anything goes.” His reference here to “the Second Coming” is particularly significant for its double entendre meaning as the Second Coming of Christ and also an innuendo for sexual gratification. Here again, Prince merges themes of religious ideology and free sexual expression in his call for social change. “Sexuality is all we ever need, sexuality, let your body be free,” Prince repeats, establishing free sexual expression as a foundation of social transformation. “Sexuality” is also significant for its allusion to activism, which is another key component of the Black Prophetic tradition. Of the relationship between Black Prophetic practice and activism, West argues that “raising the

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consciousness of people and motivating them to fight for justice” is a primary objective of prophetic figures (2014, 123). In Black Prophetic Fire, a common thread between each of the prophetic figures that West discusses with Christa Buschendorf (Frederick Douglas, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells) is their commitment to activism and the various social movements of their time. In “Sexuality,” threads of activism emerge from the outset of the song as Prince urges his listener to “stand up” against the social constraints of materialism, segregation, and racism. He also incorporates a message of activism in the song’s chorus, “Reproduction of a new breed, leaders, stand up, organize,” calling for new leadership to address the social injustices that he cites in the song. At the end of “Sexuality,” Prince performs a spoken monologue that seems to foreshadow the prophetic tone that will shape his work from Purple Rain onward. “We live in a world overrun by tourists,” Prince announces in a near-sermonizing tone, suggesting a certain inauthenticity that accompanies the times. “They look at life through a pocket camera, What, no flash again?” he continues in a quip about the narrow lenses through which society views itself and others. He then moves on to the topic of children–“Don’t let your children watch television until they know how to read,” he warns, “or else all they’ll know how to do is cuss, fight and breed.” At the close of the monologue he asserts, “No child is bad from the beginning, they only imitate their atmosphere,” and then ends with, “If they’re in the company of tourists, alcohol and U.S. history, what’s to be expected is three minus three, absolutely nothing.” Similar to his previous works, the 1999 album would continue to feature lyrics that combined religious ideology with commentary on the social issues of the times. The album’s title track “1999” describes an apocalyptic dream that Prince has about the end of the world at the dawn of the third millennium CE. As he describes the catastrophic events (“could have sworn it was judgment day”/“the sky was all purple, there were people running everywhere”) he also contemplates the brevity of life (“life is just a party and parties weren’t meant to last”). Prince’s resolution for impending world destruction is partying (“they say 2000 zero zero, party over oops out of time, so tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999”). Along the same lines as “Sexuality,” the partying that Prince suggests also includes free sexual expression (“I got a lion in my pocket and baby he’s ready to roar”). There is also underlying social commentary in “1999,” where Prince extends his critique of nuclear arms from “Ronnie Talk to Russia” into the lyrics “Everybody’s got a bomb, we could all die any day,” and the child’s voice at the end of the song asking “Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?” Through his transformation from timid disco/R&B balladeer to bold-punk/ new-wave rude boy, Prince was able to craft the beginnings of a prophetic

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voice that merged the desire for personal freedom (through sexual expression) with a growing concern for the social issues of the time. As this prophetic tone emerged in his music, so did the themes of renewal and regeneration that are often associated with Black Prophetic practice. In the lyrical imagery of “Uptown,” Prince is able to create a racially diverse world that regenerates ideals of democracy and social acceptance. In the churchlike backdrop of the “Controversy” video as well as the inclusion of the Lord’s Prayer in the song, Prince begins to explore a connection between religious consciousness and social commentary in his work. This type of prophetic voice would become more prominent at the height of his career with the sermonizing vocal style that he developed during the Purple Rain era and continued to use as he addressed social issues throughout his later career. As the next section of this chapter will discuss, the prophetic tone that developed during the height of Prince’s musical career would address a wide variety of social topics from mass consumption, poverty, and war to the 1980s AIDS crisis, drug addiction, and gang violence. “PUNCH A HIGHER FLOOR”: PROPHETIC VOICE AND SOCIAL COMMENTARY FROM PURPLE RAIN TO THE ALBUM Prince’s visual aesthetic and musical sound would change again between 1999 and Purple Rain. This time Prince traded in his hypersexualized rude boy punk stylings for a somewhat more toned-down, 1950s-style pompadour, Jimi Hendrix-inspired ruffled shirts and studded matador pants. His music was also transforming as it drew more heavily from classic blues and the Little Richard/Chuck Berry sounds of early rock and roll, as well as the dynamic stagecraft of James Brown. Along with these inspirations, Prince’s music would also feature more pronounced expressions of religious faith and social commentary. Where his previous works were concerned with the freedom of sexual expression, the music of this era would focus more on aligning sexuality and romantic love as expressions of religious devotion. In addition to this, Prince would also further develop the prophetic voice in his lyrical expression, using a sermon-like vocal style to further underscore the messages of religious faith and social critique in his music. With its significant use of religious tropes combined with symbolic social critique, the opening monologue of “Let’s Go Crazy” exemplifies a more developed prophetic voice than any of his previous compositions. Instead of hinting at religious themes as he does in “Controversy,” in “Let’s go Crazy” Prince places himself squarely in the role of the prophetic messenger of a religious ceremony. The church-themed organ chords and “Dearly beloved”

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lyrical phrasing of the song’s intro immediately puts one in the mind of religious ceremony. Following the organ chords, “Let’s Go Crazy” opens up into a halftime bass line that very much resembles the upbeat contemporary gospel compositions of the 1980s, particularly “Jesus Can Work It Out” by Diane Williams/Dr. Charles Hayes and the Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer. The religious/gospel themed instrumentation of “Let’s Go Crazy” sets the tone for the lyrical themes of religious faith that the song imparts. The more pronounced expressions of religious faith and social commentary in Purple Rain reflect Cornel West’s description of Black Prophetic tradition as a practice that centers around a “biblically motivated focus” combined with a “relentless critical consciousness” that is underscored with the “good news of Jesus Christ” (West 1999, 359). In the case of Purple Rain, the lyrics and visual representation of the album, music videos, and film are heavily informed by both religious and critical consciousness. Prince’s use of religious instrumentation and prophetic voice in “Let’s Go Crazy” are certainly biblically motivated in their references to religious ceremony, the devil (de-elevator), and the resurrection of Christ. At the same time, the prophetic voice in “Let’s Go Crazy” also demonstrates a critical consciousness that challenges elitist mass consumption (“that shrink in Beverly Hills”) and the constraints of society’s status quo. In the mid-1980s works that followed Purple Rain, Prince would continue to explore themes of religious faith and social consciousness related to Black Prophetic practice. In the song “America” on the album Around the World in a Day, Prince reconfigures the chorus of “America the Beautiful” (“America, America, God shed his grace on thee”) to describe several vignettes that discuss capitalism, poverty, education, and war. On “The Ladder” he uses a prophetic voice to tell the story of a self-absorbed king (from the land of “Sinaplenty”) who misses out on the experience of love because he is too preoccupied with his own self-interests. In the chorus of the song, Prince talks about the search for God’s salvation and the reward for those who believe (“Everybody wants salvation of the soul, The steps you take are no easy road, But the reward is great for those who want to go”). In the middle of the song, Prince performs a short monologue where he describes the emotional feeling of religious salvation. “A feeling of self-worth will caress u, The size of the whole wide world will decrease,” he proclaims. And then in a return to his themes of salvation and sexual desire he tells his listener, “The love of God’s creation will undress u, And time spent alone, my friend, will cease.” Also on Around the World in a Day, the song “Temptation” pushes the theme of religious faith and sexual desire a bit further. Amid a flurry of rock guitar chords, bluesy saxophone phrasing and wailing vocals, Prince admits to his listener that his weakness is sexual temptation (“Temptation, Working my body with a hot flash of animal lust, Temptation, all my fingers in

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the pool, go splash we must”). In another preacherly monologue, he imparts the urgency of his weakness for the flesh (“I need a lover . . . right now . . . I want you in the worst way”). Soon after, a God-like voice replies to him, “Oh silly man, that’s not how it works, you have to want her for the right reasons.” Despite his pleas that he does “want her for the right reasons,” the voice concludes, “You don’t, now die.” As he screams out from the wrath of the God-like voice, Prince laments, “I’m sorry, I’ll be good, This time I promise, Love is more important than sex, Now I understand, I have to go now, I don’t know when I’ll return, Good-bye.” This theme of realizing that “love is more important than sex” as instructed from the God-like voice represents yet another shift in Prince’s conceptualization of religious faith and sexual desire. In this case, Prince’s declaration of “love being more important than sex” privileges commitment and monogamy as the key components of sexual desire as an expression of religious faith. The song’s ending lines of “I have to go now, I don’t know when I’ll return” seem to signal the departing of Prince’s earlier conceptions of free sexual expression in songs like “Sexuality” and “Uptown.” By the late 1980s, Prince’s visual and musical persona shifted from the enigmatic rock composer of Purple Rain to the more socially introspective, almost hippie-like representations of Sign o’ the Times. While themes of religious faith would continue to inform his work at this time, the works of this era would also heavily focus on specific social issues including the United States military complex, the AIDS crisis, crack cocaine addiction, and street gang violence. This is best illustrated in the title track from Sign o’ the Times, where once again he deploys the prophetic voice to offer commentary on a series of pressing social issues. “In France a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name,” the song begins, referring to the AIDS crisis. By the time Prince is singing about it in 1987, it has proliferated throughout the world in epidemic proportions. His reference to the disease and its rapid spread (“by chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same”) is among the earliest mentions of the AIDS epidemic in musical recordings. “Sign o’ the Times” continues its commentary with references to street gang violence (“At home there are seventeen-year-old boys and their idea of fun is being in a gang called The Disciples high on crack, totin’ a machine gun”), which was also rising at alarming rates in the urban centers of the country. In close relation to street gang violence, Prince also talks about the country’s growing drug epidemic (“In September my cousin tried reefer for the very first time, Now he’s doing horse, it’s June”). Together these lines represent a previously uncharted subject matter in Prince’s lyrical repertoire, a commentary of issues related to America’s urban communities, particularly those closely related to African American males. Where “Uptown” imagined a socially harmonious and racially diverse urban utopia, “Sign o’ the Times”

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would address the real-life dystopian unraveling of urban communities in the mid-1980s. Along with gang violence and the drug epidemic, “Sign o’ the Times” also discussed poverty and war. “Sister killed her baby ’cuz she couldn’t afford to feed it and we’re sending people to the moon,” he comments on the seemingly mismanaged priorities of America when it comes to the impoverished. He revisits the reference of going to the moon in the song’s chorus (“It’s silly, no? When a rocket ship explodes and everybody still wants to fly, but some say a man ain’t happy unless a man truly dies, oh why?”). Here, he further extends his commentary to the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, perhaps questioning American excess even in the wake of disaster. On the topic of war, he sings “Baby make a speech, Star Wars fly, Neighbors just shine it on, But if a night falls and a bomb falls, Will anybody see the dawn?”. Along the same lines as “Ronnie Talk to Russia,” Prince criticizes the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative (nicknamed “Star Wars”) initiated by Ronald Reagan to develop advanced missiles for American military. In line with his focus on the commitment and monogamy aspects of romantic love, Prince’s intervention in “Sign o’ the Times” is the institution of marriage (“Sign o’ the Times mess with your mind, Hurry before it’s too late, Let’s fall in love, get married, have a baby, we’ll call him Nate, if it’s a boy”). As mentioned earlier, love, commitment and monogamy take a central focus in this iteration of his social commentary. Where his early works would champion free sexual expression as intervention to society’s constraints, “Sign o’ the Times” would contemplate the refuge of love, marriage, and family in the face of the impending dystopia that the song addresses. There were two visual representations of “Sign o’ the Times” during the time of the single’s release. The official video release would feature only the words of the song, stylized in various graphic frames, emphasizing lyrical meaning. The song is also performed in the 1987 Sign o’ the Times concert film. As the film’s opening performance, “Sign o’ the Times” begins with a short dramatic sketch of Prince walking through a red-light district and overhearing a couple argue about what they want in their relationship. The woman (Cat Glover) says she wants trust, love, sex, and talking. Her partner (Gregory Allen Brooks) responds to trust with “fun,” love with “money,” sex with “fine,” and talking with “bullshit!” The scene then changes to Prince on stage singing “Sign o’ the Times” while background dancer Cat Glover acts out the song’s words behind him. At the end of the performance, a drum line led by Sheila E. enters, walking among the flowers strewn all over the stage and forming a solemn line behind Prince as he calls out to the audience. While each of these performances highlights the messaging of the song, the film’s performance pushes the commentary further with the couple’s competing relationship priorities and the visual call to action from the drum line.

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In the context of religious faith, the song “The Cross” also engages with the social issues of the time while offering the salvation of Christ as remedy to these issues. “Black day, stormy night, No love, no hope in sight,” Prince begins, “Don’t cry, He is coming, Don’t die without knowing the cross.” In the same vein as “Sign o’ the Times,” the song describes a series of social tragedies to which Prince relates the need for religious intervention. “Ghettos to the left of us, Flowers to the right,” he describes in one scenario, “There’ll be bread for all of us, If we can just bear the cross.” Similar to the imagery in “Sign o’ the Times,” Prince references the poverty and despair of urban ghettos as part of the critical consciousness that he raises with these issues. In the next scenario, he describes a mother living in poverty, “Sweet song of salvation, a pregnant mother sings, she lives in starvation, her children need all that she brings.” Here, Prince brings attention to what West describes (by way of Frantz Fanon) as “the wretched of the earth” and the attention that those of religious faith should pay to aiding the suffering of those in need. In the Sign O’ The Times film, “The Cross” is part of a three-song sequence at the end of the film that is significantly influenced by religious imagery and church ceremony. The first two songs, “Forever in My Life” and “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night,” are performed with vocal and instrumental influences from gospel with call and response cues, tambourine rhythms, upbeat gospel jubilation, soul claps, and testifying vocals. With its slower, ballad-like intro, “The Cross” is the culminating song of this performance, serving as the apex of both the three-song sequence and the film as a whole. In his performance of “The Cross,” Prince sings in front of a backdrop displaying an illuminated cross, heart, and peace sign. As he sings, background vocalist Boni Boyer releases a handful of flowers down onto the lower level of the stage. Dressed in beads, a cross pendant and a white cross drawn on his face, Prince uses the prophetic voice as he testifies to his own lyrics (“Soon all of our problems will be taken by the cross . . . Ain’t it the truth!”). The musical and visual performances of “Sign o’ the Times” and “The Cross” further illustrate the connection of Prince’s work with Black Prophetic practice. His exploration of specific social issues including the AIDS crisis, urban street gangs, poverty, and drugs speaks directly to the critical consciousness that serves as the foundation of Black Prophetic practice. The inclusion of issues such as the urban ghettos, street gangs, drugs, and poverty in Sign o’ the Times marked the broadening of Prince’s scope of social issues to address the disempowered segments of society that the Black Prophetic tradition seeks to defend. In addition to social consciousness, “Sign o’ the Times” and “The Cross” also convey the good news of Jesus Christ through both lyrical and performative references. By the early 1990s Prince would reinvent himself again, now in his early thirties and several years past the Purple Rain juggernaut that made him an

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iconic star. Transitioning from the hippie-like looks of the late 1980s, Sign of the Times and subsequent works, his visual style and music during the Diamonds and Pearls and albums would mark the beginning of the next significant chapter of his career. At the same time that his visual aesthetic was transforming into the tailored-suit styles of old-school bluesmen, his musical sound was reaching deeper into the amalgamated funk/blues/jazz/R&B/rock rhythms with which he experimented throughout his career. While he continued to explore the reaches of these genres, he also continued to build on the themes of religious salvation and social critique that guided his work since the early 1980s. Through songs like “Live 4 Love,” “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” and “7,” Prince would expand on antiwar sentiments and critiques of poverty, while also continuing to include messages of religious faith in his music. On the Diamonds and Pearls album, the song “Live 4 Love” rails against the American military complex as it tells the story of a young bomber pilot engaged in battle. “30,000 feet and still-a counting (live 4 love), The attack on my plane is steadily mounting (live 4 love),” he sings over a fast rock beat. “They killed my buddy, but I’m supposed to feel nothing . . . How can I live 4 love?” the song continues, questioning not only the carnage of war, but also the emotional toll that it takes on soldiers. Over the next few stanzas of the song, the pilot recalls his difficult young adulthood (“Kicked out of my home at 17” . . . “Maybe I was better off staying in school”) and contemplates the consequences of his mission (“My mission, so they said, was just to drop the bombs”/“Just like I got no conscience, just like I got no qualms”). As the pilot realizes that his plane has been hit and his life flashes before his eyes, he declares that “the choice you make is vital . . . you got to live 4 love.” In the spoken-word verse at the end of the song, rapper and band member Tony M. talks about the warfare of street gangs (“in the streets of the city there’s this mentality what goes around comes around, and ganking any clown who ain’t down with the colors that you’re sporting around”). Here, the lyrics offer a critique of street violence over gang colors, as well as the overall mentality of violence that often consumes urban spaces. In a lyrical style similar to Chuck D from Public Enemy, Tony M. urges young gang members to end the violence and “live 4 love” (“Listen G, you are supposed to be striving to be the best that you can be, so stop trying to dominate and push and shove (live 4 love), Come on y’all, we got to live 4 love (live 4 love)”). In the official video for “Live 4 Love,” Tony M. recites the rap portion of the song while a background dancer aims a fake gun at his head. Midway through the verse, another dancer comes over, takes the gun, and motions “no” with his hands as if he is mediating the impending violence. Once the gun is taken away, all three men fist bump each other and begin

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dancing in unison to the chorus of the song, enacting the unity that the rap verse calls for. Continuing in this vein, “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” tells the story of a man struggling to make financial ends meet for himself and his “lady.” In the chorus of the song, Prince advises his listener that pursuits of the soul are more fulfilling than those of money (Money don’t matter tonight, It sure didn’t matter yesterday . . . That’s when you find out that you’re better off making sure your soul’s alright”). In the last verse of the song, Prince speaks out against the 1990/1991 Gulf War with lyrics that question the overall purpose of war (“Hey now maybe we can find a good reason to send a child off to war, So what if we’re controllin’ all the oil, Is it worth a child dying for?”). Along the same lines of “Live 4 Love,” Prince also contemplates the casualties of war, in this case the most innocent casualties, children (“Anything is better than the picture of a child in a cloud of gas, And you think you got it bad”). Referencing the 1972 New York Times front-page photo of children being bombed with napalm gas during the Vietnam War, Prince condemns the atrocities of all war, past and current. The video for “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” directed by iconic filmmaker Spike Lee, featured footage of a working-class African American family enjoying their time together as a family despite their economic struggles. Interspersed around the scenes of this narrative are images of Gulf War footage, unemployment signs, and stores going out of business. During the lyrics of “making sure your soul’s alright,” the video flashes shots of President George H. W. Bush and then millionaire businessman Donald Trump in what appears to be imagery of the abuses of power and money. The end of the video shows images of children in apartheid-controlled Soweto, extending the song’s antiestablishment messages to the injustices taking place in South Africa. The video begins and ends with a full-frame question mark, symbolizing the questions that the song raises about the injustices and inequalities of poverty, war, and segregationist social structures. In a similar sentiment of antiestablishment messaging, the song “7” from the album in 1992 would further explore Prince’s musical expression of religious consciousness, quoting heavily from the Book of Revelation. At the outset, “7” sounds like an “against all odds” love song (“All seven and we’ll watch them fall, they stand in the way of love and we will smoke them all”). However as the song progresses, the lyrics reveal multiple references to the Book of Revelation and the Second Coming of Christ. In the same style as the prophetic visions of Revelation, Prince talks about visions of angels (“And I saw an angel come down unto me, In her hand she holds the very key, words of compassion, words of peace”), plagues, and rivers of blood that describe the world’s total destruction. Despite the apocalyptic scene, Prince proclaims

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victory for himself and his beloved (“Twelve souls from now, you and me will still be here”). He also proclaims the victory of the new kingdom that Revelation describes upon the return of Christ (“There will be a new city with streets of gold, The young so educated they never grow old, there will be no death”). Though “7” is written very much in the guise of a love song (said to have been written for his soon to be wife, Mayte), its strong overtones of biblical imagery make it one of Prince’s most religiously inspired works. The video for “7” is filled with the symbolism of the transitions Prince was making in his personal life and career. Centered around the narrative of saving a fictional “princess” from the men who killed her father, the “7” video features scenes of Prince with backup dancer Mayte performing belly dance while several children dressed as Prince and Mayte dance around them. While Prince sings about the demise of those who “stand in the way of love” in the video, he is zapping away images of his former self that appear in life-sized capsules. This imagery seems to reflect a moment of self-critique, where Prince sought to move away from the materialism of his previous persona into a more spiritual one. Despite this shift, there are still references to sexual expression in the video in scenes where Mayte suggestively caresses the pistils and stamens of flowers. In this case, it appears that sexuality remains a part of Prince’s constantly evolving religious consciousness. Prince’s work from the album Purple Rain to the album illustrates his growing use of expressive styles related to Black Prophetic practice. As he further develops his use of a prophetic vocal style on the albums Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day, he also expands his commentary of social issues to symbolic critiques of elitist mass consumption and the confining status quo. Prince’s conceptualization of sexual expression would also evolve during this time period with lyrics, imagery, and song pairings that situated themes of sexual agency and romantic desire within the context of religious devotion. In his songs from the albums Sign o’ the Times, Diamonds and Pearls, and , Prince exemplifies Black Prophetic practices of relentless critical consciousness as he expresses more pointed critical commentary on current social issues. In this case, practices of critical social consciousness combined with expressions of the good news of Jesus Christ further open a space in Prince’s musical expression for him to explore more specific social issues (the Gulf War, the AIDS crisis, gang violence, urban poverty) with more direct social critique. This greater focused attention on critical social consciousness and religious expression would continue into the next chapter of Prince’s career, where his pointed social critique would blossom into Black Prophetic fire.

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“WELCOME TO THE DAWN”: PRINCE AND BLACK PROPHETIC FIRE FROM EMANCIPATION TO HITNRUN PHASE 2 In the years leading up to the new millennium, Prince’s musical expression and relationship with the music industry were transforming significantly. In the mid-1990s, Prince would part ways from his nearly twenty-year relationship with Warner Bros. after a long dispute over royalties and ownership of master recordings. This transition would define the remainder of his musical career and further shape the way that he expressed religious consciousness and social commentary in his work. After his break with Warner, Prince’s career would feature a number of releases that examined current social issues with even more of a pointed critique than his earlier work. Likewise, Prince would also continue to merge this social commentary with his evolving religious consciousness, which included his conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith. It is at this time in his career that the ties between Prince’s creative expression and the Black Prophetic tradition become most apparent, particularly in his collaborative work with Cornel West. With a range of topics from racism and miseducation to the injustices of Hurricane Katrina and the 2015 Baltimore unrest, the music of this period moves beyond the reserved critiques of his earlier work into the fervent counterhegemonic voice of Black Prophetic fire. In 1996, Prince released Emancipation, a three-disc celebration of his new freedom as an artist, as well as a celebration of his marriage to background dancer Mayte Garcia and their baby that was expected later that year. During the time of his dispute with Warner Bros., Prince’s social critique focused on the unfair treatment of artists regarding royalty compensation for their work and ownership of their master recordings. In protest, Prince took to wearing the word “slave” written on his face during performances in an effort to liken his mistreatment as an artist to the labor exploitation of slavery. Prince’s struggle with Warner Bros. would deeply inform the social commentary in his music during this era and beyond. It is during this time that his creative expression would heavily interrogate themes of racial exploitation and the marginalization of the poor. In terms of religious themes, Prince’s work at this time would focus on freedom and personal salvation as well as biblical teachings of caring for the society’s disempowered. In Emancipation’s titular single and in “The Holy River,” Prince discusses themes of personal salvation as they relate to his break with Warner and his marriage. On the song “Emancipation,” Prince celebrates his newfound freedom and links it to the salvation narratives that he expressed in Purple Rain (“Emancipation, free to do what I want to, Emancipation see you in the purple rain . . . break the chain, break the chain”). In the second verse of the

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song, Prince alludes to his dispute with Warner and “breaking the chain” of his record contract (“Ever since what Eve did unto Adam, What somebody been sure enough doing to me, I’ve been trying to break the chain, Get my little ass out the game, I’d rather sing with a bit more harmony”). In this case, Prince links his dispute with Warner to Eve’s deception of Adam in Genesis. Similar to his earlier themes of personal salvation through love and monogamy, “Holy River” expresses salvation through the context of marriage (“So I went on down to the holy river, I called my girl and told her I had something to give her, I asked her to marry me and she said yes, I cried”). In the same vein as his earlier works, Prince’s messages of freedom and salvation in these songs are strongly underscored by his religious faith. In his cover of Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” Prince contemplates the presence of God in the everyday people that we see each day (“What if God was one of us . . . just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home”). Instead of asking what if God was “just a slob like one of us” as in the Osborne original, Prince changes the lyric to “just a slave like one of us,” referencing his usage of the term in his dispute with Warner and perhaps also referencing the larger imbalances of power that exist between dominant and subordinate segments of society. Here, Prince illustrates the “crucial, indispensable counterhegemonic forces” within the Black Prophetic tradition that advocate “ideals of equality, ideals of humility, ideals of resistance and ideals of endurance” (West 1999, 48). Prince’s references to God as “just a slave like one of us” carry an underlying message that the existence of God in each of us makes us all equal. This underlying message of equality also links to ideals of humility in regard to the way we should treat each other, given the presence of God that exists in all of us. In addition to this, Prince’s change to the term “slave like one of us” in the song alludes to his call for ideals of resistance against inequalities lodged against artists in the music business, as well as the broader inequalities in our society. In 2001, Prince would press even further with counterhegemonic expressions and ideals of resistance in his song “Family Name” from the album The Rainbow Children. Exploring a variety of themes including American slavery, racism, and miseducation, “Family Name” opens with an automated database (the fictitious Akashic Records Genetic Information Division) that asks an unidentified user to select the “race history” they would like to learn about. When the user chooses “African American,” the computer module gives a short speech on the illusion of race in society (“‘black and white’ is a fallacy”) and the commonalities between those who identify as “black,” “people of color,” and “indigenous.” The automated voice then raises the issue of “resistance” and states that the “source of this resistance” or the categories of race must be banished. After the computer module’s speech, there is an enactment of “London, England, sometime in the early 1600s,” where an

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authoritative voice declares, “We have the God-given right to run out of our colonies anyone who does not bow down to our law.” “What’s your name, boy?” another authoritative voice calls out to one of the exiled. When the exiled person answers “Abu Cah,” the authoritative voice responds, “Well it ain’t now; it’s Tom Lynch.” Seemingly in response to the computer module speech and the skit from “1600s England,” the lyrics then ask whether these are the end times (“Am I really feeling what I feel? The last days of the Devil’s Deal”) and subsequently call for the end of the devil’s reign (“U been hidin’ behind corporate eyes, U wanna war, but u can’t fight, Devil, u got to go”). This line of questioning continues as Prince interrogates the misinformation taught in schools about Native Americans and pilgrims (“Teacher, Teacher . . . Did we really come over in a boat . . . Or did I arrive b4 you and ruin Thanksgiving Day?”). He also questions profiteering preachers and their exploitation of church members (“Ride around in ur Lexus coupe/Drive us 2 the cleaners in a pinstripe suit, Preacher, that ain’t truth!”). The chorus of “Family Name” raises the issue of minority cultures losing their heritage or “family name” to mainstream American cultural domination (“U might say, ‘what you mad about?’ But u still got ur family name”). This is linked to the stripping of African cultural identities during American slavery, as Prince plays a recorded voice quoting Thomas Jefferson saying, “If there is a just God, we are going to pay for this!” In the One Nite Alone . . . Live! recording of “Family Name” performed in Portland, Oregon, Prince asks members of the audience their family names, and then renames them with “Blackwell,” “Outlaw,” and “Lynch”—all names that in some way reference the racial marginalization of African Americans, in American society. After he renames the audience members, he cues up the band and says, “Work with it,” as if to challenge them to “work with” or imagine the injustices that accompany the “family name” of the African American experience. During his live performance, Prince makes reference to boxer Muhammad Ali’s political change from his birth name Cassius Clay. He again features the quote from Thomas Jefferson, but this time the recorded voice says, “This is Thomas Jefferson, my fellow Americans, yes I owned slaves too, and if there’s a just God, we’re going to pay for this!” After a series of wailing guitar solos, both the album and live versions of “Family Name” end with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s closing words from his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech: “Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last!’” With its searing criticism of racism, the education system, corporate America, and exploitative religious leaders, “Family Name” easily reflects

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what Cornel West describes as Black Prophetic fire, or the fervent bearing witness to injustices lodged against marginalized groups of society in order to demand change. For West, these injustices are wide-ranging and include corporate greed, cyclical poverty, and political corruption, as well as “massive unemployment, decrepit schools, indecent housing and hyperincarceration” (West 2014, 3). In “Family Name,” Prince focuses on several of these issues, beginning with the computer module intro that dismisses American racial hierarchies and calls for resistance against them. Where the presence of prophetic voice in his earlier work indirectly engages elitist materialism and corporate greed, “Family Name” candidly denounces these injustices as the artifice of the Devil. In addition to this, Prince also takes on the miseducation of the American school system in its omission of the history of Native Americans, as well as its failure to teach the slaveholding status of early American presidents including Thomas Jefferson. The renaming that Prince does during the One Nite Alone . . . Live! performance is also an illustration of Black Prophetic fire. In this case he subverts the race/power hierarchy that is often symbolized in American surnames and brings attention to the struggles of marginalized groups with the names “Blackwell,” “Outlaw,” and “Lynch.” His reference to the resistance of Muhammad Ali, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, signals the tradition of counter-voices that have fought against these injustices in the past. In terms of the overall structure of the song, the direct address to the devil, teachers and preachers in each stanza, as well as the direct address in the chorus (“You might say, ‘What you mad about?’ but you still got your family name”), is an example of counterhegemonic voicing aimed at empowering otherwise voiceless groups, particularly the poor and downtrodden. In perhaps his strongest example of Black Prophetic fire, as mentioned previously, Prince teamed up with Cornel West in 2007 for a re-release of his 2004 single “Dear Mr. Man”. In this version of the song, West contributes an introductory overdub where he urges the listening audience to speak out against social injustice and be especially mindful of advocating for the least powerful in society (“Raise your Socratic questions to the system/Bear witness to justice against the system/Be true to who you are and be true to the grand vision that keeps track of the least of these”). Shortly after this, Prince cries out, “What’s wrong with the world today? Things have got to get better,” as he begins the song’s open letter to the powers that be on the social injustice of poverty, war, racism, and manmade environmental decline. In the verses that follow, both West and Prince directly interrogate the dominant forces of society and demand change. Along the same lines as “Family Name,” “Dear Mr. Man” calls out the powers that be for a variety of social injustices. Returning to the topic of war,

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Prince points out the contradiction between America’s seemingly Christian values and its participation in war (“Who said that to kill is a sin, Then started every single war that your people been in?”). On the topics of environmental and health justice, he points out the detriment of oil spills, the disintegrating ozone layer and the overabundance of cigarette ads in poor communities (“in the hood, with cigarette ads on every block”). The song continues with mentions of the AIDS crisis as well as the failed attempts to provide assistance to the nation’s poor (“Ain’t nothing fair about welfare, Ain’t no assistance in AIDS, Ain’t nothing affirmative about your actions, Till the people get paid”). Cornel West follows up with a spoken word indictment of a mediocre American leadership rife with “legalized bribery” and “normalized corruption.” On the topic of advocating for the poor and disempowered, both Prince and West quote verses from the Gospel of Matthew on the meek inheriting the earth and caring for the “least of these.” As the song closes, Prince ends the open letter to “Mr. Man” with the emphatic words, “We tired of y’all!” In the years that followed “Dear Mr. Man,” Prince would release several other songs that speak with the same counterhegemonic force of Black Prophetic fire to confront specific social issues. “Cinnamon Girl” from the 2004 Musicology album discusses the racial profiling of Muslims in post–9/11 America (“9/11 turned that all around, When she got accused of this crime, So began the mass illusion, war on terror alibi, What’s the use when the god of confusion keeps on telling the same lie?”). In the video for “Cinnamon Girl,” a young Arab girl struggles to escape being bullied and profiled as “terrorist scum.” As he performs in the video, Prince wears the inscription 5:5 on his forehead to symbolize Matthew 5:5 (“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”). Immediately following the Hurricane Katrina disaster, he released the song “S.S.T.,” which interrogated the country’s failed response in aiding hurricane/flood victims. Framed around the Jehovah’s Witness premise of “being a guest in Jehovah’s Tent,” Prince asks “Who will be a guest in your tent? . . . Did you have open arms for each and everybody you met? Or did you let them die in the rain? Endless war, poverty or hurricane?” In the song “Dreamer” on the 2009 Lotusflow3r album, Prince revisits themes of American slavery and racism. “I was born, raised on a slave plantation, In the United States of the red, white and blue” he sings in the beginning of the song, signaling the problematic topic of American democracy in the context of the country’s history of plantation slavery. “Never knew that I was different, Till Dr. King was on a balcony lyin’ in a bloody pool” the song continues, referencing the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the racial unrest of the 1960s. “I expected so much more from a loving, a loving, loving society,” he continues as he further questions the contradiction of the way America perceives itself against the nation’s history of racism and

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marginalization. “If it was just a dream, listen,” he advises his listener in the chorus, “Call me, call me a dreamer too.” In the tradition of Black Prophetic fire, Prince bears witness in “Dreamer” to the often silenced history of slavery as well as America’s long history of racial marginalization, despite its perceived moral foundations of democracy and social acceptance. During the time of the U.S. housing market crash and bank bailout, Prince released “Act of God” on the 20TEN album, which addressed the corporate greed and exploitation of both events. “Dirty fat banker sold a house today, sold at auction, wants the family out the way,” the first verse begins. “Kicked them on the street, cause they couldn’t pay the tax, [and they] call it an act of God,” Prince continues, highlighting the exploitation of homeowners by the housing bubble. In the next lines, he criticizes government taxation (“I get a million dollars for people to hear me sing, Got to give the banker half of everything, Didn’t the founding fathers holler bout the same thing (yes, they did)”). On the song’s chorus, Prince advises his listener that freedom is an illusion, given the imbalanced power structures of our times (“I got news for you, freedom ain’t free, they lock you in a cell if you try to be, but the ones who say no, make history [and they] call it an act of God”). Continuing his criticism of taxation, he raises the issue of government spending on war (“Tax dollars build a plane, drop a bomb, supposedly to keep us all safe from Saddam”). At the close of the song, background singers join Prince in the gospel chorus-style outro, “Call it what you want except an act of God.” As an illustration of Black Prophetic fire, the strong counterhegemonic messages in Prince’s work from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s reflect what West has termed as “deep historical consciousness” for the “downtrodden and disinherited, the degraded and dispossessed” (West 1999, 14). On the album Emancipation, Prince demonstrates this on a personal level as he takes a stand as an artist against the exploitation of the larger music industry. Grounded in a sense of personal salvation that was informed by his religious faith, his opposition against the injustices of the music business opened a larger ideological space for him to further confront broader injustices. In songs like “Family Name,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Dreamer,” “Act of God,” and “S.S.T.,” Prince would apply the fervent bearing of witness to social inequalities as well as a deep historical consciousness of past power structures and events that have often been used to justify these inequalities. His collaborative work with West on “Dear Mr. Man” is a prime example of this, challenging its listener to consider a wide range of social ills that marginalize just about every segment of society, and demanding that these ills be addressed. In the year before his untimely death, Prince’s last album HitNRun Phase Two would feature two final examples of his contribution to the Black prophetic tradition. In the single “Baltimore,” written in response to the police-related death of African American man Freddie Gray and the

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subsequent rioting in Baltimore, Maryland, Prince asks, “Does anybody hear us pray for Michael Brown or Freddie Gray?” Referring to the deaths of both Freddie Gray and Michael Brown (who was murdered in a police-related shooting in Ferguson, Missouri), Prince calls for an end to guns (“Are we gonna see another bloody day? We’re tired of the cryin’ and people dyin’, Let’s take all the guns away”). The track then unfolds into a simulated march with background singers chanting “If there ain’t no justice then there ain’t no peace.” As the song closes out, a newscaster voice announces, “We have to interrupt the regular scheduled programming to bring you up to date on a developing situation in Los Angeles,” referring to the nearly back-to-back occurrences of police-related deaths that took place during that time. On the song “Revelation,” Prince returns to imagery of religious faith and sexual expression as he combines romantic love and intense sexual desire (“the task at hand until I see the sun is to keep doing you until you come, to revelation”) with religious symbolism from the Old Testament (“I’ll beat my sword into a plow, and share a heavenly potion with my future queen”). Stemming from the biblical idiom of nations “beating swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4), Prince’s declaration of love on “Revelation” is also a call for transforming our tools of war into tools that can better serve society’s growth. As a representation of some of his last creative works, “Baltimore” and “Revelation” leave us with a compelling snapshot of Prince’s legacy of social and religious consciousness. On the one hand, Prince was deeply concerned with speaking truth to power regarding the multiple injustices enacted upon a variety of marginalized groups within our society. On the other hand it seems he also wanted us to remember that romantic love and sexual desire are an integral part of social and religious consciousness, challenging us to consider every aspect of our existence as an opportunity to contemplate social change. CONCLUSION In his discussion of the relationship between the Black Prophetic tradition and African American musical traditions such as blues, jazz, and hip hop, West argues that these genres create an ideological space where counterhegemonic voices can express “ideals of humanity, ideals of equality, ideals of resistance and endurance” (West and Buschendorf 2014, 48). Along the same lines, Prince’s music has also created such space, developing a unique counterhegemonic voice over the course of his career that combined his explorations of religious consciousness with commentary on a wide range of social issues. In his early music, Prince would explore the ideals of humanity and equality in his call for freedom of individual expression and social acceptance, as well

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as his opposition to the 1980s nuclear arms race. At the height of his career he would continue to develop the prophetic voice and critical consciousness within his music as he further merged themes of religious faith with social critique. During the time of the break with the Warner Bros. label and the years following, Prince would fully express the ideals of resistance and endurance in his music, reflecting the fervent counterhegemonic critiques of Black Prophetic fire. Given its critical connections with the Black Prophetic tradition, the musical legacy of Prince is also a prime ideological space for thinking about the key role that popular music can play in this type of prophetic practice. In many instances, Prince’s unique combination of religious consciousness and social critique provided lyrical content that could not otherwise be expressed in other settings (e.g., the church). Through the platform of popular music, Prince’s Black Prophetic practice was also able to reach a broader audience and explore more unconventional subject matter. This is particularly evidenced in his conceptualization of sexuality as an expression of both religious faith and social change. It is also evidenced in the way that he was able to address issues that were often marginalized in the mainstream, including his lyrical content on the AIDS crisis in the 1980s as well as issues of urban poverty, gang violence, post–9/11 racial profiling of Arab Americans, and police-related murders of African American men. Perhaps the true genius in Prince’s music is its ability to amalgamate not only a variety of musical genres (gospel, jazz, blues, R&B, rock, punk), but also a variety of critical ideas and ideals for the audience to consider. Among these, the Black Prophetic tradition and Black Prophetic fire have been a constant influence in Prince’s body of work. “It’s a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice,” Cornel West often says of the long tradition of counterhegemonic voices that have worked to inspire and empower us to envision a better world. With his career-long connection to the ideas and ideals of Black Prophetic practice, we can certainly count Prince among those who wielded Black Prophetic fire for social change.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Greenman, Ben. Dig If You Will The Picture: Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2017. Prince. “Act of God,” track #6 on 20TEN, NPG, 2010, compact disc. ———. “America,” track #6 on Around the World in a Day, Paisley Park Records/ Warner Bros., 1985, compact disc. ———. “Baltimore,” track #1 on Hitnrun Phase Two, NPG/Universal, 2015, compact disc.

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———. “Cinnamon Girl,” track #6 on Musicology, NPG/Columbia Records, 2004, compact disc. ———. “Controversy,” track #1 on Controversy, Warner Bros., 1981, compact disc. ———. “Controversy (Official Music Video)”. Filmed [1981]. YouTube Video, 3:44. Posted [July 2017]. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=4ga​zNwzC​4H0. ———. “The Cross,” track #5 on Sign O’ the Times, Paisley Park Records/Warner Bros., 1987, compact disc. ———. “Darling Nikki,” track #5 on Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984, compact disc. ———. “Dear Mr. Man,” track #11 on Musicology, NPG/Columbia Records, 2004, compact disc. ———. “Emancipation,” track #12 on Emancipation, NPG/EMI Records., 1996, compact disc. ———. “Family Name,” track #12 on The Rainbow Children, NPG/Redline Entertainment., 2001, compact disc. ———. “Family Name,” track #1 of Disc 2 on One Nite Alone . . . Live!, NPG, 2002, compact disc. ———. “God,” track #9 of Disc 3 on Purple Rain Deluxe, Warner Bros., 2017, compact disc. ———. “The Holy River,” track #12 on Emancipation, NPG/EMI Records., 1996, compact disc. ———. “I Would Die For You,” track #7 on Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984, compact disc. ———. “The Ladder,” track #8 on Around the World in a Day, Paisley Park Records/ Warner Bros., 1985, compact disc. ———. “Let’s Go Crazy,” track #1 on Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984, compact disc. ———. “Live 4 Love,” track #13 on Diamonds and Pearls, Paisley Park Records/ Warner Bros., 1991, compact disc. ———. “Live 4 Love (Official Music Video).” Filmed [1992]. YouTube Video, 5:16. Posted [September 2017]. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=SzG​wYUES​xf8. ———. “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” track #13 on Diamonds and Pearls, Paisley Park Records/Warner Bros., 1991, compact disc. , Paisley Park Records/ ———. “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” track #14 on Warner Bros., 1992, compact disc. ———. “One of Us,” track #10 on Emancipation, NPG/EMI Records., 1996, compact disc. ———. “Prince and the New Power Generation-Money Don’t Matter 2 Night (Official Music Video).” Filmed [1991]. YouTube Video, 4:53. Posted [September 2017]. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=AmG​VAu9l​k6I. ———. “Prince and the New Power Generation-7 (Official Music Video).” Filmed [1992]. YouTube Video, 5:16. Posted [October 2017]. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/ w​atch?​v=9V-​vcXOp​G9g. ———. “Prince Cinnamon Girl (Official Music Video).” Filmed [2004]. YouTube Video, 4:07. Posted [January 2018]. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=eGj​Tc7iI​ Jbg.

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———. “Purple Rain,” track #9 on Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984, compact disc. ———. “Revelation,” track #11 on Hitnrun Phase Two, NPG/Universal, 2015, compact disc. ———. “Ronnie Talk to Russia,” track #5 on Controversy, Warner Bros., 1981, compact disc. ———. “Sexuality,” track #2 on Controversy, Warner Bros., 1981, compact disc. ———. “Sign O’ the Times,” track #1 on Sign O’ the Times, Paisley Park Records/ Warner Bros., 1987, compact disc. ———. “Temptation,” track #9 on Around the World in a Day, Paisley Park Records/ Warner Bros., 1985, compact disc. ———. “Uptown,” track #5 on Dirty Mind, Warner Bros., 1980, compact disc. ———. “When Doves Cry,” track #6 on Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984, compact disc. ———. “When Doves Cry (Official Music Video).” Filmed [1984]. YouTube Video, 2:20. Posted [July 2017]. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=UG3​VcCAl​UgE. ———. “1999,” track # 1 on 1999, Warner Bros., 1982, compact disc. Purple Rain. Directed by Albert Magnoli. Warner Bros. 1984. Sign of the Times. Directed by Prince. Cineplex-Odeon Films. 1987. West, Cornel. The Cornel West Reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999. ———. “Dear Mr. Man (feat. Prince),” track #4 on Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations, Hidden Beach Recordings, 2007, compact disc. West, Cornel, and Christa Buschendorf. Black Prophetic Fire. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.

Chapter 3

“I Am Something That You’ll Never Comprehend” A Queer Theological Reading of Purple Rain Joseph Trullinger

People frequently note about Prince that it is impossible to ignore the intersection between religion and sexuality in his work. Mainstream reflections on this intersection have tended to be superficial, either chalking up the religious dimension to a kind of symbolic garnish for the real theme of sex, or else noting this connection as quirky and paradoxical. In this piece I draw from some recent work in queer theology—specifically, the perspective of Andy Buechel’s That We Might Become God—to open up a richer view of Prince’s Purple Rain as demonstrating not only that worship of an incarnate God has to welcome queer sexualities, but furthermore that there is something essentially queer about this God whose body Christians believe themselves to embody in their communion. For simplicity’s sake, I confine my analysis to Purple Rain (mostly the album, but occasionally the film). I contend that Purple Rain articulates, through its various songs and events, the overarching theme that sexuality inherently resists conformity to rigid or tidy categories, and by constantly overspilling such limits it leads to and culminates in transcendent communion. The quickest inroad to this perspective on Purple Rain is a couplet from “I Would Die 4 U,” a song that situates a messianic message front and center: “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man/I am something that you’ll never understand.” Prince here speaks as if to embody a totality of self-sacrificial devotion, the profundity of divine love, as something that cannot be contained in sex/gender divisions. This immediately brings to mind the Pauline formulation: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There 45

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is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:25–28, NRSV). For Paul, the unity of all believers with God—as the church is the bride of Christ—means that no one may vaunt one identity as superior to or more godly than another, as this subjection to disciplinary judgment constitutes pseudo-life under the law rather than true life of the spirit. To deem others as having to adopt a subsidiary role in the church on the basis of a “perverse” sexuality, for example, is to think oneself elevated with superior spiritual authority that is supposedly merited—a rather perverse supposition to make within a faith according to which nobody merits salvation. When churches define who belongs and who does not by such disciplinary judgment, they forget that the church is for the sinners, and in this self-forgetting replicate what might be the chief sin of pride. Faith is to be a liberation from such disciplinary attitudes, opening us up to start becoming as open as God’s heart is: capacious enough to contain us all without loving any of us any the less. For finite beings like ourselves, accustomed to treating love as a zerosum game defined by scarcity, jealousy, and anxiety, this love is something that we will never understand. Much of the gender-play in Prince’s songs and stage persona certainly challenges commonplace attempts to discipline ourselves and our sexualities, and what I hope to show beyond this is that Purple Rain explores the tension between experiencing love under the terms of finitude, and its potential (some including myself would say, inherent) orientation toward something infinite, transcendent, divine. Reading Prince’s faith into the queer dimensions of Purple Rain’s sexual matrix, and reading this queerness into the religious themes of the album, we discover a kind of compatibility or “fit” between them, suggesting that the common separation between the supposedly “liberal” openness to non-normative sexuality and the supposedly “conservative” domain of Christian faith is itself a disciplinarian falsehood. As Buechel puts it, “all good theology has always been queer, even if this way of describing it is new.”1 Conceiving of God or of art in terms of what Pat Buchanan termed “the culture war” is shrill, unhelpful, and perhaps most ironically, presumes that the nature of God is already understood, when Prince rightly characterizes it as “something that you’ll never understand.” Queer theology is the attempt (as all theology is an attempt) to articulate the mysterious divine message not only in a way that embraces queer people and practices, but in turn shows how these people and practices in and of themselves reveal something essential about God, whose beloved the theologian takes all of us to be. In this context, taking queerness more or less to mean what goes beyond strict regulation and definition in one’s desires and the connective acts they circulate, the fact that God is love (1 John 4:8) and that love has to encompass queerness necessarily entails that God is queer. After all, Christians worship

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an embodied God, and the complexities of sex and gender are inseparable from that. Prince so directly draws the connections between sexuality and spirituality together that Purple Rain is ripe for queer theological analysis. Let us listen closer to Purple Rain and determine whether something new can be revealed. Some qualifications of my project are necessary before proceeding: 1) The first is for me to call attention to the indefinite article in the subtitle of this piece. What I offer is a queer theological reading of Purple Rain, not the queer theological reading; the richness of Prince’s work and moreover of queerness belie any illusions that what I see at work is definitive, let alone exhaustive. 2) I should acknowledge that I follow Buechel’s way of using the term “queer,” which he somewhat uses to cover four basic possible meanings: a) queerness as instability of identity, b) queerness as strategy of subversion, c) queerness as boundary transgression, and d) queerness as “simple” strangeness.2 Serious problems can arise when fixating on any one of these four possible meanings, which can be in play at the same time. Queer is hard to define, as its very “essence” (if essence is the right word) connotes being beyond tidy definition. Definitions that usually strike most scholars as enlightened can be reductive of real people’s actual experiences. For instance, regarding the statement that “gender is performance,” Julia Serano writes: Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. But performance doesn’t explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. . . . Performance doesn’t even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same, wore the same T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers that I always had, yet once other people started reading me as female, they began treating me very differently. When we talk about my gender as though it were a performance, we let the audience—with all their expectations, prejudices, and presumptions—completely off the hook.3

Writing as an outsider to this experience, I should apprise the reader of the possibility that I may have been similarly reductive, despite my intentions to the contrary. 3) I focus merely on the artistic content of the album and film Purple Rain, and none of Prince’s other work, personal biography, interviews, or other output. I do not deal with Prince’s well-documented shift toward a more “orthodox” view on sexuality in the years after 1984’s Purple Rain. Undoubtedly interesting work has been (and will be) done on what such a shift means for his earlier work. But all interpretations have to be selective, and this one is no different.

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“LET’S GO CRAZY” Admitting its limitations as a film, Purple Rain’s narrative nonetheless provides a structure through which we can better read the messianic and Christological themes of the album. Based loosely on Prince’s own rise as a young superstar in the Minneapolis music scene, the story’s protagonist (“the Kid,” played by Prince) struggles to find artistic connection with an audience and romantic connection with another would-be musician (“Apollonia,” played by Apollonia Kotero). That the Kid flounders in his relationships is not hard to understand: he is conceited with the owner of the First Avenue club he performs at, he thinks himself above rehearsing, he is dismissive toward his bandmates and their contributions (most prominently, Prince’s lead guitarist at the time, Wendy Melvoin), and his way of relating to Apollonia veers from playful tenderness to taunting and physical abuse. We are given to understand that the Kid nonetheless wishes to be a better person, but is replicating the push-pull dynamic of his parents’ abusive marriage. We can tell that the Kid feels figuratively stuck in his parents’ destructive patterns, symbolized by the way he lives in their basement but dreamily decorates it with sentimental curios, an escapist compromise with the collision between his dreams of superstardom and the grinding realities of the music business. It’s only when the Kid turns to music for more earnest self-searching after his father’s attempted suicide that he begins to appreciate the work of his bandmates, and finds a more grounded sense of himself to the extent that he not only wins back Apollonia but also wins over the audience at the club. On this psychological reading, Purple Rain is about the redemptive power of music. The instant and enduring appeal of the music in the movie—for which the album is the soundtrack—proves that point well enough. But a deeper, theological reading is possible. From the instant Purple Rain begins, we are immediately in a church-like space: an organ drones with an old-time religion sound, and like a pastor, Prince directly addresses his audience as “dearly beloved.” This song, “Let’s Go Crazy,” will soon enough be punctuated with gasping, simulated sex sounds in the first verse. This juxtaposition easily shocks most sensibilities, making it easy to ignore what the opening “sermon” might mean for the rest of the song’s message about sexual freedom and exploration. The sermon contrasts “this life” in which “you’re on your own,” with “the after-world, a world of never-ending happiness.” What separates heavenly happiness from the travails of our current life is primarily communion, some kind of divine togetherness, as opposed to our contemporary existential isolation from one another’s experience. (One may immediately think here of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s point that “sin is separation.”4) Prince’s words during his musical transition into the song proper, “So when you call up that shrink in Beverly

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Hills . . ./Instead of asking him how much of your time is left, ask him how much of your mind, baby,” underscore the need to go crazy. Prince observes that we tend to put pointless fears of mortality above the project of overcoming our mental limitations, which are definitive of a society of “sanity,” in which each of us are separated from one another, disconnected. Hence it may matter that the song is titled “Let’s Go Crazy” and not “I’ll Go Crazy”; the realization of a heavenly life of eternal happiness requires mutuality and communion currently disallowed by a constrictive society, symbolized as an elevator that breaks down at lower levels of life (requiring us to “punch a higher floor”). From an eschatological perspective, this is the kingdom of God breaking into history through the cooperation of the community, a utopian vision of a higher-order life, a limitless life, whose very possibility strikes us as crazy to aspire toward, much like “the purple banana” Prince says we should look for “before they put us in the truck.” Of course, bananas aren’t purple but the opposite color, yellow, and so the purple banana is a potent symbol for the supposedly impossible, the coincidence of opposites. So when Prince enjoins us to “go crazy” and “get nuts,” it is the craziness of demanding the impossible and the activation of our deepest desires that stretch out for this future communion. Like all utopianism, it sounds crazy. H. Zahra Caldwell has argued extensively that a racially inclusive, feminist utopian vision has informed much of Prince’s artistic works and process.5 According to Caldwell, “Prince’s utopian imprint is so strong on his fans that he transforms the concert space, extended even to the audience, into a future and present utopian space.”6 That a utopian ideal of harmonious togetherness could be both future and present maps perfectly onto the classical theological statement that the kingdom of God is both not yet here and already here. By aspiring for what ought to be, this utopian and eschatological vision critiques what is for not living up to that possibility. José Esteban Muñoz points out this duality to the utopian along the lines of queer utopia: “Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing. . . . Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”7 For Muñoz, queer relationality orients all of society toward a fundamentally different time, queer time, as opposed to “straight time,” or the way of experiencing time as regular, predictable, and revolving around productivity and reproductivity of (traditionalist) “family time.”8 In “Let’s Go Crazy,” this insistence upon a better world plays out (as in many theologies of liberation) as the demand to work for this kingdom’s realization alongside others who also yearn for a fullness of eternal life, a yearning to reach this craziness of what exceeds normal time. The queer

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utopia of this divine fullness of life calls out from ahead of time, an eschaton challenging the present order of things. It is highly significant in this regard that Prince’s band is called the Revolution, whereas the band of his rival Morris Day is called the Time. The Time’s music is well-liked, funky, popular, and much like Morris Day himself, by and large following the conventions of the day. They succeed in delivering to the people what they want to hear. This is not to deny that their music is fun, but the Time is “with the times,” so to speak—the straight time of the normal. The Revolution, on the other hand, plays an indescribable fusion of rock, funk, electronica, blues, country, you name it. They are like nobody else. When the club manager Billy tells the Kid, “Nobody digs your music but yourself,” it is not only a frustrated (if friendly) warning—to which the Kid hot-headedly retorts to Billy to “fuck off!”—but also in its own unintentional way an indication of just how special the band members are. They are queer, in more than one sense—not least of which is the off-screen relationship (implied in the film) between guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman. The Revolution shocks and scandalizes the crowd, provoking prejudiced jeers or—what artists fear even more—indifference or impatience to hear something else. The audience simply does not “get” the Revolution, and even more so the Kid, whose temperamental outbursts off-stage and wild antics on-stage do not help him to seem “relevant.” The audience’s chilly reception to the Revolution strains credibility when watching Purple Rain, as we (no less an audience!) see some truly electrifying performances that capture Prince’s undeniably talented passion and his band’s deft and smooth musicianship supporting it underneath. Nonetheless, we can get the point: genius is not understood in its own time, and for Prince as for Christ, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” (John 1:11 NRSV). The explicit messianic self-comparisons that come in “I Would Die 4 U” support this link. Yet on a simpler level, our ears know the difference between the Time and the Revolution; when the movie ends, it is the Revolution’s songs that stay in our heads, not the Time’s. What triumphs is not the repetition of the past order, but the breakthrough of an evergreen order from eternity that appears crazy and utopian by the standards of straight time. This maps very well onto the classic Christian notion of an apocalypse, an unveiling of the divine kingdom that was hidden from the more conspicuous and banal orders of temporal power.9 The bandleaders themselves crystallize this dichotomy between the normal and the queer. Morris Day is a flashy dresser, opting for big suits with bold colors, walking with a cane, and riding around in a luxury car. He lets his entourage handle petty affairs, and he gets along well with the manager of the club, never failing to take some undermining digs at the Kid when he listens to the manager’s complaints. We get the sense of a man perfectly

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well-integrated with the world of material success. The Kid, on the other hand, carries out a far less socially acceptable form of male flamboyance, reflective of his more dramatic personality and circumstances. His style is not simply bold but brazen, not simply dapper but decadent, not simply suave but sensual. Several elements brand him as a gender outlaw in this regard: a man in heels, a ruffle shirt, fine lace, and a high-collared jacket. Morris at one point calls him a “long-haired faggot.” We hear no sympathy or openness in this taunt, intended to further entrench the Kid’s status as an outsider. They are both conspicuous for their appearance, but one is marked for esteem while the other endures rejection. Their divergent forms of peacock masculinity take on greater significance when analyzed through the phenomenon of black dandyism. In Slaves to Fashion, Monica Miller argues that for black people queerness is substantially different than it is for white people, such that the term “quare” (“queerness with some ‘shade’ thrown on it”) is more appropriate.10 The prevailing conception of a dandy is almost invariably a white, upper-class subject; thus even as this dandy may signify queerness, he still fits within a social system of white supremacism. The black dandy, however, is quare, and reveals the normally airbrushed history of subjugation behind white wealth, just by his very presence and self-presentation. “A racialized dandy is at once a threat to supposed natural aristocracy, he is (hyper) masculine and feminine, aggressively heterosexual yet not quite a real man, a vision of an upstanding citizen and an outsider broadcasting his alien status by clothing his dark body in a good suit.”11 Miller notes that few people have discussed Prince within the tradition of black dandyism.12 I would contend that Prince’s self-styling as a dandy—with finery worn by royalty in the era of European ascendency, something many people associate with the very word prince—is not mere vanity but what Miller calls “redemptive narcissism,” that is, a self-obsession for the sake of autonomously asserting individuality in a playful way, over against a myriad of social forces that are anything but kind toward black men (to say nothing of seeing them as individuals).13 Although both Morris Day and the Kid stand out as fine dressers, it is the Kid who more potently embodies a quare self-presentation with his proclivity to fashion himself in more feminine and unusual ways, such as wearing black lace panties as a sexy kind of mask during his performance of “Computer Blue.” Morris Day simply shakes his head, looking on in comfortable disapproval. “TAKE ME WITH U” + “THE BEAUTIFUL ONES” With this background established, we can better understand what is at play in the rivalry between the Kid and Morris for the affections of Apollonia. This

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is no ordinary love triangle between them, but competing visions of the future that stand at odds with one another: one a repetition of the more recognizable or immediate past of black respectability (e.g., the zoot suits worn by Morris and the Time), the other announcing a multi-racial, multi-gendered quare utopia anticipating the way the world ought to be but currently is not (Prince and the Revolution). Thus it makes some sense that the song “The Beautiful Ones,” centering as it does on Apollonia’s need to choose between the Kid and Morris, begins with futuristic buzzes and bleeps in a strange but seductive synthesizer loop. The future is calling, bringing a moment of decision of intense simplicity: “Do you want him, or do you want me?” This question would not be a bad way of synopsizing God’s message through the prophets.14 As with the prophet Hosea’s marriage to an unfaithful wife, God’s relationship with his people is one of a deep care that spills over into wounded frustration, alternating between castigation and plaintive promise (Hosea 1:13–14 alone, in just two verses, exemplifies such mixed feelings). The intensity of this call springs not from a place of stoic self-possession, but the vulnerability of one heart reaching out for another. No matter how much prowess one possesses, one’s beloved can hold one hostage: “You were so hard to find/The beautiful ones, they hurt you every time.” While the song is on one level a simple declaration of desire and clarification for where one stands romantically, this couplet conveys the painful ways in which we are drawn to love people with whom our future is not assured. Beauty calls one onward toward overreaching, desiring someone who is very likely to break your heart. This represents an interesting development beyond the charming simplicity of “Take Me with U,” in which love begins in an innocuous, almost naïve willingness to follow one’s attraction wherever it leads. Whereas “Take Me with U” plainly declares the Kid’s determination to be with Apollonia (whether that be “spend[ing] the night at your mansion” or “spend[ing] the night on the town”), in “The Beautiful Ones” the choice on which their future depends is out of his hands. With this development, with all the vulnerability it contains, the story of the album and film spills over into a darker place of aggression and desperation on the part of the Kid/Prince, to which we now turn. “COMPUTER BLUE” + “DARLING NIKKI” Frustrated by Apollonia’s (understandably pragmatic) decision to be taken under Morris Day’s wing for the sake of her music career, the Kid’s performance of “Computer Blue” and “Darling Nikki” amounts to an embittered exposure of his sexuality to the wider public. Watching the Revolution perform these songs at the club, Apollonia’s embarrassment increasingly builds

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until she leaves in shame. There is an edge to the frank sexuality of these songs, an undertone of compulsion or possessiveness that reveals the Kid’s unhealthy equation of self-regard with a refusal to brook any compromise. It is fairly clear this brazenness is a reactive attitude toward the situation of vulnerability laid out in “The Beautiful Ones,” where he is at the mercy of Apollonia’s decision; since he cannot control what she decides, he seizes upon the opportunity to flaunt his sexual attractiveness and experiences in front of her for all to see, almost as a punishment for her rejection (or what he perceives as her rejection). “Computer Blue” begins with an unforgettable, cryptic exchange between Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin; Lisa asks Wendy whether “the water [is] warm enough,” to which Wendy’s affirmative replies are flatly intoned, as if robotically subservient. Lisa seems eager to “begin” some process, probably sexual in nature (a bath?), and one can hear a note of reservation in Wendy’s voice about this, as if she is obeying due to some force or inner programming beyond her control. Given the way that “Computer Blue” and “Darling Nikki” flow into one another both on the album and in the film, and given that “Darling Nikki” recounts a story of a young man finding a woman’s sexual kinkiness overwhelming and compelling, the way “Computer Blue” begins not only represents an overtly queer sexual charge between two women, it also introduces the theme of sexual desperation and the danger of losing oneself in erotic fascination. Prince wonders, “Where is my love life? Where has it gone?/Somebody please, please tell me what the hell is wrong?” He is clearly lonely and sexually frustrated, driven to distraction, and pained by the inexplicability of how his needs can go unmet. He therefore concludes: “Until I find the righteous one/Computer blue.” Is “computer blue” a sex robot? Is it the process Wendy and Lisa discuss at the beginning of the song? Is it a combination of both? Or is it some kind of pornography Prince is imagining to exist in the future, anticipating the way that the character of Nikki from the following song first appears “in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine”? Whatever computer blue is, it is clearly a substitute for some truly connective sexual experience or relationship. Instead of “a righteous one,” computer blue is only serviceable in this regard, or is even an unrighteous one. The titular Nikki of the next song is an ambivalent figure Prince describes as a “sex fiend,” who can be read positively as a sexually liberated woman introducing a young man into a deeper world of mutually wonderful erotic experience, or as a quasi-demonic succubus preying on a young man’s sexual curiosity and relative inexperience to manipulate him into getting what she wants. Certainly the odd coda to the song, with sounds of a rainstorm combined with bizarre gospel singing (“the Lord is coming soon”) played backwards, can tip the listener toward the latter interpretation. There is also

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the detail that when he goes to Nikki’s place, she asks him to sign his name “on the dotted line”—as though this is some kind of Faustian pact with the devil—and “the lights went out” as soon as he complies, clearly in for more than he bargained for. At the same time, the speaker wants Nikki to come back into his life after she leaves mysteriously and without explanation the morning after their liaison, and the note she leaves him thanking him “for a funky time/Call me up whenever you wanna grind” suggests a more consensual, liberating experience. She has vanished quite suddenly out of his life—which is especially odd, given that it was her place she took him back to (again, suggesting Nikki is some preternatural figure). Whoever she is, and whatever she is, Nikki is certainly not a neutral figure as “computer blue” might be. She is undeniably powerful, and the impersonality of computer blue stands in contrast to the personal nature of his encounter with Nikki. “I can’t tell you what she did to me/But my body will never be the same,” Prince says, suggesting either some kind of trauma or some kind of awakening. In either case, the song clearly communicates the power of eros to overwhelm us and put us into a situation that is deeper than we can manage. This duality to erotic intensity can allow us to better understand the song, and indeed, Prince’s general fusion of sexuality and spirituality. It’s relatively standard for Christian sermons and materials to note that two of the Greek words for love, agape and eros, bear divergent meanings, with eros being sexual, “carnal,” and selfish, whereas agape is spiritual, “godly,” and selfless. In this, many Christians are uncritically (or unwittingly) following Anders Nygren’s influential book on the subject, which nonetheless does not hold up after decades of scholarly scrutiny regarding the actual way these words were used in the Greek language or in church history.15 As orthodox an authority as Gregory of Nyssa, for example, defines eros as agape brought to intensity, which not only sees eros and agape as compatible, but awards eros quite a high honor as the best word for describing the eternal “wedding night” between Christ and his bride, the Christian.16 In treating sexuality as dichotomous to spirituality, straitlaced reactions to Prince’s music as “godless” or amoral—best typified in Tipper Gore’s moral panic about listening to “Darling Nikki” from Purple Rain with her daughter in her car, leading to the creation of “parental advisory” labels so parents can more strictly control their children’s sexuality—is a dichotomy dripping with rich irony. The Tipper Gores of our culture are operating with a rather debased notion of the erotic as inherently immoral, selfish, objectifying, and godless—and thus in need of being quarantined off to a purportedly private realm of familial control, with a matching politics of social control and desensitization to one another’s embodied playfulness.17 Indeed, one almost wonders whether the detail everybody remembers about “Darling Nikki,” that Prince meets her “in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine,” might

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scandalize not so much because it is about sex per se, but because it is about a woman with autonomy over her body in a patriarchal culture deeply suspicious of women doing anything for themselves and not for men.18 Likewise, Kelly Brown Douglas’s analysis of how people can be embarrassed by the sensuality of blues music shows that the sexuality of black people (and black women especially) is demonized and feared, even according to “hyperproper” black men’s attempts to achieve bourgeois respectability within a white supremacist culture that historically characterizes black people as animalistic. The conflation of sexuality with the subhuman therefore can, even if unintentionally, play into the hands of white supremacy.19 Marvin Ellison’s account of sexuality’s ethical and spiritual dimensions argues against such privatization and management of other people: If it is misleading to say that we merely have a body, it is also misleading to suggest that sexuality concerns only one’s “private” feelings apart from others and the world. Rather, sexuality is our relational capacity to move beyond ourselves toward others. Living passionately in our bodies, living from the center outward (rather than from external scripts), opens us to vital and at times playful interaction with others. Sexuality is a mode of communication, the giving and receiving of recognition and regard. The erotic desire for knowledge—to know and be known by another—goes far beyond the need of the intellect or the genitals. The whole self becomes engaged. We long for an embodied response who confirms our individuality, knows us subject-to-subject, and responds to us as a person fully alive. Sexuality infuses personal and social life with energy for connection and mutual recognition.20

The erotic is therefore not inherently opposed to the wholeness God calls us toward, and in fact, can facilitate this way of being, especially inasmuch as we are embodied beings and Christians believe in an embodied divinity. Sexuality is far more than what we do with our genitalia. It is the capacity of connection with others that makes sensuality a deeply spiritual faculty, through which we feel with another person, sharing who we are and opening ourselves to become otherwise rather than remaining fixed and static. Audre Lorde nicely captures this capacity in her helpful distinction between the pornographic and the erotic: the erotic is connective in the aforementioned ways, but the pornographic is “the suppression of true feeling,” for it “emphasizes sensation without feeling.”21 By “the pornographic” Lorde does not mean printed or visual depictions of sex so much as she means an inauthentic attitude toward sexuality, even apart from whatever’s in the magazine that Nikki’s reading. Thus the pornographic, which abuses people by engaging in sensation without the emotional riskiness of feeling, is akin to the ascetic’s self-abnegation, for both wish to put a halt to who we are, as humans (including oneself) are easier to manage if they remain static and disconnected from

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others.22 Lorde’s conceptual framework suggests that the erotic is inner liveliness, as opposed to the inner deadness of the pornographic. Thus Christ’s declaration that he came to give us life in the fullest way possible (John 10:10 NRSV), when fitted together with the reflections of Lorde and Ellison, suggests the rich possibility that spiritual health is perfectly compatible with a healthy, connective, ethical sex life. Contrarily, the disconnected and pornographic way of comporting oneself with sex can be spiritually unhealthy and sinful, precisely because it denies an inwardness to our feelings according to a restrictive standard imposed on us from the outside.23 To the extent that Nikki seems to have treated Prince merely as a means to an end, to corrupt his relative innocence by taking him back to her sexual lair or “castle,” she acts according to the pornographic. By that same logic, “Computer Blue” implies a disconnected, impersonal, pornographic sexualspiritual despair. Thus these would be instances of sexual sin, even though sex itself is not a sin—a subtle but important distinction for the viability of a queer theological reading of Purple Rain. Douglas writes of positive, spiritually healthy sex as a kind of playfulness, which in and of itself transforms us toward something transcendent: “In play one gets lost in time. Play virtually becomes a space where eternal time enters into finite reality. Hence, the finite constraints of an oppressive life are broken by the eternal reality of joyful life.”24 The reading of Purple Rain underway here—that it explores how eros has an inherently infinite character that resists external restriction and aims at transcendent connection and communion—allows us to read “Computer Blue” and “Darling Nikki” as a journey to the dark side of the erotic, of how sexuality can be abused, fall short of its calling to the infinite, and lapse into finitude and disconnection. “WHEN DOVES CRY” + “I WOULD DIE 4 U” + “BABY I’M A STAR” In this section I will discuss these songs out of the order they appear on the album and film, as “When Doves Cry” was dashed off after the movie finished filming and Prince realized he needed an additional song to round out the soundtrack. (If only all our afterthoughts were of such sterling quality!). “I Would Die 4 U” and “Baby I’m a Star” appear at the tail end of the film, after the climax of “Purple Rain,” to express a triumphant reintegration of the Kid’s relationship with Apollonia and his long-awaited breakthrough with his audience. The sequencing of these songs, and therefore the implied story that the album tells as opposed to the film, is a subject for rumination when we get to “Purple Rain” itself. Answering the question of why Prince ends the album with “Purple Rain” will only make sense when we analyze the song

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itself. Nonetheless, at this juncture we can reflect on how these three preceding songs represent something of a conversion or metanoia, a turnaround of mentality and spirit from the raunchy despair of “Computer Blue” and “Darling Nikki” toward becoming a moral person, and inhabiting a more generous stance toward love as something infinite. “When Doves Cry” grapples with the finitude of how we are shaped by our familial and interpersonal history; “I Would Die 4 U” articulates redemption in explicitly Christological terms; and “Baby I’m a Star” exults in a perpetual progress in becoming more of who one is. “Baby I’m a Star” can easily strike one as the least interesting song on the album, as it seems at first glance to simply be about a person boasting of one’s own talent and one’s unstoppable meteoric rise toward stardom. However, in light of our earlier insights about “redemptive narcissism” as a healthy attitude by which black dandyism militates against white supremacist culture, there is definitely more substance here than that. I would add that when reading this song as of a piece with Prince’s quareness, it envisions the legitimacy of hoping that the world is a place that will not just tolerate a gender outlaw like Prince, but as a matter of fact will celebrate his individuality: “Hey, I ain’t got no money/But honey I’m rich on personality.” The richness of personality, of the Kid’s personal style as opposed to the more externally scripted fashion of Morris Day, can be expressed by a reflection on the cultural significance of the color purple. Purple is of course the color we most easily associate with Prince, given the emblematic genius of Purple Rain. But why purple, in particular? Purple is of course the color of royalty, of princes, of richness. But purple is also the color of self-indulgence; we frequently use “purple prose” as a slander against writing that is too expressive, too eccentric, too baroque, too queer, too quare, too personal. Paul West’s “In Defense of Purple Prose” puts into brilliant relief this set of associations that I am here claiming to be operating in Purple Rain generally (and that “Star” in particular is celebrating): Of course, purple is not only highly colored prose. It is the world written up, intensified and made pleasurably palpable, not only to suggest the impetuous abundance of Creation, but also to add to it by showing—showing off—the expansive power of the mind itself, its unique knack for making itself at home among trees, dawns, viruses, and then turning them into something else: a word, a daub, a sonata. The impulse here is to make everything larger than life, almost to over-respond, maybe because, habituated to life “written down,” in both senses, we become inured and have woken up with something almost intolerably vivid. When the deep purple blooms, you are looking at a dimension, not a posy.25

The eternity that enters into time when we sensually play is of accord with the rich expansiveness, the richness of personality, the purple mentality that

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everything can be transformed and elevated and emancipated into going crazy, into utopian communion, into messianic time. Inasmuch as queerness requires such a bursting out of unimaginative and bigoted (we might say prosaic) normative constraints, it points us toward something “larger than life” (like the Kid on the stage), something theological, messianic. But before we arrive at the messianic, let us examine the sharp contrast to such integration of the Purple One with a world he inspires to be more purple, the defeated lack of purpleness in “When Doves Cry.” Prince invites us to “Dream, if you can, a courtyard/An ocean of violets in bloom.” Violets are of course purple, and here they constitute not just a bunching but an ocean, and are not closed-up and budding, but blooming. This evocative and literally florid metaphor makes us practically able to smell the gentle scent of violets, but en masse (“an ocean”), and therefore intense in their collective soft power. Yet the violets do not exist in actual fact, but only in the dream he asks us to envision, if we can. That implies reality is devoid of purpleness, of gentleness, thereby fitting his impassioned plea: “How could you just leave me standing/Alone in a world that’s so cold?” Our world is not kind to dreamers. It is cold and dismissive toward utopianism and romanticism, and it accustoms us by brutal force to losing our capacity to dream. This song appears in the film as commentary on how the Kid has smacked Apollonia, thereby embodying the very thing he loathes in his abusive father. The sudden similarity of himself to his father frightens him. We seem doomed to repeat the repressive patterns of our parents, and to self-sabotaging our capacity to have flourishing, spiritually healthy relationships: “Maybe I’m just too demanding/Maybe I’m just like my father, too bold.” This is the inheritance of original sin, leaving us perplexed at our propensity to error, meanness, and selfishness. We wish to live in accord with our nature—to be animals of peace, doves—but we seem destined for failure, for it to end in tears. We can therefore interpret “When Doves Cry” as a kind of elegy about our fallenness. It is over against this backdrop that the lines “I’ll never beat you/I’ll never lie” in “I Would Die 4 U” are especially potent. In the film, they function as the Kid’s repentant plea for forgiveness for how he has treated Apollonia. The Kid is of course a flawed, human individual. How then is the overt messianic self-comparison functioning within this song? I think the reading that makes the most sense, and is the richest for our purposes, is to read the lyrics as sliding between both the finite human being that is Prince/the Kid and the infinite divinity of Christ. He is simultaneously speaking as if from the perspective of Christ, and dreaming of the person he could become—one whose purpleness steps beyond self-expression and into self-sacrifice, following love from the pornographic and depersonalizing self-absorption, to where its true destination lies, infinite self-giving and connection with others in spiritual communion.

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Understanding the character of this communion requires understanding how it could be the case that Christ and his body—the church—can be united. This unio mystica is frequently expressed in mystical literature as the sexual congress of groom and bride. Paul’s cryptic hints about such a relationship are steeped in heterosexism and patriarchy, and therefore can seem antithetical to a queer theological perspective which resists the idea that it is godly for wives to be “subject” to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22–33 NRSV). But Paul’s invocation of how “the two will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:23 NRSV) out of healthy love for one another can be extracted out of this bigoted ideology, and reread for the pluripotent way that sexuality and spirituality, eros that is agape, unite in the union of Christ and the church. Yet what does this mean? Admitting that it is a mystery, “I Would Die 4 U” takes up this thought in provocative ways, which we can begin to better understand through Andy Buechel’s recent contention that the body of Christ is queer. Let’s begin with the first lines of the song: “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man/I am something that you’ll never understand.” Let us return to the scripture we cited at the beginning: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:25–28, NRSV). At first, it could sound like Paul is saying that our respective genders are obliterated into a genderless godhood; were that true, sexual identities and expressions of various sorts would be a kind of illusion or false appearance on top of an agender divinity, which would represent the “truth” of what we are. Without discounting being agender as no less an identity as others, Buechel puts forth a reading of this famous scripture in the light of the sacrament of the Eucharist, which reveals that all the genders of the members of the church— Christ’s body—are united with God without confusion. By consuming the transubstantiated host elements (bread and wine), as a communal love-feast, we are incorporated into Christ: Eucharistically, the body of Christ cannot be said to be male in a simple way. It is now also bread, which has no sex; it is neuter. The body of Christ is both sexed and not sexed. Further, the extension of the body that we are observing is not limited to that of the bread alone. The disciples who eat it are also taking in the body of their Lord, and in the church’s understanding, this act is the reverse of normal eating. Instead of the material of the bread being broken down and incorporated into the body of the eater, the one who consumes is instead taken into and united with the body of Christ. They, and all their human specificity, including sex, are brought into the now multi-sexed, multi-gendered body of Jesus.26

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The sacrament of communion is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, the transformation of ourselves both as individuals and as a cosmopolitan community. This ongoing identity, to be made complete with the full arrival of God’s kingdom, is omni-gender because Christ’s body has as many genders as it has members. Thus the church is fundamentally queer, as the “normal” ways we understand bodies to operate and discipline them into working is here suspended by miraculous and mysterious communion.27 Similarly, the attractiveness of Jesus’s body during the Transfiguration implies that the erotic can have a sublime radiance that cannot be reduced to the genitals (in this case, Jesus’s penis).28 “The encounters with the resurrected Lord intensify the limitations and reductions of modern conceptions of sexual difference and sexual orientation, limitations first seen at the transfiguration. Jesus’ body is not only queer in its fluidity, openness, and excess; it is queer by how it relates to other bodies erotically, drawing them towards the Divine.”29 Working with Buechel’s queer theological reading of communion—in the sacramental, communal, and mystical senses—we burst out of the restrictive norms that would limit God even more than ourselves. The typically sharp juxtapositions of “lover” and “friend” misapply, if only because the God who is identical to Love has inherently infinite, inexpressible character: “I’m not your lover, I’m not your friend/I am something that you’ll never comprehend.” When Prince characterizes himself/the Messiah as “not a human” and as “a dove,” as “conscience” and as “love,” the swift interchangeability implies that these descriptions that would normally be impossible to coexist are reconciled in a God who transcends yet contains them all. Yet he comes back again and again to Christ’s central and perpetual message: “I would die for you.” This is not reckless or self-destructive love, but love that would undergo any condition because it itself is unconditional. This tender love seeks to comfort us (“Make you happy when you’re sad”) and transform us (“Make you good when you are bad”). But this enrapturing transformative love summons our participation in it, such that we cannot be merely passive recipients, but must respond to the calling with trust: “All I really need/Is to know that you believe.” Thus there is a relationship between God and the soul, between lover and beloved, between Christ and his bride. We ought to respond to the demands of this relationship in which God has taken the initiative, yet such an “ought” is not a debilitating burden but a liberating life: “No need to worry, no need to cry/I’m your Messiah and you’re the reason why.” As Teresa of Avila heard God say to her: “If I had not created heaven, I would create it for you alone.” God is intimior intimo meo—nearer to me than I am to myself.30 If eros is too low a word for such intimacy, Buechel would teach us that that says more about language than it says about eros.31

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“PURPLE RAIN” The mysteriousness of the purple rain of the title track is like the word “God”: we all do not know exactly what it means, and yet somehow we can intuitively feel what it means. Reading the melancholy and moving complexity of Purple Rain, we can make sense out of it as the unattained goal that has defined the longing permeating the rest of the work. It is simultaneously Prince’s signature song, the work most expressive of his unique individuality, and in the film it is the piece through which he finally connects with a universally inclusive audience, a communion that includes people from all walks of life, straight people and queer people. Even the skeptical club manager, Billy, as well as the Kid’s arch-nemesis, Morris Day, are won over by the song and finally acknowledge the beauty within the special identity of the Purple One. Having journeyed through highs and lows, having progressed from a false messianism of egotistical self-regard toward a generosity more indicative of the Messiah—the Kid surprises Wendy and Lisa by crediting them for their robust part in the song’s creation—he has come into his own at last. “I never meant to cause you any sorrow/I never meant to cause you any pain.” The simplicity of these lines belie their depth, the weight of sadness that comes with feeling the disintegration of a bond with someone you thought you would be with for the rest of your life, whom you loved not simply deeply, not simply intensely, but perilously, with nothing held back from one’s heart, risking the very sense of who you are to become something eternal with this other person—and now, somehow, the little eternity you were building together has to end. You had thought you were on the right side of forever already, and everything about you is implicated in the disorienting wrongness and rawness of having to go on without them. There need not even be any cruelty that caused it, no singular selfishness or even multiple acts of malice, for as these lines convey, not all relationships break apart intentionally. What we never tell one another, what we leave to one another to figure out only through heartbreak, is that sometimes our love is not enough. Perhaps we don’t say it because we don’t know how to say it, perhaps because words fail to convey this deepest of failures, the inexpressibility of just how achingly we desire love and how tragically we mishandle the vulnerability love requires of us. To have a broken heart is to have hoped that reaching as far as one can—perhaps beyond one’s grasp—one might be held forever. For finite beings like ourselves to hope for this infinity is a paradox, and so no wonder we counsel against such foolhardiness, aiming for a more manageable form of mutuality; it is insensible to risk so much of oneself, it is not exactly sane, it may even be crazy to hope so deeply as to love. Rather than love just temporarily or in a way that stays within preset definitions, Prince

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has loved all the way to the end, as far as he could: “I never wanted to be your weekend lover/I only wanted to be some kind of friend.” Time is broken along with your heart, and somehow you go on—or some broken version of yourself, an ending that goes on and on without reprieve, persistently awaiting a future wholeness that never seems like it’s going to arrive, a messianic time of Parousia wherein this deficient and degraded order of things will pass away and a new time of heartfelt peace and joyful openness will reign. It is here that we can make headway into Prince’s extremely cryptic one-off explanation (if we can call it that) of what he means by “purple rain”: “When there’s blood in the sky—red and blue = purple . . . purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain.”32 The apocalyptic imagery and tenor of “blood in the sky” that’s behind “Purple Rain” speaks to this possibility of everything being opened up in a future that transcends everything we’ve known and every way we’ve failed, and even underscores the necessity of being open to the radicality of this renewal: “Honey, I know, I know, I know times are changing/It’s time we all reach out for something new—that means you too.” His voice cracks as he announces this changing of the times, this end of an era, and the arrival of the new in the midst of the old. It is all too much, too much to bear. You are inadequate to the future toward which you are called, and yet you cannot go back to the past: “You say you want a leader, but you can’t seem to make up your mind/I think you’d better close it, and let me guide you to the purple rain.” There is no way out of the mystery of heartbreak, only the hope that by following another’s guidance— the grace of ongoing love that endures all things (I Corinthians 13:7)—there might be a future beyond our brokenness. He does not wish any ill upon the one he loved, in fact he wants the opposite; but together they must face that they are parting, face that they can no longer live alongside one another, face to face. The situation the song points toward feels so intimate, so true of just the two of them, and yet it has a universality to it: “If you know what I’m singing about up here/C’mon, raise your hand.” Despite none of us being able to say what Prince means by “purple rain,” who can truly listen to this song and not feel out of that listening that they can raise their hands? Somehow we know, despite our unknowing. We float on as the song continues on and on, elevated in this sublime truth and how it keeps on almost ending, only to not fully resolve itself, deepening and enriching itself in sparkling piano flourishes that dwindle like crackling fireworks, and dark string section drones that pull us toward something indefinable. The song’s ending, much like the eschatological status of God’s kingdom, is already here, and not yet here. The paradoxical nature of how “Purple Rain” ends—and how Prince chooses for this song

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to be how the album ends—is itself thought-provoking. Why end the album on a note of melancholic vulnerability, rather than triumph, as in the film? I think the answer lies in what is probably the richest part of the song, even as it has no words. After the verses, the song continues on movingly, moving from melancholy toward something like resolution—or is it resignation? It is impossible to categorize the emotional space into which the song heads after its verses, as Prince sings in something between a coo and a cry—and yet somehow, a deep peacefulness, even a strange kind of joy, emerge out of what he evokes in this cri de cœur. There is some transformative fire within this wounded heart, perhaps some pale imitation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for the inherent vulnerability of eros is tied up with what it means to worship a wounded God, Christ. When we love, we render ourselves vulnerable, and there is no love without vulnerability, not even for—in fact, especially for—God. Perhaps then the odd feeling of peace that can come over us when listening to “Purple Rain” is that it poetically brings us into some partial acceptance of this mystifying truth that to love is to open oneself to being vulnerable, without armor, without defenses (unlike the “castle” within which Nikki lurks, fortified). Like the song itself, love may not ever really come to an end, but continue onward in a pain from which we never recover, if by recovery we mean tidily being “over” another person. Instead, the love has to make space for other possibilities, to “reach out for something new,” and perhaps like Christ’s omni-gender body, the heart might be able to acquire such capaciousness to accommodate another in the future—but without obliterating the specificity of who it took in. Such is the open question we all face, wounded and woundable as we are: can we become inwardly open enough for both history and possibility to coexist, neither one at the expense of the other? Such a transformation would ask us to become more than we are now, to be a bit more like the infinite divinity who has space for all, as if to say, “Let’s go for something that we’ll never comprehend, let’s go for something purple, let’s go for something queer. Let’s go crazy.” NOTES 1. Andy Buechel, That We Might Become God: The Queerness of Creedal Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 13. 2. Buechel, That We Might Become God, 3–13. 3. Julia Serano, “Performance Piece,” in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, ed. Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2010), 85–86. 4. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperOne, 1986), 293–94.

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5. H. Zahra Caldwell, “‘We Are in the Feminine Aspect Now’: Women Artists, Prince, and Visions of Utopia,” Journal of African American Studies 23, no. 1 (September 2017): 408–24. 6. Caldwell, “We Are,” 415. 7. José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 1. 8. Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 25. 9. Giorgio Agamben, The Church and the Kingdom, trans. Leland de La Durantaye (New York: Seagull Books, 2012), 34–35. 10. Monica L. Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 11. 11. Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 11. 12. Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 12. 13. Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 246. 14. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), 6–7. 15. Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller, Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), xiii–xv. 16. Buechel, That We Might Become God, 158. 17. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2015), 40–41. 18. Thomas W. Laqueur argues that stigmatization of masturbation increased throughout European history, after a period of vague disapproval and conflation with “sodomy,” to an increasingly specialized and medicalized anxiety about what people (especially women, purported to be unregulated by reason unlike men) were up to in private. The rise of private reading materials and print culture exacerbated this social panic, in tandem with an Enlightenment privatization of the individual. Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2003). 19. Kelly Brown Douglas, “Black and Blues: God-Talk/Body-Talk for the Black Church,” in Sexuality and the Sacred, ed. Marvin M. Ellison and Kelly Brown Douglas (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 50. 20. Marvin M. Ellison, “Reimagining Good Sex: The Eroticizing of Mutual Respect and Pleasure,” in Sexuality and the Sacred, 247–48. 21. Audre Lorde, “The Uses of the Erotic,” in Sister Outsider (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007), 54. 22. Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” 56. 23. James B. Nelson, “Where Are We?: Seven Sinful Problems and Seven Virtuous Possibilities,” in Sexuality and the Sacred. 24. Douglas, “Black and Blues,” 63. 25. Paul West, “In Defense of Purple Prose,” in Sheer Fiction, vol. I (New Paltz, NY: McPherson, 1987), 47–48. 26. Buechel, That We Might Become God, 29. 27. Buechel, That We Might Become God, 39.

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28. Buechel, That We Might Become God, 28–29. 29. Buechel, That We Might Become God, 37. 30. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), III.6.11, p. 43. 31. Buechel, That We Might Become God, 158. 32. NME features this quote without context or reference. It could be apocryphal. Lucy Jones, “20 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Purple Rain’,” NME, December 10, 2012, https​://ww​w.nme​.com/​blogs​/nme-​blogs​/20-t​hings​-you-​didnt​-know​-abou​ t-pur​ple-r​ain-7​66800​.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agamben, Giorgio. The Church and the Kingdom. Translated by Leland de La Durantaye. New York: Seagull Books, 2012. Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Buechel, Andy. That We Might Become God: The Queerness of Creedal Christianity. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015. Burrus, Virginia, and Catherine Keller. Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. Caldwell, H. Zahra. “‘We Are in the Feminine Aspect Now’: Women Artists, Prince, and Visions of Utopia.” Journal of African American Studies 23, no. 1 (September 2017): 408–24. Ellison, Marvin M., and Kelly Brown Douglas, eds. Sexuality and the Sacred. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by James M. Washington. New York: HarperOne, 1986. Laqueur, Thomas W. Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2003. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007. Marcuse, Herbert. Eros and Civilization. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2015. Miller, Monica L. Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2019. Serano, Julia. “Performance Piece.” In Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman, 85–86. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2010. West, Paul. Sheer Fiction. 4 vols. New Paltz, NY: McPherson, 1987.

Chapter 4

“Flesh of My Flesh” Prince’s Theology of Eros Emily McAvan

In the intro to Prince’s song “Arrogance” on the 1992 album , there is a conversation with his friend Kirstie Alley, who plays a journalist in the short skits across the album: She asks, “What do you believe in?” “God” he replies. “Who is your God?” “You.” It is my contention that this short dialogue illuminates a profound truth about the way that Prince’s music incarnates a fleshly theology, one in which the divine can be found in eroticism, an eroticism of creativity and play. In this chapter, I will bring Prince’s sexual spirituality into conversation with queer theology, in particular the “indecent theology” of the late Argentinian theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid. As Althaus-Reid puts it in her landmark work Indecent Theology, “let us suppose [. . .] that God is outside traditions; that God transgresses sexual traditions, and [. . .] God imagines new traditions all the time.”1 What I wish to argue is that Prince’s overtly sexual material shows a creative reinvention of religious iconography as embodied, as corporeal, propelled by desire, reinventing the theological tradition of immanent, sacred sex. His work shows fluid gender and sexual identifications not easily recuperated by heteronormative culture. Queer theorist Jack Halberstam has recently noted that: Prince [. . .] pioneered a gender-bending style that both emphasized his virtuosity and uniqueness, and brought out a queerness, or sexual excess, and a transness, or gender ambiguity, that exceeds simple divisions between gay and straight or trans and cis that offered access to complex, polyrhythmic worlds of love, lust, apocalypse and heartbreak.2

In doing so, Prince challenges gendered and sexual norms in a provocative and compelling form of pop culture theology. While many theologians would see the gender and sexually polymorphous Prince as far beyond the bounds of 67

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orthodox religious purview, here I follow theologian Mark C. Taylor who has poignantly said that “religion is most interesting where it is least obvious.”3 While there is little that is “decent” about much of Prince’s music before his 2001 conversion to the Jehovah’s Witnesses—and subsequent cleaning up of his image—it is this aspect that I wish to pursue for its theological implications in this chapter. While we may not find many Prince songs in church or synagogue, Prince’s work stimulates religious reflection in ways that are still provocative and exciting even now, in an age with far more gendered and sexual excess than in the 1980s when Prince first made his mark. The boundary between sacred and profane, however, remains as potent as then, and it is this challenge that Prince poses for the religious. INDECENT THEOLOGY In order to understand what is at work in Prince’s corpus––sexually and theologically––it will help to begin with an analysis of the sexual assumptions of (Christian) theology. I start from the premise put forth in AlthausReid’s The Queer God, where she argues that “belief systems are organized around people’s bodies, and people’s bodies in relationships, and in sexual relationships.”4 Historically, Christian theology has been a sexual theology that ignores fleshly desires, seeing sin in many expressions of sexuality from homosexuality to sex outside of the sacrament of marriage. Celibacy has in many cases been the ideal of Christian conduct, or failing that, sex within heterosexual marriage. As Althaus-Reid puts it provocatively, “theology is the art of going to bed with God while avoiding full sex.”5 In other words, Christianity makes numerous assumptions about bodies, desires, and practices that may not match up with the lives of its believers. Theologians Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller argue that “divinity comes [. . .] encumbered by the projection of all manner of finite images derived from our bodily life: images of a lord or warrior, a friend or father, a humanoid love, and minimally, an inconspicuous personal pronoun [that is, he].”6 Though God as an incorporeal being can be gendered only as metaphor for theologians, it is one that is insisted upon with remarkable rigidity by many Christians. Even negative theologians, who deny the very ability of language to describe God in any way, have nevertheless insisted upon the maleness of the divine. Similarly, the heterosexuality of every persona in the Bible had been assumed by almost everyone until the advent of queer theology in the 1990s. Religion as a field in the West has been marked by an almost total heteronormativity—and a highly limited one at that. Althaus-Reid argues compellingly that, as a result of this heteronormativity, our potential images of the sacred have been incredibly limited. “We

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cannot see the divine outside the reductive structures of a Systematic Sexual Theology which knows little about love outside decent regulatory systems of controllable sexual categories.”7 And yet, theology demands a fuller, more honest approach to gender and sexuality. As queer theologian Mark D. Jordan says, “The revelation of an incarnate god demands that its believers honor form.”8 The forms of sexual life of all people, which include sexual and gender diversity, require a full range of theological images. Indecent theology as discussed by Althaus-Reid “must go beyond the positive identification with a larger Christ [but] must sexually deconstruct Christ, too.”9 I want to argue that Prince, while his work is overwhelmingly heterosexual in orientation, nevertheless produced a kind of indecent theology. As Althaus-Reid has put it, heterosexuals “also live in asphyxiating closets.”10 While most of Prince’s work is ostensibly heterosexual in desire––excepting a few lyrics, such as the gender ambiguous lover “happy boy or a girl” from “Diamonds and Pearls”—it is far from “decent” for the most part. There is very little of the heterosexual “reproductive futurism” described by queer theorist Lee Edelman11 as the Mobius strip of heteronormativity, the compulsory organization of bodies and desires around the future (always already heterosexual) child to come. “A whole sexual theological performance of dressing and undressing (uncovering), the disorganising of bodies and their recasting into naturalised pattern of relationships has been historically materialised into institutions of such as the family,” writes Althaus-Reid.12 We can see a challenge to this heteronormative organization of bodies and pleasures in Prince’s work, as when he says “We don’t have to make children to make love, and we don’t have to make love to have an orgasm” in the outro to 1987’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Sexual desire is its own reward in Prince’s music, disconnected from the heteronormative demands of child-rearing and penetrative sex. Prince anticipated the concerns of the queer theory of the 1990s onwards in which desire becomes a kind of transcendental value. Though there are indeed numerous heteronormative and cisnormative elements in Prince’s music and image, I see this chapter as engaged in a queer “textual poaching”—to use Henry Jenkins’s term—drawing from relevant fragments to underline a certain trajectory of Prince’s work that can be useful and meaningful to anyone interested in breaking out of the heteronormative closet. We can begin to get a sense of the sexual excess of Prince’s music–– described by Halberstam––at work in the Diamond and Pearls single “Gett Off” (1991), in which he talks about “twenty-three positions in a one-night stand.” It is not just the excess of the sexuality on display that is challenging for a religious listener but the temporal perspective—sex disconnected from love, from marriage. “I got seven hours, baby, so what you wanna do” he sings in ’s “I Wanna Melt With U” the following year. Althaus-Reid has talked about the “sexual experience of Queer people who experience

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love and intimacy in the casual and in friendship relationships [from whom] we may learn that God is a God of moments and that moments can be different but the momentary is also divine.”13 One-night stands may well be the very definition of sinful for many Christians of various orthodoxies, and yet Prince challenges us to see something meaningful as well as pleasurable there. The narrator of “Gett Off” admits “it’s hard for me to say what’s right when all I want to do is wrong”––an admission that the dominant narratives of gender and sexuality are frequently restrictive of all but marital sexuality. For those people with the “wrong” gender and sexual expressions, it is hard to say (or do) what’s right in the eyes of the world, and the church. Love and sex are not reproductive in “Gett Off” and instead work according to the logic of the fetish—Prince’s prospective lover speaks about a fantasy of “something about a little box with a mirror and a tongue inside.” Holy pervert that he is, Prince’s reaction is glee—“what she told me then got me so hot I knew that we could slide.” Eros, not agape, is the underlying motivating force for Prince, and though there is a clear spiritual thread running through his work, there is little sense of sin in his sexual theology.

GUILTY OF NO SIN Arguably, Christian theological discourse on sexuality has been marked by an emphasis on sin (Jewish tradition with its emphasis on chet, or missing the mark, is rather different). Althaus-Reid argues that “sex as lust is an important conceptual category which is not new, but has dominated theology for centuries.”14 To gloss theology as heterosexual, as Althaus-Reid does, is to already be engaged in an act of defamiliarization, estranging the sexual ideologies at work in heterosexual theology. To see heterosexual (and I would add cissexual) theologies as ideologies is to see sexual hierarchies as man-made, constructed, political rather than moral. Althaus-Reid notes the consequences of this social organization: “denying lust, or the ‘lustful desires of the flesh,’ determines when, how and with whom we go to bed, and as such it has been the issue of main interest in all heterosexually-based theology.”15 In another song on , “And God Created Woman,” Prince retells the second creation story from Genesis, casting himself as Adam to his lover’s Eve. In an analysis of the Garden of Eden creation story in Genesis, queer theologian Ken Stone points out that homophobic clichés like “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” ground themselves in a naturalized sex/gender binary driven by divine command toward reproduction. He says that

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since binary sexual differentiation upon which this imperative rests does appear to be presupposed throughout much of the Bible, the fact that the Bible has so few explicit references to same-sex sexual contact becomes less problematic for religious proponents of the heterosexual contract. What is important is that the Bible does so often promote, naturalize, and sanctify a “particular obligatory social relationship between ‘man’ and ‘woman.’”16

Stone points out that numerous Christian readings of Genesis from Karl Barth to feminist Phyllis Trible rely on an ultimately homophobic reading of “gender complementarity.” We can see this in a song written several years after “And God Created Woman,” the lead single from The Gold Experience “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” in which Prince’s lover is “the reason that God made a girl.” Heterosexuality becomes the “reason” for the gender complementary creation, and vice versa. But though it is working on potentially homophobic territory, “And God Created Woman” ultimately problematizes dominant heteronormative glosses of Genesis. The narrative in which Eve is created from Adam’s rib is replayed: “one of my ribs he took and it shall be/bone of my bones/and God created woman.” While this image can be seen in some ways to found the heterosexual complementarianism discussed by Stone––an unequal ideology of “opposite sexes” that casts women as derivatives of men—it is striking that Prince takes a feminine role even in a song that attempts to cast heterosexuality in mythic terms. We can see this creation story as a brief moment of queer maternity, in which the male body is reproductive, birthing his partner without sexual reproduction. The repetition of corporeal images (“bone of my bones,” “flesh of my flesh,” “soul of my soul”) suggests a kind of twinning between Prince and his lover that queers the complementary Creation story. These corporeal images are repeated by a female backing vocalist (presumably Mayte Garcia, later to become Prince’s wife) after Prince’s lead vocal, a movement which inverts the heterosexual narrative—Prince is the flesh/bones/soul of the woman in question, too. Prince becomes like a woman, just as she is like him. Roland Barthes once noted in A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, “dream of total union: everyone says this dream is impossible, and yet it persists.”17 Where heteronormative readings of the Genesis creation story see it as creating complementary relations between the sexes, Prince sees union between the sexes, a blurring between gendered boundaries. At the very least, Prince is problematizing ideas of masculinity, especially black masculinity. Images of heterosexuality usually fetishize difference, rarely seeing likeness as a source of erotic tension. “I used to let you wear all my clothes,” Prince sings in Dirty Mind’s “When You Were Mine” (1980), an early queering of gender in his work indebted to new wave music. From Freud onwards, heteronormative narratives of gender and sexuality have seen likeness between lovers as

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a kind of pathology (especially for gay and lesbian couples), and this remains a powerful narrative for gender essentialists. So it is particularly notable how Prince challenges gender norms in producing a soft, even queer, masculinity that sees femininity as something to imitate as well as idealize. Yet it is not just in gender norms that Prince reworks the Biblical narrative. Prince’s retelling of the Garden of Eden narrative evokes a prelapsarian world before the origin of sin with the line “We were naked and did not care.” “I am guilty of no sin” he declares, strikingly refuting Augustine’s original sin and instead claiming sexuality as a (perhaps even the) site for religious contemplation. Sexuality is imagined as being without sin, as innocent. And yet the specter of original sin is not entirely banished from the scene. Prince sings poignantly, “temptation sweet and so much/surely die if neither one of us shall ye touch/then again we could die from the rush.” Sexual “temptation” (itself a loaded term) is sweet, and though the lyric literally suggests that sex might equal death (a particularly potent image in the age of AIDS), there’s a kind of sublimity to sexual desire being imagined. Sexual desire is a “rush,” an excess or surplus with a transcendental value. Though there is the specter of sin (“many serpents who have lied”), “I’ll have your love in the end” the verses conclude, a definitive claiming of the sacred relation between the two lovers. Moreover, there’s a kind of sacramentality to sex in “And God Created Woman” in particular, and much of Prince’s corpus in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sex allows Prince a sensation of the divine, a fragment of the sacred. Althaus-Reid has noted the erotics of communion: In communion there is an example of intertextuality or intersexuality with God who becomes (transubstantiation or not) our bodies and shares our complex sexualities. And God becomes chaos: the smell of our bodies when making love, our fluids and excretions, hardening of muscles and the erectness of nipples.18

For the early to mid-career Prince—before his conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith and disavowal of much of the sexual content of his corpus––the relation to God is always mediated through the body of the beloved. Prince worships his lover, moving from the immanent world of the flesh to the transcendent and back again. And it is this worshipping of the beloved that we see so powerfully in “And God Created Woman.” GENDER TRANSGRESSION One of the more remarkable aspects of Prince’s work is the way that the gendered personas are frequently fluid and challenging to the sex/gender/

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sexuality heterosexual matrix. Queer theorist Judith Butler has influentially argued in Gender Trouble that gender can denote a unity of experience, of sex, gender and desire, only when sex can be understood in some sense to necessitate gender—where gender is a psychic and/or cultural designation of the self—and desire—where desire is heterosexual and therefore differentiates itself through an oppositional relation to that other gender it desires. The internal coherence of either gender, man or woman, thereby requires both a stable and oppositional heterosexuality.19

Although Prince’s work is in many ways apparently heterosexual, there is a distinct fluidity to the gendered persona of many songs that disrupts this unity of sex, gender, and desire. This is most obvious in the case of the infamous Love Symbol that Prince assumed in the 1990s, combining the male and female signs into a new unpronounceable name (just as the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton makes up God’s name in the original Hebrew). Prince experimented with gender in other ways, for example as Camille, the female persona he assumed from the mid-1980s to the late 1980s. At one point Prince even considered releasing an album under the name.20 Sign o’ the Times’ “If I Was Your Girlfriend” (1987) marks the high point of this gender experimentation, with an androgynous high-pitched vocal from Prince reimagining a sexual relationship from the perspective of a woman––a queer crossing, transmuting a heterosexual relationship into a homosocial female friendship, or even into a lesbian relationship. The song begins with the lines, “If I was your girlfriend, would you remember and tell me all the things you forgot when I was your man?” This transgender desire is repeated again in Lovesexy where Prince says “if I come back as a woman, I want a body like yours.” Halberstam notes that Prince was a “favorite icon for drag kings in the nineties,”21 a sign of the plasticity and pleasures at work in his gender performance. What might it mean to see Prince, as Halberstam does, as in some ways transgender? What might this mean for a consideration of the religious elements of his work? Theologian Lewis Reay suggests that a transgender theology would be “beyond gender paradigms [and seek] to reveal the existence of transgender, intersex and gender-queer people in the narrative of God’s relationship with humankind.”22 All well and good. But I think we can go further and see a God of the gaps between identity categories, in the subversion of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, in the pleasures and pains of the remaking and rearticulation of gender and sexuality. For it is not only his late conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith that constitutes his investigation of the divine––indeed, quite the contrary. Prince’s late work—for instance, 2001’s Jehovah’s Witness themed Rainbow Children—has little of the

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theological interest of his earlier gender and sexual ambiguity. If we then see the early Prince as trans-ing gender, we can therefore see something divine in his gender performance, in the pleasures of pretense, ambiguity and play. It might be, as transgender theorist Sian Taylder says with regard to transgender theology, “a gloriously inappropriate clash of the decent and the indecent.”23 In one of the axioms that open Epistemology of the Closet, queer theorist Eve Sedgwick influentially suggested that “some people, homo-, hetero-, and bisexual, experience their sexuality as deeply embedded in a matrix of gender meanings. Others of each sexuality do not”24 (26). While gender is not entirely absent from Prince’s oeuvre—notably in “Gett Off’s” “let a woman be a woman and a man be a man” line––there remains a significant gendered ambiguity to Prince’s presentation as well as his lyrics. The cover of Lovesexy, for instance, features Prince naked, propped up against a bed of flowers, with one hand covering his nipples. It’s a curiously androgynous image, combining the phallic imagery of the stamen of the flowers with a softer, feminine floral scene. In covering his chest, Prince strikes a pose more akin to the coy women of Renaissance nudes such as Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”. French feminist theorist Luce Irigaray has argued that women are “beautiful object[s] of contemplation” in the “dominant scopic economy” of Western patriarchy25 and it is fascinating that Prince (especially in the 1980s) so persistently offered his own body to the gaze, male and female, in ways that are more strongly feminine rather than masculine. We can see this reversal of heterosexual gender norms at work in other songs, too. “Ravish me, liberate my mind,” Prince sings in Lovesexy’s “Anna Stesia” (1988), taking on the role of the passive sexual partner, queering heteronormative gender roles. Here Prince is explicitly bisexual in his desire, singing, “have you ever wanted to play with someone so much you’d take anyone boy or girl?” As the song goes on, the lyrics move from the explicitly queer and sexual to a religious narrative. The third verse begins, “Save me Jesus, I’ve been a fool/How could I forget you are the rule/You are my God.” Yet just as in the skit with Kirstie Alley, it is clear that Anna Stesia is Prince’s God, too. This link between the sexual and religious, the sacred and profane, becomes more explicit in the second half of the song, with the repeated refrain “love is God, God is love, girls and boys love God above.” Prince lays the chorus over this chant, suggesting that ravishing is part of God’s love, including the ravishing of the male narrator by an active female lover. In the end, the narrator imagines his love for Anna Stesia bringing him “Closer to heaven? Maybe. Closer to God, yeah, closer to God.” We can thus see Prince’s indecent theology as a form of what French philosopher Michel Foucault in the first volume of The History of Sexuality has argued marks the dominant modes of discourse in the West since the Middle Ages––confession. He says:

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The confession has spread its effects far and wide. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in the most solemn rites; one confesses one’s crimes, one’s sins, one’s thoughts and desires, one’s illnesses and troubles; one goes about telling, with the greatest precision, whatever is most difficult to tell.26

It is arguable that for post–World War II popular culture, rock and pop music has been one of the main forms of confession. This is especially true for sexual confessions, whose libidinal energy has driven artists as different as the Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye, the Shangri-La’s, and Madonna. Prince confesses his sexual secrets in his music, a move that brings him closer to God, without any real sense of sin.27 Desire, not sin, is the secret that Prince is endlessly confessing.

WELCOME TO THE DAWN Throughout this chapter I have suggested that Prince’s work is excessive in the way it imagines gendered and sexual norms, in ways that have religious implications. What does it mean, theologically speaking, to think about this excess? Althaus-Reid notes that “born out of a split relationship between eros and agapian love, Christ has become the lustless messiah of systematic theologians.”28 And yet, she argues, this binary is unproductive for queer and liberation theology. “Why ‘either/or’? Why choose between agapian and erotic love? [. . .] What sordid or brilliantly passionate stories are hidden behind the love which is constructed as de-eroticised?”29 Arguably the de-eroticized theology of bodies exerts a presence on more than just believing Christians. Augustine’s “original sin” has influenced the entire history of Western sexuality, and remains a powerful influence even in the days of marriage equality and rough sex. Of course, the boundaries have shifted somewhat, with a general acceptance of pre- or non-marital sex in some ways, yet there remain numerous forms of scandalous (the modern equivalent of sinful) sexuality––queer, transgender, polyamorous, adulterous. And even with this limited acceptance in secular communities of previously unacceptable forms of sexuality, the boundary between sacred and profane remains a firm one. The Da Vinci Code aside, representations of sexuality and the sacred in popular culture remain scarce. Prince’s representations of sex, gender, and the sacred are profoundly important for the study of popular culture. As one of the foremost pop auteurs of the last forty years, his collapsing of the boundary between sacred and profane is a powerful one. Though I have in large part drawn on queer theology and theory to illustrate the sexual implications

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of Prince’s work, it is equally necessary that the closets of heterosexuality be opened, too. Though arguably Prince went back into the closet upon his conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith in 2003, there is a queer potential in his work that remains significant. In his Cruising Utopia, queer theorist Jose Esteban Munoz has talked about a “certain surplus in [art] work that promises a futurity, something that is not quite here.”30 Though it begins at the beginning with the creation story, Prince’s theologically informed work points forward, to a world of freer pleasure, creativity and play. As Althaus-Reid puts it, theology should make room for: The excessiveness of our hungry lives: our hunger for food, hunger for the touch of other bodies, for love and for God; a multitude of hungers never satisfied which grow and expand and put us into risky situations and challenge, like a carnival of the poor; the textbooks of the normalisers of life.31

A theology of the flesh, of sexual desire and gendered fluidity, which makes use of any and every resource in reworking images of the divine. At the end of “Gold,” the final song of 1994’s The Gold Experience, a female spokenword vocal intones, “welcome to the dawn”––a clear messianic promise for a new future. The gendered and sexual excesses and ambiguities of Prince’s music and image open up a new horizon of religious experience, one that includes hitherto shamed and ashamed communities, for anyone who wants more than the restrictive world of heteronormative and cisnormative desires that separate body from mind, eros from agape, the sacred from the profane, flesh from spirit. NOTES 1. Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000), 67. 2. Jack Halberstam, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), xii. 3. Mark C. Taylor, About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999), 1. 4. Marcella Althaus-Reid, The Queer God (London: Routledge, 2003), 43. 5. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 23. 6. Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller, “Introduction,” in Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality, ed. Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 4. 7. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 69.

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8. Mark D. Jordan, “In Search of Queer Theology Lost,” in Sexual Disorientations: Queer Temporalities, Affects, Theologies, ed. Kent L. Brintnall, Joseph A. Marchal, Stephen D. Moore (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), 298. 9. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 95. 10. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 33. 11. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 2. 12. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 96. 13. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 69. 14. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 87. 15. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 87. 16. Ken Stone, “The Garden of Eden and the Heterosexual Contract,” in Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler, ed. Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St. Ville (New York: Columbia, 2006), 50. 17. Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, trans. Richard Howard (London: Vintage, 1978), 228. 18. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 92. 19. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), 31. 20. A copy of the unreleased Camille album was sold posthumously. See https​:// ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/m​usic/​music​-news​/rare​-copy​-of-p​rince​s-unr​eleas​ed-lp​-cami​ lle-u​p-for​-auct​ion-1​26736​/. 21. Halberstam, Trans*, xii. 22. Lewis Reay, “Towards a Transgender Theology: Que(e)rying the Eunuchs,” in Trans/formations, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Marcella Althaus-Reid (London: SCM, 2009), 165. 23. Sian Taylder, “Shot from Both Sides: Theology and the Woman Who Isn’t Quite What She Seems,” in Trans/formations, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Marcella Althaus-Reid (London: SCM, 2009), 73. 24. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 26. 25. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 26. 26. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume One: The Will To Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1998), 59. 27. A rare exception to this is the outro to Around The World In A Day’s “Temptation,” in which Prince is told by a deep voice “you have to want her for the right reasons” and he promises “I’ll be good/this time I promise/love is more important than sex.” Though the conflict between sex and God animates the work of Marvin Gaye, for instance, this is rarely a thematic for Prince in the same way. 28. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 120. 29. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 120. 30. Jose Estaban Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 7. 31. Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 200.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Althaus-Reid, Marcella. Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. The Queer God. London: Routledge, 2003. Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Translated by Richard Howard. London: Vintage, 1978. Boesel, Chris, and Catherine Keller. “Introduction.” In Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality, edited by Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume One: The Will To Knowledge. Translated by Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1998. Halberstam, Jack. Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Irigaray, Luce: This Sex Which Is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Jordan, Mark D. “In Search of Queer Theology Lost.” In Sexual Disorientations: Queer Temporalities, Affects, Theologies, edited by Kent L. Brintnall, Joseph A. Marchal, Stephen D. Moore, 296–308. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. Munoz, Jose Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Reay, Lewis. “Towards a Transgender Theology: Que(e)rying the Eunuchs.” In Trans/formations, edited by Lisa Isherwood and Marcella Althaus-Reid, 148–67. London: SCM, 2009. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Stone, Ken. “The Garden of Eden and the Heterosexual Contract.” In Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler, edited by Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St. Ville, 48–71. New York: Columbia, 2006. Taylder, Sian. “Shot from Both Sides: Theology and the Woman Who Isn’t Quite What She Seems.” In Trans/formations, edited by Lisa Isherwood and Marcella Althaus-Reid, 70–91. London: SCM, 2009. Taylor, Mark C. About Religion: Economies of Faith in Virtual Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999.

Chapter 5

Parables from the (Animal) Kingdom Will Stockton

Prince did not eat his last meal: roasted red pepper bisque, kale and spring vegetable salad. Ray Roberts, the artist’s personal chef, found the food in the refrigerator when he returned to Paisley Park a few days after Prince’s death on April 21, 2016.1 Roberts told the press that Prince had recently been eating less and drinking more water. The artist “suffered from frequent sore throats and seemed to be losing weight,” according to the story. So Roberts prepared smoothies and juices, easy-to-digest food for an artist widely known for eschewing meat, alcohol, and drugs. Prince’s favorite dishes, according to Roberts, included roasted beetroot and pesto broccolini. As soon as news of Prince’s death broke, rumors swirled about of an opioid overdose. But Roberts dampened them. There was “not even a hint” that Prince abused prescription drugs, he claimed. *** My most recent meal––which, I trust, will not be my last (I write this section on September 2, 2018)––I ate in full: red curry quinoa with tempeh. The meal came courtesy of Green Chef, a meal delivery service. I signed up for the vegan plan, which provides me and my husband with three dinners each week. It’s enough food for him, not quite for me. I made a side salad using leftover collard greens. I also grilled a small tuna steak. The soundtrack for tonight’s meal prep included “Joint 2 Joint,” track seven on the second disc of Prince’s Emancipation (1996). Riding along a smooth synth loop before breaking into a series of raps and interludes, the song spins the loose tale of a one-night stand. The next morning, Prince, in 79

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robotic monotone, tries to give the girl the boot: “Oh great, now you think you’re my soulmate / You don’t even know what kind of cereal I like.” You imagine she says something innocuous like “Chex.” But Prince shames her: “Wrong! Cap’n Crunch.” He adds, “With soy milk / Because cows are for calves,” and then accuses her of gold-digging. “Joint 2 Joint” contains one of several references to veganism in the Prince catalog––and I’ve played the song for this reason. I’ve played it to remind myself of Prince’s tone (“Wrong!”), his Aristotelian rationale (“cows are for calves”), and his use of veganism as a rhetorical weapon to alienate the woman he seduced the night before with the promise of licking her joint to joint like a piece of meat. Something similar happens in “Gett Off,” from Diamonds and Pearls (1991). Prince invites a woman back to his “Paisley crib” and asks her what she wants to eat: “Ribs? / Ha, toy, I don’t serve ribs.” I used to mishear “toy” as “Tori,” and think about Tori standing there in the Paisley Park kitchen, momentarily taken aback and hungry, the refrigerator stocked with tofu, veggies, and soy milk. See, too “Chelsea Rodgers,” one of Prince’s last great funk tracks, off Planet Earth (2007). Rodgers isn’t like Tori or the nameless woman in “Joint 2 Joint.” She is the late Prince’s vision of a female “role model”: a chaste Jehovah’s Witness. Any prospective husband “must be baptized / According to the master plan.” Although the Jehovah’s Witnesses place no restriction on an adherent’s diet other than a prohibition against the consumption of blood (following Genesis 9:4), Rodgers also “don’t eat no meat.” I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness. Raised an evangelical Christian in Atlanta, Georgia, in the 1980s and 1990s, I became an atheist in college and remain so today. I’m also gay and married––a fact of which the Jehovah’s Witness Prince would surely disapprove. Still, the fish in my freezer, and tonight on my plate, represents a compromise I’ve made with some of the religious values I once shared with Prince––an artist who, like no other, but also like he did for so many others, shaped my understanding of sexuality and spirituality. Cue me driving back from Mount Vernon Baptist Church, age seventeen, rapping every word to the extended remix of “Gett Off.” Cue me, age twenty, buying soy milk for my Cap’n Crunch, a cereal I didn’t even like. *** Prince did not convert me to vegetarianism, but he helped. At age fourteen, I converted in accordance with my reading of scripture. My Christian friends assured me that my interpretation was wrong. Had not God shown Peter a

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vision of a sheet descending from heaven? The sheet “contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds.” An animal buffet. A meat smorgasbord. “Get up, Peter,” a voice commands. “Kill and eat.” Peter objects, “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” He knows the law. But the voice rebukes him: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 9:12–15. NIV). At Mount Vernon Baptist Church and Mount Vernon Christian Academy (the latter my small private high school), I tired of this argument about clean and unclean animals, New Testament versus Old Testament diets. When Emancipation dropped in 1996, my senior year, Prince afforded me a new way to explain myself. I skipped the bit about Adam and Eve, the lion and the lamb, and snapped, “Cows are for calves.” It was something of a non sequitur: Prince goes after milk, not burgers, on “Joint 2 Joint.” Also, calves don’t eat cows. Still, I thought the statement so cool, so incisive a principle that, like the sword of scripture itself (Hebrews 4:12), it would surely slice through any confusion about what humans, Christian or non-Christian, should eat. I remained a vegetarian for six years, through four years of high school and two years of college. In the beginning, I tried to go vegan––to join what Anthony Bourdain so memorably called the “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarians, fantastical priests of a “temple that should not be polluted by animal protein.” But my mother drew the line at buying me non-dairy milk.2 Then, in 1999, I went on a date with a boy who talked me into ordering shrimp. Over dinner, we talked about growing up Christian, coming out of the closet, and leaving our faith behind. *** Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays, which they associate with pagan ritualism, and with an unbeliever’s understanding of time. “A good name is better than good oil,” writes the author of Ecclesiastes, “and the day of death is better than the day of birth. Better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for that is the end of every man, and the living should take it to heart” (7:2, NWT).3 In a 1998 interview at Paisley Park with The Spice Girls’ Mel B, the newly converted Prince explains, “We came here not knowing we were going to die. Someone told us that. If we never knew we were going to die, we wouldn’t celebrate birthdays . . . I’ll celebrate the day I die.”4 “Because you’re going to move onto the next path in life?” Mel B asks. Prince nods, points a finger in enthusiastic affirmation. In truth, Jehovah’s Witnesses adhere to a complex eschatology in which “the last days”

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commenced during the month of October 1914; that was the month Christ ascended to the throne of heaven and cast Satan down to rule on earth. According to standard Jehovah’s Witness theology, we live now on the eve of Armageddon. But Prince’s point seems to be that measuring time out in human lives is antithetical to life everlasting in the Kingdom. Or as Prince sings in “Chelsea Rodgers,” “The day that we stop counting / We live as long as a tree.” *** The truth of veganism came back to me like a revelation shortly after my thirtieth birthday. Its source: a 2007 editorial by law professor and animal rights philosopher Gary Francione. Opining on public condemnation of NFL player Michael Vick for his dog-fighting operation, Francione proposed that Vick’s actions were no different than the actions of any of us who attend a barbeque. Pitting dog against dog, roasting a pig on a spit, it was all the same. But what about our need for meat? For animal protein? Francione writes, “There is no ‘need’ for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet. We impose pain, suffering and death on these billions of sentient nonhumans because we enjoy eating their flesh and the products we make from them.”5 I read these words on my computer in my home office in Fishers, Indiana, brought to the editorial by some now forgotten series of hyperlinks. Francione’s moral clarity was bracing––convincing and convicting. It cut through all my post-Christian excuses for eating meat, however “humanely” raised. When it came to consuming animal protein of any sort, there was no need, only my desire for pleasure, which wasn’t sufficient justification. That night I told my husband that I would no longer buy him yogurt during my weekly grocery run. “Well, dear,” he said, “it sounds like you’re joining a cult.” *** What sort of mythologizing––of theologizing––hinders someone like Ray Roberts, someone close to Prince, from suspecting that he had a drug problem?6 One answer: the body is a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19), and Prince––a Seventh-Day Adventist turned spiritual seeker turned Jehovah’s Witness–– that temple’s high priest.

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Temple rules forbade drug abuse: “Put down the needle / Put down the spoon,” Prince admonishes on “The Love We Make.” Listen to music instead. He says it plainly in the oft-bootlegged “Purple Music”: “Don’t need no reefer, don’t need no cocaine / Purple music does the same to my brain.” Listen also to “We Can Funk” (recorded, ironically enough, with George Clinton): “I’m testing positive for the funk / I’ll gladly pee in anybody’s cup.” Or the intro to “Eye No”: “The reason my voice is so clear is there’s no smack on my brain.” See, too, “Sign o’ the Times,” which draws a straight line between smoking weed and shooting heroin. Even “Clouds” (from 2014’s Art Official Age), which disses the internet in favor of intimacy (“Never underestimate the power of a kiss on the neck”) sounds, on first listen, like an antidrug message: “We’ll get to something higher that doesn’t require clouds.” Such testimonies of temple purity make it hard to imagine Prince popping pills, even if those pills were one way that Prince worked to keep the temple open. We now know that Prince secreted away bottles of painkillers all around his purple kingdom. He had been using opioids for years to treat chronic pain resulting from decades of acrobatic onstage performances. Rumor had also long held that Prince needed a double hip replacement but refused the surgery, citing the Jehovah’s Witness prohibition against blood transfusion. We now know he underwent the surgery regardless in 2010. A “purist,” in several senses, to most everyone who knew him, Prince treated the debilitating effects of time on the body in secret. *** When I became a vegan at thirty, I scoffed at the idea that there was anything religious about my conversion. I had lost my Christian faith in internet chat rooms many years previous, worn down by a boy named Dan who cited Ayn Rand like I cited God. My midlife veganism was principled but atheistic; it did not require a God who dictated or even expressed preferences about the human diet. All my veganism required was commitment to a moral principle: that, as Gary Francione often formulates it, it’s wrong to harm animals for reasons of amusement, convenience, or pleasure. Of course, the religious studies scholar, if not any believer, could also say my veganism required adherence to a principle I could no more prove than assert as an article of faith. The moral psychologist could say, too, that my belief in this principle precipitated a resurrection of my adolescent evangelism––an enthusiastic

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witness for the Truth of Veganism on Facebook and Twitter, over awkward dinner conversations, in blog posts.7 These possible translations gesture toward what makes religion itself so hard to define, and religious practice so hard for even atheists like me to escape. *** In an October 1997 interview with Vegetarian Times, Prince (then a glyph, so the interviewer calls him The Artist) testifies to the health benefits of his recent conversion to veganism. “I’ve not eaten red meat for about ten years now,” he says. “I’ve always had a preference for all things vegetarian but not until recently did I figure out how good they were for you (in a physical sense).”8 Prince preaches a hodgepodge of spiritual ideas in this interview: auras, reincarnation, oneness, and the spirit: “I have energy, and most of all, my aura is stronger. . . . Vegetarianism is a natural step for anyone seeking oneness with the spirit. The conscience is powerful (in a good way) when clear and weak when not.” He starts by citing the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not kill means just that! We don’t have to kill things to survive. In fact, the complete opposite happens. If you kill, you will die.” It’s a fluff piece. Prince strings together a vaguely Christian, vaguely “Eastern” justification for refusing to “eat anything with parents.” And the interviewer lets him because Prince’s face on the cover will sell copies. When I first read the interview, as a vegetarian myself, I found Prince’s veganism admirable––at that point enviable. But I also found his theological justification sloppy, a clumsy form of witnessing. As someone used to wielding the sword of scripture, I wished he hadn’t said anything more than “cows are for calves.” *** In I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon, Touré argues that Prince owed the foundations of his religious imaginary to Seventh-Day Adventism (SDA), the largest denominational offshoot of the Millerite movement that swept America in the 1800s.9 The Millerites believed the Lord was coming––on October 22, 1844, to be exact. When that day passed, an event known as the Great Disappointment, some adherents abandoned the faith. Others, known as Adventists, doubled down on the apocalyptic predictions. One of SDA’s founders, Ellen G. White (1827–1915), testified to having

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received over 200 visions from the Almighty, many of them about the end of the world. The song “1999” famously announces itself as a vision from God: “Don’t worry,” the deity intones (it’s Prince, his vocals slowed to a sludge), “I won’t hurt you. I only want you to have some fun.” The scene comes straight out of the book of Revelation, if not the writings of Ellen G. White herself. The sky turns purple. People run everywhere. But, as Touré writes, Prince “isn’t afraid because he knows what’s happening. . . . He knows death is a portal to Heaven.”10 Yet Prince’s prescription for living through the end of days is not exactly Ellen G. White’s. Whereas White preaches temperance and chastity, Prince preaches partying and fucking. “1999” gives way to “Little Red Corvette,” a song about a one-night stand that succeeds in transforming the sports car into a vaginal, rather than phallic, metaphor.11 “Delirious” celebrates the orgasmic loss of bodily control as Prince begs to go “up and down, in and out and around your lake.” “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” at least nods toward Christian ideals of monogamy, even as Prince moans about his sincere desire to “fuck the taste out of your mouth.” “D.M.S.R.” then spells out the only things worth living for: dance, music, sex, romance. And those are only the first five tracks on this double album. Prince had patterned this Christian twist on carpe diem before, especially on Controversy (1981). The recitation of the Lord’s Prayer over the bridge of the album’s title track prepares the way for Prince’s perversion of that prayer: “People call me rude / I wish we all were nude / I wish there was no black and white / I wish there were no rules.” See also “Sexuality”: “You don’t need no money / You don’t need no clothes / The Second Coming / Anything goes.” As Prince theorizes it, “sexuality” is a force both theological and political. The command to “let your body be free” not only joins the funk war against racism; it also protests the enslavement of the flesh to this fallen earth. “Let me take you to another world,” Prince offers––to a heaven in which bodies are not encumbered by color or clothes. *** For God’s people living at the end of days, Ellen G. White prescribed a life of moderation. “I was shown,” she writes, “that intemperance would prevail in the world to an alarming extent, and that every one of the people of God must take an elevated stand in regard to reformation in habits and practices.”12 Prince’s early hedonism enacts the intemperance that White prophesied would overtake the world. In a career marked by the performance of oppositions––male and female, God and Satan, moralizer and pornographer––early

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career Prince acted out a one-man SDA eschatological theater. As his career developed, he acted out, too, a reformation in habits and practices that eventually carried him into the camp of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to a wincing reflection on his young boundary-pushing self. Yet what White meant by “a reformation in habits and practices” was less immediately sexual than dietary, the “intemperance” of which she spoke less orgiastic than gluttonous. All around her, White saw sickness. Bodies crippled by the ingestion of meat, caffeine, and tobacco. She believed that abstaining from meat restored her to health in late adolescence. She testified, too, that God had confirmed her belief: “I was shown that God would give to His commandmentkeeping people a reform diet, and that as they received this, their disease and suffering would be greatly lessened.”13 As my evangelical adolescent self would have told you, scripture itself indicates that humans would do well to abstain from the consumption of animals. According to the parable of Genesis 1, Adam and Eve did not eat meat: “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it” (v. 29). Neither, it seems, did the animals all over the kingdom eat one another. God authorized the consumption of animal flesh only after the flood (Genesis 9:3–4), separating the clean from unclean, and prohibiting the eating of animals that had not been drained of their blood. According to the prophet Isaiah, inhabitants of heaven and the New Earth would again be vegetarian: “The wolf and lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain” (Isaiah 65:25; see also 11:6–7). Never mind Peter’s vision in Act 9, or what God had granted fallen humans permission to consume in this interim period between the flood and the establishment of heaven on earth. A vegetarian diet––or rather a vegan one, entirely plant-based––was clearly God’s ideal. Or as Ellen White put it, “With our first parents, intemperate desire resulted in the loss of Eden. Temperance in all things has more to do with our restoration to Eden than men realize.”14 Today, Seventh-Day Adventists incline toward vegetarianism. Their reform diet, like my adolescent vegetarianism, reflects their belief in God as Creator––both of Eden and heaven, but also of earth, the place in-between. SDA vegetarianism is reflective in that it looks back to prelapsarian existence, and anticipatory. It looks forward to, and enacts, the end of time, when the lion will lay down with the lamb. *** In June of 2018, I quit veganism after eight years of lawful adherence.

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My reasons weren’t great. I wanted to lose twenty, maybe thirty pounds. I felt gross. My stomach slumped over my beltline. My cheeks and neck betrayed nighttime snacking. Cutting back on the amount of food I ate only made me hungry. Exercising made me hungrier still. I blamed my vegan diet, which was, of necessity, high in carbohydrates (the latest enemy of fit people everywhere). I do not eat junk food; I have long been a strict natural foodie. I already exercise a lot: I run, I swim, I Crossfit (a cult of sorts in and of itself). My current iTunes exercise playlist kicks off with Prince’s “Let’s Work.” I have alienated friends––and probably prevented myself from making a few––by vegan-shaming them. By insisting, relentlessly, that people, especially relatively well-off people, only eat meat for pleasure, and that pleasure is no good reason for killing. However religious my belief, I wasn’t wrong. I still believe that principle. But approaching forty years old, my body simply wasn’t metabolizing carbohydrates at the rate it once did. My sixteen-year-old son, who eats whatever he wants, most of it from Burger King, suggested there would be other ways: “Have you tried meth, dad?” I had not. Yet by cutting carbs and substituting eggs and fish, I dropped twenty-eight pounds in three months. I had more energy. I slept better. Through sin, I restored my temple. *** My parable of a midlife crisis is as old as time. I imagine Adam and Eve lived in the garden for a long while before the serpent approached with the apple, with the lie that they would not die. In Prince’s version of this parable, a man tries to escape time by refusing to mark time. As he said on Dutch TV in 1999, “I don’t celebrate birthdays, so that stops me from counting days, which stops me from counting time, which allows me to still look the same as I did ten years ago.”15 Prince stands up, wiggles his hips, earns his laugh. But he means what he says. *** At some point in the 2000s, if not at several points, Prince admitted animal products into his diet. He told George Lopez in 2011 that he ate vegetarian, not vegan, though he always “stay[ed] away from red meat.”16 That same

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year, he allowed the magazine Heavy Table into his Paisley Park refrigerator, the contents of which included kimchi, soy creamer, yak’s milk, and a log of Braunschweiger.17 In 2014, he told the Arsenio audience that he could only cook one dish: omelets.18 Did he eat that sausage? Did he eat fish? I do not know. My own decision to eat fish, as opposed to chicken or red meat, was based entirely on dubious claims about fish’s relative lack of sentience. I will tell you that it is wrong to harm animals, fish included, for reasons of pleasure, amusement, or convenience. I have several times refused my son’s request to go fishing. I now eat fish. The eggs are easier to justify. They come from the chickens that live in my backyard: hens I took off a friend’s hands for the sole reason that I wanted omelets. These chickens will not be sent to slaughter when they cease laying. They are free to root around in the dirt, digging for worms, for the rest of their lives. A small restoration of Eden, perhaps. *** The Prince of my vegetarian adolescence was not Touré’s 1980s SDA funkmaster. I was too young then. As 1999 rode the charts, I danced in front of the TV to Fraggle Rock and scaled the living room bookshelf to spin Steve Winwood’s Arc of a Diver. The Prince I encountered as a teenager in the 1990s was studying scripture with former Sly and the Family Stone bassist Larry Graham. This Prince could take eleven minutes telling you how badly he wanted to fuck you (“Come”). But this Prince also seemed to be on the edge of conversion. He had married Mayte Garcia, his soul mate, the most beautiful girl in the world. He had made a triple album (Emancipation) celebrating marital love. He seemed, for once, settled––almost saved. In the 1990s, I needed the Prince I encountered to convert to Christianity, or to hover near conversion. (I knew nothing of his SDA upbringing, and I strategically abstained on the question of whether Jehovah’s Witnesses were true Christians.) Being his fan––a Prince fanatic, potentially in violation of the first and second commandments (Exodus 20:3–6)––was otherwise too morally discordant, incongruous with my evangelical values, my belief, with the apostle Paul, that it was our duty as Christians to fill our minds with “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable . . . excellent or praiseworthy” (Philippians 4:8, NIV). Prince’s catalog, while almost always excellent, was not always pure. But for every “Come,” there was an “Elephants and Flowers.” For every “Joint 2

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Joint,” a “Holy River” or “The One.” For every “Gett Off,” a “God” or “The Cross.” Only much later would I learn that this push and pull between sex and God was written into the heart of rock and roll. Only later would I learn that Jerry Lee Lewis believed he was going to hell. That Little Richard temporarily quit the business to record gospel. That Elvis attributed his lascivious hips to his Pentecostal upbringing.19 In his epistle to the Romans, Paul writes that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (3:23). It’s a verse most evangelicals, if not most Christians, know by heart: a foundation for the doctrine of original sin, but also a humbling reminder of universal human fallibility, our propensity for sin. Prince had sinned. I had sinned. Indeed, I had sinned by listening to Prince––by rapping to “Gett Off” on the way home from church, and by mentally substituting Tori for a boy I wanted to strip like “a Peter Paul’s Almond Joy.” But, in the language of my childhood, Prince also “sought God.” Listen to “Eye No”: “There was confusion / Lightning all around me / That’s when I called his name / Don’t you know he found me.” Or “Thunder,” with its “promise to see Jesus in the morning light.” Or “The Ladder”: “Everybody wants salvation of the soul.” At home, I carefully selected which Prince tracks to play in my parents’ presence. While they were not overly censorious people, they would nonetheless have disapproved had they heard me listening to “Sexy M.F.” or “Scarlet Pussy.” I curated a playlist of Christian-friendly Prince tracks for my home stereo and stored my copy of Come underneath the passenger seat of my car. That was how I made peace with Prince: I divided him, myself, in two, and held the Purple One poised on the edge of Christian conversion. In private, I traded the Prince of peace for the Prince of pleasure. *** This division between pleasure and peace, public religiosity and private eroticism, is one Prince himself never allowed. For Prince, as so often noted, sexuality and spirituality were one and the same aspect of human experience. To be embodied was to desire, and to desire was to desire both other people’s bodies and God. He called the highest expression of this desire “love,” and did not so much measure it against, as placed it on a continuum with, physical attraction and sex. Prince was always something of a Christian mystic, a medieval spiritualist in erotic commune with the divine. As something of a testament to this religious tradition, he even stages a miracle play at the end of “Temptation,” the final song on Around the World in a Day (1985). After Prince writhes in

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sexual agony for most of the song’s seven minutes, his body set aflame with a “hot flash of animal lust,” God shows up to condemn the beast to death: “Oh, silly man, that’s not how it works. You have to want her for the right reasons.” Prince repents, professing to understand that “love is more important than sex.” But he does not renounce sex. Only demotes it. Furthermore, when Prince comes back to life on Parade (1986), he’s as sexy and spiritual as ever. “The chord strikes,” Prince sings over the opening track’s ferocious barrage of beats, “the devil no like” (“Christopher Tracy’s Parade”). The whole album sounds like sex music to beat back Satan. Perhaps that’s one reason Prince resonated so much with me as a horny evangelical teenager. Prince did not ask us to abandon God in order to have sex. He asked us to draw closer to God, but with our bodies. Prince retained this mystical understanding of God when he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He cleaned up his act, going so far as to revise the lyrics of his old songs for new, family-friendly performances. He made a whole album, 2001’s The Rainbow Children, promoting the most conservative of sexual values. “Stay with me baby,” Prince sings, “But let me tell you how it’s going to be / There’s a theocratic order” (“1+1+1=3”). Yet the album’s as sensual as anything Prince ever wrote. On The Rainbow Children, sex joins spouses in the “sensual everafter”––outside time––where anything goes: “Anything to get you wet,” Prince moans (“Mellow”). *** “She don’t like no beef,” Prince sings of his soul mate (his second, Manuela Testolini, if we read the song autobiographically) on The Rainbow Children (“She Loves Me 4 Me”).20 Only now it’s not clear whether he means animal flesh or arguing with her husband. *** The worst song in the Prince catalog is “Animal Kingdom,” which Prince dedicated to PETA and included on his 1997 acoustic album The Truth. In it, Prince schools a friend (Spike Lee, who had recently appeared in a Got Milk? ad) on the idiocy of drinking cow juice. The song is cloyingly earnest, evangelical in the least inspired way. Prince’s stretched-out vocals most closely approximate a long whine. A dolphin chatters in the background as Prince beseeches us to “leave [our] brothers and sisters in the sea.”

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The interviewer for Vegetarian Times asks whether “fans of your music might be put off by the message of songs like ‘Animal Kingdom’ or by the public declaration of your vegetarianism.”21 It’s a fair question. Prior to 1997, Prince’s message had been something like “the world is ending, so let’s dance.” Now he’s moaning about the ills of blue cheese. Prince responds: “Fan is short for ‘fanatic.’ I call my supporters ‘friends.’ My friends are very forward-thinking individuals. I’m not sure how many are meat eaters but soon all will know the consequences of a barbarian lifestyle. It’s called karma! My music is dictated by the spirit. Not worrying about people’s reaction is what has sustained me, I believe.” Based on this response, I’m not sure whether I’m being a fan or a friend for dumping on “Animal Kingdom.” Even as a vegan, I found the song loathsome. It reminds me of nothing so much as Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The verse provides me with a way to understand such a musical abomination, Prince’s abandonment of veganism, my own. *** In 2008, The New Yorker’s Claire Hoffman sat down with Prince at his house in Los Angeles, a city he said he moved to for religious reasons: “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.”22 By saying that everyone in LA has the same religion, Prince means that they all have the same false religion. For Jehovah’s Witnesses, all other religions are the same wrong one. Hoffman opens the piece with a description of Prince’s opulent rented digs. His Purple Majesty has installed two purple thrones in the living room, one on either side of the fireplace. The wall boasts pictures of Prince “in various states of undress.” Hoffman does not mention that Prince still believes––or believes once again––that he lives in the end of days. “All across the nation / People doing what they can / To avoid a tribulation / That will be great throughout the land,” Prince had sung a year before on “Get on the Boat.” Hoffman is more interested in what about his thinking has changed. When she asks the Jehovah’s Witness writer of Dirty Mind his opinion on the issues of gay marriage and abortion, Prince raps his fingers on the Bible and says, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was like, ‘Enough.’”

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After The New Yorker story broke, Prince allegedly, through an unnamed source, claimed he was misquoted: “What His Purpleness actually did was gesture to the Bible and said he follows what it teaches, referring mainly to the parts about loving everyone and refraining from judgment.”23 But I doubt that’s true. There’s a world of difference between pointing out that God flooded away all the perverts and claiming that you don’t judge. Prince was performing his uncompromising self––then backpedaling, maybe, through a back channel. Prince had said, and done, worse. Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin reported in 2004 that they had attempted a Revolution reunion in 2000. But Prince refused to participate. “He declined because of my homosexuality,” Melvoin said, “and the fact that I’m half-Jewish.” He said he would perform only if she became a Jehovah’s Witness and renounced homosexuality. Melvoin was resigned: “I was like: I guess we’ll never see him again.” But no. They regrouped in 2006 for a performance in London. They collaborated, too, on “Resolution,” which appeared on Planet Earth. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. *** What kind of mythologizing––of theologizing––accounted for my shock when it was revealed that Prince had a drug problem? Prince’s own: the image of himself as one who stood outside time. This self-image was deeply embedded in Prince’s psyche, and in Prince’s public performance of himself. SDA’s Ellen G. White offered the people of God her reform diet as a way to avoid sickness, to escape pain. Prince began taking painkillers for the same reason. This is not to say that he understood his own drug use as a religious experience. It is to hazard the claim that for Prince, the appeal of SDA and Jehovah’s Witness eschatology, of vegetarianism and veganism, of opioids themselves, all emerged from the same place: a desire to survive embodiment, to escape the physically corrosive effects of time. It is to hazard the claim that like Prince’s faith in the impending Armageddon, like my own return to eating fish and eggs, the painkillers held Prince in abeyance––they kept the man who professed not to believe in time poised in the end times, the space between Eden and whatever comes after. The painkillers kept Prince living in what, on The Rainbow Children, he calls “The Everlasting Now”: not a future or a past but an eternal present brought about by “accurate knowledge of Christ and the Father,” and a diet devoid of animal flesh. Finally, it is to hazard the claim that “accurate knowledge” made Prince, like me, equal parts evangelical and asshole––as vulnerable to sin as he was to judge the sin of others. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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NOTES 1. “Prince’s Last Supper Went Untouched, Says Musician’s Personal Chef,” The Guardian, May 2, 2016, https​://ww​w.the​guard​ian.c​om/mu​sic/2​016/m​ay/02​/prin​ces-l​ ast-s​upper​-went​-unto​uched​-says​-musi​cians​-pers​onal-​chef.​ 2. Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 70. 3. When quoting verses relevant to Jehovah’s Witness theology, I use the New World Translation, produced by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, as opposed to the New International Version. 4. “Prince Interview Mel B 1998 Paisley Park,” YouTube, https​://ww​w.you​tube.​ com/w​atch?​v=7Ls​ZoWBA​Ikc&t​=491s​. 5. Gary L. Francione, “We’re All Michael Vick,” Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach, http:​//www​.abol​ition​istap​proac​h.com​/medi​a/lin​ks/p1​04/ph​ilade​lphia​-dail​ y.pdf​. From Francione, see also Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or Your Dog? (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000); and Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 6. Even if we take him at his word, Ray Roberts’ lack of suspicion regarding Prince’s drug problem sounds unbelievable. Roberts would know that Prince’s plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, on April 15, 2016. The plane diverted to Moline on its way back to Minneapolis, following what would be Prince’s final concert at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. The pilot reported an “unresponsive male” on board. Rumor had it that paramedics administered a “save shot” of Narcan (naloxone hydrochloride). Prince spent three hours in the hospital, and then checked himself out. His spokesperson blamed the flu. I have had the flu several times. It has never rendered me unresponsive. 7. See, for example, Will Stockton and Karen Tongson, “Triggers and Lions and Vegans, Oh My!: From a Comment War to a Conversation about Cecil and the Ethics of Eating,” Bully Bloggers, August 27, 2015, https​://bu​llybl​ogger​s.wor​dpres​s.com​ /2015​/08/2​7/veg​giesm​ackdo​wn/. 8. Catherine Censor Shemo, “A Prince of a Guy: The Rocker with a ‘Bad Boy’ Rep Talks to Vegetarian Times about the Loves of His Life: His Wife, Music, and Vanilla Soymilk,” Vegetarian Times, October 1997, https​://si​tes.g​oogle​.com/​site/​ prnin​tervi​ews/h​ome/v​egeta​rian-​times​-octo​ber-1​997. 9. Touré, I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). Touré likewise grounds the apocalyptic dimensions of Prince’s religious imaginary in the Cold War experience of a world on the brink of nuclear destruction. 10. Touré, I Would Die 4 U, 140–41. 11. Ben Greenman, Dig if You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God, and Genius in the Music of Prince (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2017), 73–74. 12. Ellen Gould White, Counsels on Health (Ellen G. White Publications, 1923), 559, https​://m.​egwwr​iting​s.org​/en/b​ook/2​0/toc​. 13. White, Counsels on Health, 559.

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14. White, Counsels on Health, 48. 15. “Interview Prince and Larry Graham TROS TV SHOW,” YouTube, https​:// ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=YZB​xo1_r​XPM&t​=498s​. 16. “Prince Interview on George Lopez 2011,” YouTube, https​://ww​w.you​tube.​ com/w​atch?​v=mcg​vcqVH​JC0&t​=330s​. 17. “What’s in Prince’s Fridge?” Heavy Table, April 1, 2011, http:​//hea​vytab​le.co​ m/wha​ts-in​-prin​ces-f​ridge​/. 18. “Prince on The Arsenio Hall Show Full Episode,” September 16, 2014, YouTube, https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=pUV​ZW6-r​ZKw. 19. Randall J. Stephens, The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ‘n’ Roll (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 20. Mayte Garcia reads this album as a thinly veiled narrative of Prince’s courtship of and marriage to Manuela Testolini. In this reading, Garcia figures as the album’s Banished One. See The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince (New York: Hachette, 2017), 266–67. 21. Shemo, “A Prince of a Guy.” 22. Claire Hoffman, Soup with Prince, The New Yorker, November 24, 2008, https​ ://ww​w.new​yorke​r.com​/maga​zine/​2008/​11/24​/soup​-with​-prin​ce. 23. Daniel Kreps, “Prince Irate after Allegations He’s Anti-Gay Marriage,” Rolling Stone, November 18, 2008, https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/m​usic/​music​-news​/prin​ ce-ir​ate-a​fter-​alleg​ation​s-hes​-anti​-gay-​marri​age-8​2103/​.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Garcia, Mayte. The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince. New York: Hachette, 2017. Greenman, Ben. Dig if You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God, and Genius in the Music of Prince. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2017. Stephens, Randall J. The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ‘n’ Roll. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Touré. I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. White, Ellen Gould. Counsels on Health. Ellen G. White Publications, 1923. https​ ://m.​egwwr​iting​s.org​/en/b​ook/2​0/toc​.

Chapter 6

“Dance with the Devil” The Paradox of Prince’s Spooky Songs Stefan Sereda

This chapter revels in paradox as expressed through Prince Rogers Nelson’s music, and, more specifically, through his “Spooky songs,” which I propose as a shorthand for a body of Prince lyrics personifying devils, describing hellish landscapes, and addressing sin. However jubilant or cautionary, the Spooky songs—which are named for Spooky Electric, a moniker Prince ascribes to the devil on 1988’s Lovesexy album—provide a counterpoint to the meditations on Christian spirituality found in his “Sunday songs.” The label “Sunday songs” originates with recording engineer Susan Rogers, who notes, “almost all of Prince’s songs with religious or spiritual overtones— ‘God,’ ‘The Cross,’ ‘Sign o’ the Times’—were recorded on Sundays.”1 Prince fans and biographers have since adopted this tag for addressing his more spiritual and overtly political songs.2 For lack of a contrasting canon, the Spooky songs have thus far merited less discussion, except by reactionary parties seeking to vilify Prince’s output, such as the Parental Music Resource Center.3 I put forward this chapter to begin accounting for the noted gap in critical attention and provoke further discussion of a thematic thread snaking its way through Prince’s artistic output. The Spooky songs offer imaginative representations of all things sinful, and when juxtaposed with the Sunday songs, they reveal how paradox manifests as an overarching conceit in Prince’s lyrical oeuvre. The Spooky songs also qualify the overt Christian spirituality he professed throughout most of his career. Despite Prince’s Christian leanings, several of his songs illustrate the flipside of those values. Prince represents himself as a paradox, and despite his Christian messaging, his deliberately confounding lyrical statements lend him an impish trickster persona. Moreover, these enigmas invite the listener toward an abject, hellish meaninglessness. The Devil appears wearing multiple guises throughout Prince’s oeuvre and becomes a necessary trickster 95

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archetype personifying sin, suffering, and temptation as well as an enemy against whom Prince positions himself, his God, community, ideology, and spirituality. Holy figures that appear in Prince’s works, such as angels, exist alongside lesser demons that manifest personal and social tragedies. Prince also regales the listener with tales of demonic pseudo-succubi who punish his torturously pleasurable and hence paradoxical lust, rather than celebrate his lovemaking in a manner similar to the angels in “Adore.” In addition to lust, Prince thematized blasphemy to contrast his prideful boasting and messianic promises of salvation. Furthermore, the liberated, utopian locales he promised in songs such as “Paisley Park” only exist as heavenly oases if they appear against a harsher backdrop. Prince juxtaposes these utopias with the eternal Hell as well as landscapes that resemble Hell-on-Earth. Ironically, Prince’s most pious album, the Jehovah’s Witness-inspired The Rainbow Children, delivers his most thorough reckoning with “spooky” iconography. Whereas the album preaches against sin and the Devil, it provides further evidence that the Devil was necessary to Prince’s religious pontifications. I suggest that his devotion to paradox is as pervasive as his commitment to Christianity. THE PRINCE PARADOX The Oxford English Dictionary defines “paradox” as “a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well-founded or true.”4 Two statements Prince makes on the album Come illustrate this definition: at the beginning of “Space,” Prince announces “I’ve never been one to hide my feelings,” whereas the first lyrics of “Letitgo” assert, “All my life I’ve kept my feelings deep inside.” Taken together, these statements regarding Prince’s lifelong approach to self-expression form an absurd contradiction that nevertheless proves true when certain possibilities are accepted—for example, that Prince does not know himself, that he understands his feelings as ambivalent and his psyche as “containing multitudes,” or that he sings these songs through different poetic personae.5 Alternatively, the OED defines paradox as “a statement or proposition which, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems logically unacceptable or self-contradictory” and “a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.”6 The liar paradox exemplifies the former definition: to announce oneself as a liar is to offer a contradiction: if the statement is true, then the speaker is not lying, and if it is false, then the speaker is telling the truth, and logic collapses in either incidence. Taken at face value, Prince’s contradictory statements as to whether he shares or hides his feelings formulate him as a liar (however intentionally or unintentionally), presenting audiences with a problem of interpretation. As

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for Prince being “a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities,” examples abound, but it is worthwhile to begin with his statement on “My Name is Prince,” where he sings, “I know from righteous, I know from sin / I’ve got two sides, and they’re both friends.” Prince frames his paradoxical identity in explicitly religious terms. In this song where Prince is ostensibly the speaker, the lyrics suggest he embodies a juxtaposition between sin and righteousness where the two coexist if not in peace, then at least in friendship, as separate but somehow united beings. For Prince, one supports the other: without sin for contrast, righteousness is meaningless, and vice versa. Since 1981, Prince has suggested paradox as being fundamental to understanding his persona and oeuvre. In Controversy’s opening lyrics of the first and title track, “I just can’t believe all the things people say, am I black or white? Am I straight or gay? Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?” Prince seems amazed, if not aggravated, at spectators who expect him to fit into singular categories as an either/or rather than a both/and subject. In other words, Prince implies his celebrity is based on paradoxes that encourage dialogue among audiences who should not attempt to limit his persona through a desire to label him rather than understand him. The pairing of questions, “Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?” suggests a potential accusation of blasphemy, if, similar to the preceding questions, they are to be interpreted as existing in an either/or dynamic. The lyrics are elusive, but Prince seems to imply critics are putting him in a trap: if Prince believes in himself, audiences could assume he does not believe in God, and, likewise, if he is not a blasphemous rebel, listeners might conjecture he does not adequately believe in himself. Prince could be implying a paradox in audience demands: they expect piety and adherence to social norms, but also open rejection of those norms. Prince’s early 1980s audience was primarily American, and American society, as edified by Ronald Reagan’s conservative Republican administration, overwhelmingly adhered to Christianity and, simultaneously, to the doctrines of capitalist individualism. On this same track, Prince delivers the Lord’s Prayer before leading his band in his own chant: “People call me rude, I wish we all were nude. I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules.” In the Lord’s Prayer, Prince prays “forgive us our trespasses” and “lead us not into temptation,” implying he understands God’s demarcations of certain acts as sinful, then defiantly wishes such rules did not exist, effectively challenging his deity. Here Prince announces he will follow sinful and spiritual paths simultaneously. Prince’s paradoxical lyrics grant him a devilish trickster persona. The “imp of the perverse” is a metaphor for following the urge to do wrong simply because wrongful action presents itself as an option. The term neatly applies to Prince’s deliberate attempts at confounding his audience with

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contradictory versions of “the truth.” To return to the liar paradox, an impossible claim such as “I always lie” draws the receiver toward the horrifying abject, where meaning collapses.7 In William Friedkin’s film adaption of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Father Merrin warns Father Kerras about abject meaninglessness, stating, “The demon is a liar, it lies to attack us . . . but it will also mix lies with the truth, to confuse us.”8 Even on seemingly righteous tracks such as the confessional “The Sacrifice of Victor,” Prince’s confessions to the listener follow a similar approach (it is true, for example, that Prince was epileptic, but not that his name is Victor). Iago, the impish villain in Shakespeare’s Othello, whom the title character calls a “demi-devil” (5.2. 314), remarks, “I am not what I am” (1.1. 71). Iago’s claim is a Satanic inversion of God’s statement to Moses, “I am what I am.”9 Prince’s conflicting confessions in “Space” and “Letitgo” similarly frustrate any attempt at understanding him except as an impish embodiment of paradox. INFERNAL NAMES In Mark 5:9, the man possessed by demons tells Christ, “My name is Legion [. . .] for we are many.”10 Prince name checks “the Devil” in “Mountains,” “Eye No,” “Face Down,” “Christopher Tracy’s Parade,” and elsewhere. The officially unreleased but leaked track “Dance with the Devil” features the Devil’s most extensive appearance in a Prince lyric. The title references dialogue from the film Batman (1989), for which Prince recorded the soundtrack. The line is a key motif in the film: thug Jack Napier asks young Bruce Wayne after killing his parents, “You ever dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight?”11 Later, after Napier transforms into the Joker, he asks Wayne this question again, and at this moment, the adult Bruce realizes his nemesis is a grown-up version of the same thug who killed his parents, thus fueling Wayne’s pursuit of justice as Batman. The Joker explains, “I always ask that of all my prey. I just like the sound of it.”12 The line’s flippancy makes it more disturbing, as it provides insight into the Joker’s reasonless violence. This moral absurdity brings Wayne into contact with “the abject,” or “the space where meaning breaks down,” from which horror generates. In the Joker’s parlance, to “dance with the devil” is to play with the Absurd, or meaninglessness. The statement is kindred to the demon’s discursive attacks on the priests in The Exorcist, Iago’s declaration that “I am not what I am,” or Prince making contradictory confessions about his feelings on Come. Whether Prince sampled this dialogue on “Batdance” with an awareness of the metaphysical absurdity it implied or because he “just liked the sound of it” remains a mystery. “Dance with the Devil,” on the other hand, depicts the

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Devil as “demon clever” and a “cunning liar” who breeds loveless children and invites the curious to their deaths.13 In Purple Rain’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” “De-elevator” is a figure that tries to “bring us down,” standing in opposition to the “never-ending happiness” of “the Afterworld” promised in the introduction. De-elevator is a hellish contrast to eternal salvation, operating similarly to the Devil as Prince personifies him in Parade’s “Mountains.” Here, the Devil tries to bring down the subject to whom the lyric is addressed by threatening heartbreak and insurmountable, consumptive depression in the form of mountains and a sea overflowing with tears. The similarity between the Devil and De-elevator in these songs suggests De-elevator is among Prince’s guises for the Devil. Prince bookends his 1988 album Lovesexy with two tracks mentioning “Spooky Electric”: “Eye No” and “Positivity.” “Eye No” speaks of Heaven and Hell, contrasts Prince’s “Lord” and the Devil, and finds Prince refusing Spooky Electric for the sake of love and, ultimately, Lovesexy. Spooky Electric reappears in “Positivity,” where, like De-elevator and the Devil in “Mountains,” he becomes aligned with depression and negativity: the “Spooky Electric sound” is a “whirlwind designed to slow you down” that “cuts like a knife” and “tries to get in you.” The Spooky Electric sound’s ability to infest a person is reminiscent of demonic possession. Prince warns, “Give up if you want to and all is lost, Spooky Electric will be your boss.” Later, Prince encourages the listener to “fly high right by Spooky and all that he crawls for, don’t kiss the beast.” “The beast” can be a symbol of primal animal urges, but given Prince’s prolific Biblical referencing, it is worthwhile to consider he is referring to the Beast of Revelation, another name for the Antichrist.14 Spooky Electric is also a malicious foil for “The Dance Electric.” In this track (recorded by Andre Cymone for a 1985 release, with Prince’s own version released in 2017), the Dance Electric (also referenced in the track “God”) is a metaphor for salvation in a world on the brink of apocalypse. Prince notes the dance’s “rhythm is love” and encourages his audience to “love all enemies.” Yet when an enemy arrives in the form of Spooky, who perverts the Dance Electric, Prince tells the listener not to kiss this Beast. Prince also refers to the Antichrist on Controversy’s “Annie Christian,” where “Annie Christian, Annie Christ” serves as a homophone for “antichristian, antichrist.” This is, notably, the first time Prince invokes a demonic figure, and she is gendered in the feminine. Although other witches and succubi follow in later songs, Prince genders the Devil as masculine in “Mountains” and “Christopher Tracy’s Parade,” and Spooky too is male (too little is said of De-elevator for gendered conclusions to be drawn). The title character is a blasphemer, as Prince recounts “the way Annie tells the story, she’s His only son.” This reference strengthens the association between Annie and the Biblical Antichrist, since the Beast blasphemes against God.15 Annie is

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also a “whore,” and given the tracks other allusions to the Book of Revelation, Prince is likely conflating the Antichrist with the Whore of Babylon.16 Prince blames Annie for various crimes and social ills: political corruption, as indicated by the reference to the ABSCAM scandal; assassinations, here manifested in John Lennon’s killing and the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life; and the killing of black children. Notably, Prince suggests the last crime merits the electric chair for Annie. Prince alludes to the Devil’s last incarnation in the Bible as the Beast from the Book of Revelation, but also its first incarnation as the Serpent from Genesis. On “3rd Eye” from the album The Truth, Prince retells the Eden myth, likening the Serpent to Adam’s genitals when it “appears between Adam’s thighs” and “tries to release upon Eve the nectar / The injector tries.” The Serpent, in this case, is Adam’s penis, which is armed with an injector capable of releasing nectar into Eve. The nectar can be seen as a product of the forbidden fruit with which the Serpent of Genesis tempts Eve, provoking her Original Sin.17 In the unreleased “Purple Music,” Prince suggests “we’ll find a serpent to sacrifice / we’ll make a wish and then we’ll visit purple paradise.” Again, the Devil, here incarnated as a serpent, is required so Prince can achieve paradise through sacrificing evil. There is also another devilish implication in this line: a serpent would be an unholy sacrifice, unfit to offer God, and Prince does not suggest to whom he would present the sacrificial serpent. “The Word” makes reference to a “forked tongue” and a “wicked one,” again alluding to Satan and the Serpent. In “The Rainbow Children,” which is analyzed later in this chapter, Prince rewrites the Eden myth, changing the serpent’s name to the Resistor. Overall, Prince’s singular Devil is most often male but capable of adopting a female form in “Annie Christian,” taking a dual gender similar to the glyph Prince later adopted as his moniker. As with Prince himself, his Devil wears several names, but Prince tends to avoid many of the traditional ones, such as Satan, Lucifer, or Mephistopheles. In “Let’s Go Crazy,” the Devil is objectified as a down elevator. In “Positivity” and “3rd Eye,” Spooky Electric and the Serpent respectively are animal beasts. In “Christopher Tracy’s Parade,” the Devil retreats from Tracy’s piano chords to an “evil car,” but in “Positivity,” Spooky Electric produces sound. Although “Positivity” does not make explicit that the Spooky Electric sound is music, the phrase plays on the diction wielded by music critics when referring to pop forms, as in the term used to categorize music by Prince and his associated artists, “the Minneapolis sound” (“Minneapolis” and “Spooky Electric” having the same number of syllables). Prince’s choice of “Electric” as Spooky’s last name is complicated, given the word’s use in his oeuvre: in “The Dance Electric,” the titular dance is a loving, communal force. In “Temptation,” a sinful “purplectricity” generates from bodily intercourse. Intercourse is more benign but no

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less electric in “Electric Intercourse.” “Temptation” follows “The Ladder,” where the king of “Sinaplenty” is tempted with love from one of his subjects, Elektra. In “Electric Chair,” Prince demands the electric chair as punishment for his unrepentant thoughts. Electricity has alternatively positive and negative charges in Prince’s catalogue, so while “Positivity” warns of Spooky Electric, if not for the qualifier “Spooky,” the name could conjure the same ambivalence. As with electricity, Prince’s Devil, who can be male or female, object or animal, and musical or music-adverse, and who runs from confrontation, remains intangible even in a tangible form. SEX FIENDS AND LESSER DEMONS Prince sang of other holy beings from Christian mythology besides Jesus and God the Father, such as the “heavenly angels” who cry tears of joy at the sight of Prince’s lovemaking in “Adore.” Prince contrasts these angels with the horde of lesser demons appearing in his lyrics. Demons act as metaphors for personal and social tragedies in “Others Here with Us” and “Lady Cab Driver.” The former is an unreleased track and one of Prince’s eeriest musical experiments, with its atonal noises, distorted background vocals, and supernatural lyrics referencing hauntings, crib death, and suicide. In the first verse Prince asserts, “All I was brought up in this world to know / Is lost when a demon swallows them whole.” The lyrics remain ambiguous as to whether the demon causes the misfortunes and hauntings or is only tangentially related to them. In “Lady Cab Driver,” Prince locates the demon within him, and links it to his anger over personal resentments and social ills. As Prince expels his demon, he complains about low wages, as in “the cab you have to drive for no money at all.” Prince also critiques ghettoization when he bemoans where his driver has to live, income disparity when he chastises the rich who “don’t know how to give,” and laments America’s history of colonialism when he alludes to Yosemite Sam as a representation of the frontier myth. A more common figure in Prince’s lyrics is the pseudo-succubuscum-dominatrix. These characters punish Prince for the “animal lust” he mentions in “Temptation,” which is his lyrical persona’s most bestial feature and the sin he indulges in most often. In “I Am Fine: Eschatology in Prince’s 1999 and Purple Rain,” Chris Johnson identifies a typical Christian process playing out in Prince’s songs: the sinner, aware of his own impending death, seeks Christian redemption. Johnson notes that in three of Prince’s most hypersexual songs—“Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” “Darling Nikki,” and “Temptation”—“all have outros exploring Christian concepts: a love for God in the face of death [. . .] and being forgiven by

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God for being lustful.”18 Prince’s demonic dominatrices fulfill the opposite purpose: they torture Prince for his lust, and paradoxically pleasure him through pain. “Darling Nikki” and “Shockadelica” find Prince at the mercy of hellish dominatrices. Both titular characters charm or otherwise coerce Prince into a submissive state characterized by degraded willpower and lapses in sanity, then proceed to sexually torture him. In “Darling Nikki,” Nikki is a “sex fiend,” the word fiend connoting an evil spirit or demon, whom Prince “could not resist.” “Shockadelica,” who “must be a witch” according to the lyrics, is also an occult figure. Although this song is written in the second person, Shockadelica also saps her victim’s willpower, as Prince promises, “she got your mind, body, and soul hitched.” Nikki distorts reality: when she takes Prince home to her castle, a setting that connotes the gothic tradition, he adds that “the castle started spinning or maybe it was my brain, I can’t tell you what she did to me.” In “Shockadelica,” the victim cannot tell dream, reality, and mirage apart. Nikki and Shockadelica both exercise magical abilities: the lust-object Nikki vanishes after a sexual tryst, and Shockadelica places her lovers in trance. Furthermore, both lyrics contain imagery that could suggest satanic elements to the characters. Nikki owns “so many devices, everything that money could buy.” This outrageous display of wealth is in keeping with traditional depictions of Satan, such as in Matthew 4:8–9, where the Devil tempts Jesus atop a mountain, offering him all the world’s kingdoms in exchange for Jesus’s worship.19 Nikki tells Prince, “sign your name on the dotted line,” but the lyrics are vague as to whether Prince is signing a consent form, a BDSM contract between master and slave, or a contract to exchange his soul for sex. Afterward, the lights go out so Prince and Nikki can “grind,” a euphemism for sex implying toil and violent abrasion. “Shockadelica” invokes similar darkness imagery. Such darkness contrasts Prince’s frequent use of “the dawn” to symbolize salvation and enlightenment.20 Hellish imagery also permeates “Shockadelica,” which begins with “the lights go out, the smell of doom / Again is creepin’ into your lonely room / the bed’s on fire, your fate is sealed.” Shockadelica’s presence brings fire, doom, and darkness, with the notion of sealed fate recalling the contract Prince signs with Nikki and eternal judgment. Both Nikki and Shockadelica lack the Christian virtue of mercy: Prince promises the former will “show you no mercy” while the latter proffers an unending cycle of doom, rewarding her victim’s crying with another “nasty ride.” Overall, Nikki and Shockadelica act as devils that torture lustful sinners in hellish environs. While “Darling Nikki” ends with a cleansing rain along with a back masked message professing love for God,21 and the events in “Shockadelica” could be “just a mirage,” Prince must suffer these visions to appreciate that his lust has consequences.

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ACCUSATIONS OF BLASPHEMY Besides lust, pride was also among the vices Prince explored in his lyrics. Prince’s boasting sometimes bordered on blasphemy, a sin he thematized. If Prince is indeed the speaker in “I Would Die 4 U,” then his claim “I’m your messiah” is tantamount to making himself into a false idol and betraying God.22 The album Lovesymbol is particularly concerned with blasphemy, and laden with imagery from Genesis, where the Bible first describes Original Sin, as well as Exodus, where God gives the Ten Commandments to the Israelites. The first verse of the braggadocio opener, “My Name is Prince,” begins, “In the beginning, God made the sea / But on the seventh day, He made me.” This claim is heretical to Jewish and Christian dogma, wherein God reserves the seventh day for rest.23 In this song where Prince selfidentifies as the speaker, he continues, “He was trying to rest, y’all, when He heard the sound / Sound like a guitar, cold gettin’ down.” Prince figures himself as a force so disruptive he interferes with the Bible’s established version of events in Genesis’s creation myth and overpowers God. Notably, Prince alludes to his much-praised work ethic as a source of sinfulness, since by playing guitar on the seventh day he violates the Fourth Commandment’s stipulation, “Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy.”24 Prince infringes on two more of the Ten Commandments as he blasphemes, since he makes wrongful use of the Lord’s name and bears false witness.25 Prince resolves this episode thus: “I tried to bust a high note, but I bust a string / My God was worried, until He heard me sing.” This resolution presents an impish paradox: Prince blasphemes, sins, and disrupts God’s business with pride becoming of Lucifer, but wins over God in the process. It is as though Prince is saying God anticipated sin arising in His creation before Original Sin occurred in the Garden of Eden, and saw this too as good. Prince frequently speaks of “salvation,” as in the “sweet song of salvation” he mentions in “The Cross” and going so far as to title a track “Saviour.” The Lovesymbol album’s ballad, “Damn U,” is a rare Prince song where he speaks directly about damnation. Ironically, the song is a sex ballad. Although Prince is “making love” with his lust object, the sex is bestial rather than sanctified, as he sings, “like animals just want to breed / come to think about you baby you’re my only need.” Here, Prince’s animal lust has him forgetting the spiritual needs he professes so often. Prince’s sexual desire finds him “on fire ‘til you come and put me out,” which further invokes hellish imagery. The tender music juxtaposes the cursing lyrics, but Prince attempts an explanation: “all I’m trying to say is that my psychedelic shouts / when you damn me / damn U.” Prince is not offering to die for his love interest’s sins or professing “I Wish U Heaven” as he did on the Lovesexy album, but demanding retribution for the sinful lust a lover has provoked in him. Afterward, the track segues

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into a conversation with a fictional interviewer, Vanessa Bartholomew. The conversation turns blasphemous, as Vanessa asks, “What do you believe in?” and Prince responds, “God.” Vanessa prompts, “Who is your God?” and Prince, replies, “You.” At this point, Vanessa is right to ask, “Is this reality or just another façade?”––but of course Prince has drafted this dialogue, predicting his listener’s confusion and desire to know the real Prince.26 Whether Prince blasphemes in this conversation is ambiguous, as he could be worshipping the woman as a false deity, or as part of God’s universal creation and thereby an extension of God. What is clear from this passage is that Prince once again confounds interpretation, confusing reality and autobiographical myth. Prince, playing the trickster, segues into the following track with distorted cackling, as Vanessa grits, “Why are you so arrogant?” On the following track, “Arrogance,” Prince answers this question, along with others, such as “what makes a man want to curse and swear / and blame it on Heaven ‘cause he’s already there” by explaining “it’s the same thing that made Eve take the first bite.” Prince claims he blasphemes out of arrogance, a state of mind encouraging him to embrace the temptation to sin. The album finds Prince growing increasingly aware of his earlier blasphemy. In the cryptic suite, “3 Chains o’ Gold,” the speaker begins, “If I don’t hear the accusations of blasphemy . . . this is the best day of my life.” A breakup song with stakes encompassing the life eternal, “3 Chains o’ Gold” finds an “evil girl” leaving the speaker, who relies on the titular tokens for protection from “a date with the undertaker.” The speaker assures the girl, “if 1 of us has to go, U will go before me,” avowing his chains will “shine forever.” Yet a paradoxical turn in the song’s operatic, dirge-like climax finds Prince short of breath as he chants “forever” one final time. The music does not fade out on a repeating vamp, which would suggest eternal perpetuity, but reaches a definite conclusion, so while the speaker believes his chains will shine forever, the track obviously does not. The speaker never guarantees the chains will provide him with eternal life, only that he will outlive the evil girl. The track suggests Prince can ignore his blasphemous words, which he relegates to mere accusations, but that he will ultimately suffer damnation without atonement. “3 Chains o’ Gold” gives way to “The Sacrifice of Victor,” which is part memoir, part parable, and framed through the character Victor, yet another of Prince’s facades. The gospel-inflected number finds Prince/ Victor making a pilgrimage toward the female personification of angelic joy, asserting, “When I reach my destination / My name will be Victor,” and concluding, “amen.” This album closer constitutes an evolution away from the blasphemous persona found in the opener “My Name is Prince,” framing Lovesymbol as an album about a maturation process that finds Prince abandoning the pride attached to his name. Yet an irony remains: Lovesymbol is among Prince’s most boastful, grandiose albums.

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LANDS OF SINAPLENTY Idyllic—and sometimes Edenic—locations dot Prince’s lyrical geography: “Uptown,” “Paisley Park,” “Graffiti Bridge,” “Crystal Ball,” and “3121” are all presented to the listener as welcoming utopias, or, in Matt Thorne’s evaluation, “locations that offer liberation.”27 Prince alludes to Eden and invokes garden imagery in “Girl,” “Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden,” and “And God Created Woman,” but in “3rd Eye” Prince explores its potential for paradox, as this representation of the utopian garden includes the Serpent found in Genesis. In opposition to these utopian landscapes are Prince’s songs referencing Hell and depicting Hell-on-Earth. Prince’s Christian interpretation of the afterlife involves two opposing realms. In “Eye No,” he proclaims, “there is a Heaven and a Hell” (italics mine). In Prince’s lyrics, hell is invoked as a metaphor for both social decay and personal malaise. Whereas “Crystal Ball” associates hell with war, hate, and terrorism, “Computer Blue (‘Hallway Speech’ Version)” relates it more concisely as “life without love.” Less overtly hellish are Prince’s social problem songs, but these lyrics often invoke demonic or otherwise disturbing Christian imagery as well. The aforementioned “Annie Christian” and “Lady Cab Driver” associate American ills with the Antichrist and a demon, respectively. Among the litany of real-life complaints mentioned in “Sign o’ the Times” (including starvation, drug abuse, gang violence, and the Challenger disaster), Prince sings, “Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling off a church and killed everyone inside.” Given that Hurricane Annie occurred in the 1930s and not in 1986 when Prince wrote the song, it is possible that he invoked this particular hurricane to recall his Antichrist character Annie Christian as an apocalyptic sign. “The Ladder” and “Digital Garden” present Hell-on-Earth in the context of fables. The former track begins, “Once upon a time, in the Land of Sinaplenty.” Sinaplenty’s ruler is not Satan or an agent thereof, but “a king who didn’t deserve 2 be,” who “knew not where he came from / nor where he was going,” and “never once said thank u, never please.” The King, who has an admiring subject, Elektra, is unmoved by her smiles because he is “looking for the Ladder” or “salvation of the soul.” In other words, this royal figure sounds like a stand-in for Prince, and a self-assessment contrary to the messianic proclamations (“I Would Die 4 U”) found on his previous album. If we can infer that the King is representative of his kingdom, Sinaplenty lacks in respect and graciousness to the point that it does not deserve to exist. This realm is stagnant and directionless, ignorant of its history or its future direction, and in this it takes on the timeless infinity of Hell or at least some sort of limbo. Sinaplenty’s detachment from history is similar to the cultural genocide inherent in the African American experience that Prince sings about in “Family Name.” Yet within this otherwise irredeemable landscape

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is a yearning for salvation and a willingness to pursue it despite the difficult climb ahead. If Sinaplenty is Prince’s attempt at offering a landscape painting of his soul, it is a barren one from which hope may blossom. Prince’s hellish landscapes—even that of the sinner’s soul—include a contradictory possibility for renewal. RESISTING THE RESISTOR The Rainbow Children (2001) has more “spooky” subject matter than any other Prince release. Conceptually, the album revisits Lovesexy’s poetic exploration of Christian Manichaeism with a Jehovah’s Witness vernacular. The album coincides with a period in Prince’s life and career when he had embraced Jehovah’s Witness dogma and sworn off cursing or singing his most risqué lyrics.28 Performances of “Sexuality” on the Musicology tour wherein he replaced the word “sexuality” with “spirituality,” thus singing, “spirituality is all we ever need,”29 exemplify the shift in Prince’s worldview. Although Prince continued writing sexually charged lyrics, several of his older, expletive-ridden, pornographic songs disappeared from set lists altogether. He might, in the course of a concert, tease audiences with “Darling Nikki,” but refuse to sing along. Prince also proselytized to fans, colleagues, and neighbors, and The Rainbow Children is a conduit for his preaching. On this album, Prince represents himself among those who are saved from sin. The lyrics’ Manichean worldview involves a struggle of good against evil, but it is framed as an us-versus-them battle, with Prince on the side of the righteous. In keeping with Prince’s oeuvre and Biblical as well as cultural myth, the devil arrives in various guises, as “the Devil,” “the Resistor,” and “the Enemy.” In “Muse 2 the Pharaoh,” “dem devil come dressed as light,” taking on an appealing form to trick people. Prince suggests, “maybe they gon’ fool the untrained mind,” insinuating through the words “dem” and “they” a paradox running throughout his oeuvre and Christian mythology: the devil is singular, but also legion. The Devil arriving as light also presents a theologically subversive paradox: in the Bible, God’s first “good” creation is light. Lucifer, who defies God before being cast from heaven, is also disguised as an angel of light. Since God sees light and deems it good, and his creation later spites him, this paradox either begs the conclusion that the Biblical God is not omnipotent, or recognizes this betrayal as a good and necessary occurrence. On “The Work Part 1,” Prince insinuates that the whole social edifice is a hellish corruption when he sings, “we’re living in a system that the Devil designed / and suffering from this devil’s most heinous crime.” Herein, the Devil’s crime is abstracting people from their origin as beings made in God’s

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image, and thus proof of God’s divinity: “he’s tried to keep us from the reason we were born / that is to be the living Truth in human form.” In “Family Name,” a narrative drawing together Jehovah’s Witness ideology and African American slave history, Prince cites 1914 as the year the Devil arrives. This date is in keeping with Jehovah’s Witness teachings, wherein Jesus Christ begins to rule in Heaven as of 1914, while Satan is sent to Earth in the same year.30 Meanwhile, Prince locates the Devil “hiding behind corporate eyes.” The song explores how slavery robbed African Americans of their birth names as part of a larger process of cultural genocide.31 Here the Devil has “got to go,” and when he questions his eviction, Prince reminds him he has his family name, aligning the Devil with those who privilege from perpetuating African American oppression. The lyrical repetition “devil, devil” occurs in a verse alongside “mirror, mirror,” implying, once again, an internalized, devilish persona inhabiting the speaker, or at least that the devil lies to present Prince, African Americans, and the Rainbow Children who do God’s work with a false self-image. Prince also likens the Devil to a “teacher, teacher” who presumes to offer authentic African American history, and a “preacher, preacher” who takes in money only to “ride around in your Lexus Coupe / Drive us to the cleaners in a pinstripe suit.” The song’s association of African American plight with the Devil recalls the racially charged demonic rhetoric found in “Annie Christian” and “Lady Cab Driver.” Prince details a process where colonizers profit from African American exploitation through religious and educational institutions that exacerbate the disconnection from their origins, reflecting the Devil’s attack on God’s children in the Jehovah’s Witness–inspired “The Work Part 1.” “The Rainbow Children” expounds a similar narrative, with Prince revisiting Edenic imagery. Whereas Prince reinterpreted the Serpent as Adam’s genitals in the song “3rd Eye” from an album called The Truth, “The Rainbow Children” preaches a “truth” similar to that espoused in Genesis, with the Serpent reimagined as “the Resistor,” who tempts “the Wise One” and “his woman.” According to the lyrics, rather than come between the Wise One and his God, the Resistor “assimilated the woman first and only,” and chaos ensued, leading to her banishment from the rainbow, along with five others. The lyrics present this retelling of the Eden myth as “the accurate understanding of God and his law,” but taken together with “3rd Eye,” Prince creates his own paradox in offering two conflicting versions of “the truth”: one that has the Resistor assimilate the woman, and the other that has the Serpent assimilated into Adam so he can attack the woman. Prince refers to “the Banished Ones” throughout the album. The Banished Ones reappear on “Digital Garden,” where they build the eponymous Hellon-Earth. A consequence of “the Resistor’s dream,” the Digital Garden is a paradoxical “brilliant darkness” housing “so-called Angels of Light” and

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“lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.” Prince attributes these lies to a familiar target, the media, or, in his vernacular “whosepapers, hellavisions, and scagazines.” Eventually, the lyrics have God returning the Banished Ones to their origin in Mendacity (recalling Sinaplenty from “The Ladder”), and the Rainbow Children working to take apart the Digital Garden by doing “The Work.” “Digital Garden” finds Prince deploying his newfound Jehovah’s Witness beliefs to attribute lies about him to other media rather than confound listeners with contradictory confessions as he did on the Come album. The album’s allegory has the Rainbow Children standing in for Jehovah’s Witnesses and doing the work necessary to resist the Resistor and this Devil’s hellish constructions: slavery, genocide, corrupt education systems, greedy hypocritical religions, corporations, and the media. Yet if Prince is firmly among the Rainbow Children and not the sinners, the album’s Manichean preaching remains rife with paradoxes, including an Eden myth that contradicts his previous Eden lyrics, a hellish landscape of brilliant darkness that digitizes God’s beauteous Garden of Eden, and a Devil dressed as light, which, according to Genesis, is God’s first “good” creation. A more overwhelming paradox is that invoking the Devil is necessary for proving God’s divinity on Prince’s most religious album. “Y’ALL DON’T KNOW WHO I AM!” In the early hours of March 22, 2016, I had the pleasure of attending a Prince after-show at Montreal nightclub Musique. The impromptu event was part of Prince’s final Piano & a Microphone tour, and within a month, Prince would make his way out of “this life.” During the brief sampler set, Prince teased the audience with a musical snippet of “Darling Nikki,” stomping about the stage like The Kid storming to his dressing room in Purple Rain and declaring, “Y’all don’t know who I am!” I share this anecdote because it demonstrates how Prince’s most notorious song (at least among those he found fit to release) never fully disappeared from his performances, and his statement, “Y’all don’t know who I am,” coheres neatly with the mystique he had created for himself in the thirty-five years since releasing “Controversy.” Was he the virtuous Jehovah’s Witness who swore off vulgarity, or the hypersexed rabble-rouser who so offended America’s cultural gatekeepers? Prince can hardly blame his audience for not knowing who he is, given the contradictory claims about his lifelong approach to self-expression he made on “Space” and “Letitgo.” Indeed, Prince’s onstage outburst seemed more like a passiveaggressive taunt directed at die-hard fans who would clamor to hunt down his after-party and stay awake until 4:00 a.m. on a Monday night and then return home in freezing weather to see him play up close and personal. In reflecting

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on this moment in the set, I am reminded once again of Iago’s frustrating confession and inversion of God’s introduction to Moses: “I am not what I am.” As Prince frustrates his audiences’ ability to distinguish lies from truth in his lyrics, it is unsurprising how Prince the pious can so easily morph into Prince the impish. Prince vacillates between righteous Christian proselytizing and equally strong assertions of vice. On Manichean albums where Prince firmly aligns himself with Christian values, his religious sentiments necessitate “evil” forces to position as antithetical to the virtuous. While Prince invites his listeners to utopian venues of liberation, these can only exist within wider negatively charged landscapes, which Prince typically represents as hellish or sinful. Prince’s blasphemies undermine his messianic attempts to lead his flock toward salvation. Demons manifest in Prince lyrics as personifications of tragedy and deliverers of oxymoronic pleasurable pain, standing in contrast to the heavenly angels watching over him in the joyous “Adore” and “The Sacrifice of Victor.” Despite his status as “villain,” the Devil—whether appearing as De-Elevator, Spooky Electric, or some other alias—is a necessary foil for Prince and his God, without whom Prince’s religious mythology would be empty. Prince sells his audience on salvation, and there is no salvation without sin. The Spooky songs give form to sin, and it most often sounds electric. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A few people besides those noted in the citations below helped make this chapter possible. I want to thank two contributors to the prince.org discussion board: AnnaStesia10, who pointed me toward “Others Here with Us” as an example of Prince songs about demons, and SquirrelMeat, who shared a copy of Prince: Lovesexy ’88 and whose insights into Spooky Electric were invaluable to my study. The website www.princevault.com also proved an indispensable resource. I dedicate my work on this chapter to my older brothers, Paul and Peter Sereda, who turned my tender ears on to the Lovesymbol album when I was eleven, and whose warped copy of Sign o’ the Times still rotates on my turntable. NOTES 1. Susan Rogers’ remarks are quoted in Alan Leeds’ liner notes to Prince: The Hits/The B-Sides (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Records Inc., 1993), 8.

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2. Prince’s fans refer to the Sunday songs on the prince.org discussion board. See Prince Apocalypse/The Dawn Playlist, accessed January 14, 2019, http://prince.org/ msg/7/415772 and Camille—The Tracklist, accessed January 14, 2019, http://prince. org/msg/7/432113. 3. I am of course referring here to the much-publicized and now legendary sociocultural response to Prince’s song “Darling Nikki,” which inspired Tipper Gore to form the Parental Music Resource Center, eventually leading to the U.S. government’s adoption of warning labels for lyrical content on music recordings. For further information, see Olivia B. Waxman, “The Story of Prince and Those Parental Advisory Stickers,” Time, http:​//tim​e.com​/4303​801/p​rince​-dead​-darl​ing-n​ikki-​paren​tal-a​ dviso​ry/. 4. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “paradox,” accessed January 14, 2019, https​:// en​.oxfo​rddic​tiona​ries.​com/d​efini​tion/​parad​ox. 5. Poetic analysis cannot take for granted that a poem’s author is also its speaker. When Edgar Allen Poe describes events in “The Raven,” it is safe to assume the author is not the first-person narrator describing supernatural happenings within the text. Since this chapter argues that Prince’s lyrics are especially aimed at confounding interpretation, I want to stress here that I am not assuming Prince and his speakers are one and the same. Indeed, he often monologues through characters such as his alter ego, Camille. For the sake of brevity, I attribute all lyrical deliveries to Prince or “the speaker” throughout this chapter. 6. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “paradox,” accessed January 14, 2019, https​:// en​.oxfo​rddic​tiona​ries.​com/d​efini​tion/​parad​ox. 7. In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva defines the Abject as an ontological threat to the subject wherein meaning collapses and abjection as the subject’s reaction to this collapse. The Abject brings the subject into contact with “what disturbs identity, system, order” and “what does not respect borders, positions, rules,” thereby calling attention to “the fragility of the law” and eradicating the border between human and animal, or culture and its precedent. See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 4–13. 8. The Exorcist. Directed by William Friedkin. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1973. Film. 9. Exodus 3:14 (NRSV). 10. Mark 4:9 (NRSV). 11. Batman. Directed by Tim Burton. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1989. Film. 12. Ibid. 13. Matt Thorne interprets “Dance with the Devil” as a song where Prince warns against embracing the Devil and “seems to blame the victim, suggesting that dancing with the Devil is something someone does out of curiosity, and in doing so the person dooms themselves.” Thorne sees Prince as rewriting the Joker’s homicidal madness into a victim-blaming sermon, where the victims receive “a punishment for curiosity.” See Matt Thorne, Prince (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), 226. 14. See Revelation 13:1–18 (NRSV). 15. Revelation 13:6 (NRSV). 16. Revelation 17:5 (NRSV).

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17. Genesis 3:1–6 (NRSV). 18. Chris Johnson, “I Am Fine: Eschatology in Prince’s 1999 and Purple Rain,” Journal of Theology & Culture (2018–2019): 274–79, 276. 19. Matthew 4:8–9 (NRSV). 20. Prince’s song “Dark” also alludes to a woman who, similar to a succubus, drains him sexually, financially, and psychologically, as Prince sings, “Took my sex and my money, took all my self-esteem/You had the nerve to think it was funny, I never knew a bitch so mean.” Prince, “Dark,” Come (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Records, 1994), compact disc. 21. The coda to “Darling Nikki” offers another symbolic inversion, this time taking a trope usually assumed to be Satanic—hidden messages about devil-worship revealed when playing a record backwards—and instead burying a Christian message on the recording’s surface. This sonic flourish tempts the listener to reverse the record and discover what more Prince had to say in this song that was already alarmingly explicit to some, only to reveal Christian sentiments. See Prince, “Darling Nikki.” 22. Exodus 20:4 (NRSV). 23. Genesis 2:3 (NRSV). 24. Exodus 20:8 (NRSV). 25. Exodus 20:7 and 20:16 (NRSV). 26. Ibid. 27. Thorne, Prince, 121. 28. Thorne, Prince, 364. 29. Ibid, 404. 30. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Four Major Cults (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1963), 291. 31. Since “Family Name” is about the cultural genocide involved in African American slavery, and seeing as how Prince figures the Devil as lurking within corporations, it is tempting to relate this song from his period as an independent artist on NPG Records to his battle against Warner Bros., wherein he wrote “SLAVE” on his face during concert appearances and record company meetings to protest his contractual obligations. See Thorne, Prince, 311.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hoekema, Anthony A. The Four Major Cults. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1963. The Holy Bible, The New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. Toronto: Canadian Bible Society, 1993. Johnson, Chris. “I Am Fine: Eschatology in Prince’s 1999 and Purple Rain.” Journal of Theology & Culture (2018–2019): 274–79. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Leeds, Alan. Liner notes for Prince: The Hits/The B-Sides, by Prince. Warner Bros. Records, 1993, compact disc.

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Light, Alan. Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain. New York: Atria Books, 2014. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven.” Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems. New York: Vintage Books, 1975. Prince. Prince: Lovesexy ’88. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1988. Thorne, Matt. Prince. London: Faber and Faber, 2012. Touré. I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon. New York: Atria Books, 2017. Waxman, Olivia B. “The Story of Prince and Those Parental Advisory Stickers.” Time. April 21, 2016. http:​//tim​e.com​/4303​801/p​rince​-dead​-darl​ing-n​ikki-​paren​ tal-a​dviso​ry/.

Chapter 7

Graffiti Bridge Prince’s Sacred Triumph over the Profane Erica Thompson

The start of the worship service is signaled not by an organ, but an electric guitar. There is no pulpit, but there is a stage. The clergymen and women are members of the New Power Generation band, who have devoted their lives to “making love and music.” The building is not a church, but the Glam Slam nightclub in Minneapolis, and the minister is Prince. The left side of his clerical collar is white; the right side is black, and his robe is checkered. It’s a duality fitting for a rock-androll shepherd known for guiding his congregation with texts on free love and uninhibited expression, alongside love letters to God and his Son. Tonight, the scripture is sacred, not profane. Prince’s message is taken directly from 1 John 4:8: “God is love.”1 With a joyous countenance and outstretched arms, he sings of a God who creates life and distributes peace and power. But the pews are empty. That scene is taken from the 1990 film, Graffiti Bridge, which Prince wrote and directed. In his starring role as “the Kid,” Prince performs the spiritual song “Elephants & Flowers.” Uninspired, the crowd slowly trickles out of the club. A quasi-sequel to Purple Rain, the film reunites the Kid with rival Morris Day, bandleader of The Time. The men battle over control of the Glam Slam, while an angel on Earth attempts to influence their behavior. Critically panned and commercially unsuccessful, the movie was the death knell of Prince’s film career. But to Prince, it was not a failure. “It was one of the purest, most spiritual, uplifting things I’ve ever done,” he told USA Today. “Maybe it will take people 30 years to get it.”2 113

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Three decades later, taken in the context of Prince’s full career and life, Graffiti Bridge is worth revisiting as a crucial point in the late artist’s spiritual journey. Prior to the release of the film, Prince was a rebellious, envelopepushing sex symbol, who expressed his complex relationship with the sacred and profane in three phases: First, he championed a sex-based spirituality whereby sexual freedom was viewed as the key to individual and societal liberation. Next, as he gradually employed Christian references in his art, he openly struggled to reconcile his spiritual and sexual sides. Then, in 1988, prompted by a spiritual awakening, he replaced the dark, sexual Black Album with Lovesexy—his boldest declaration of Christian faith at the time. Released during Prince’s spiritual awakening phase, Graffiti Bridge and its soundtrack are a commentary on the artist’s real-life struggle with the sacred and profane. It references the critical and commercial backlash he received in response to his spiritual music. Ultimately, it conveys that spiritual contentment is more rewarding than sexual ecstasy and sex-centered art. *** Prince’s relationship with angels dates back twenty years before he cast poet and singer Ingrid Chavez as one in Graffiti Bridge. As an epileptic child, he had seizures until they reportedly stopped with divine intervention. “My mother told me one day I walked in . . . and said, ‘Mom, I’m not going to be sick anymore,’” he said on the Tavis Smiley Show. “She said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because an angel told me so.’ Now, I don’t remember saying it, that’s just what she told me.”3 During his childhood in Minneapolis, Prince would have been taught to believe in angels as living guides and protectors;4 he was exposed to Christian doctrine at Minneapolis Glendale Seventh-day Adventist Church, which he attended with his maternal grandmother, Lucille.5 Later, as a teenager, he participated in summer activities at Park Avenue United Methodist Church, where he would return to marry his first wife, Mayte Garcia.6 By the time he released his first album, For You, in 1978, the twentyyear-old had established a spiritual foundation in Christianity. And he drew on those roots as he thanked God in the liner notes, a practice he’d continue throughout his career. At the same time, he’d reportedly adopted a sexual-liberation ideology, according to Howard Bloom, Prince’s publicist throughout much of the 1980s. As a teenager rehearsing with his first bands, Grand Central and Champagne, in friend and bassist Andre Cymone’s basement, he identified with the 1960s hippie movement, and became a charismatic champion of the “free love” philosophy.7

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“Prince was operating that kind of utopian world . . . in Minneapolis with Andre,” said Bloom, who interviewed Prince about his childhood to better shape his image. “My guess is they got some girls to come down there.”8 Whether his sexual escapades in the basement were real or imagined, Prince elevated the ideology early in his career. By his third album, Dirty Mind, he was pushing the envelope visually—wearing his signature costume of bikini briefs, trench coat and heels—and with his lyrics about oral sex (“Head”) and incest (“Sister”). Bringing a “make love, not war” message to songs like “Uptown” and “Partyup,” Prince promoted a sex-based spiritual system. “Prince genuinely believed that sex has the power of salvation, and that sexual freedom is the equivalent of the cross,” Bloom said. “And that the ability to do anything sexually that you want, the ability to even recognize what you want sexually, that all of that is as liberating as the crucifixion. Not only can it liberate individuals, but it can liberate a society and stop war.”9 Prince expanded his sex-as-spirituality philosophy, delivering Christian references like The Lord’s Prayer and “The Second Coming” of Christ among his tributes to the flesh. One standout is the 1999 track “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” during which Prince follows a desire to “fuck the taste out of your mouth” with a devotional chant about God. Later, on Purple Rain’s “Darling Nikki,” the catalyst for Parental Advisory stickers on albums,10 he included a backwards message about Christ’s return. But at the height of his superstardom in the mid-1980s, he was arguably conflicted about his practice of mixing the sacred and the profane. He shared his anguish onstage during the Purple Rain tour, crying out to God in monologues, “I know I said I’d be good, but they dig it when I’m bad.”11 At another, he clasped his hands in prayer and uttered, “Yes, I believe in you. Yes, I trust in you. Yes, I’ll be good.” Then, he launched into the song “God,” one of his most straightforward, religious tunes to date.12 “There was that struggle between the kid that really wanted to be right with God, and the kid that was Dennis the Menace,” said Dez Dickerson, Prince’s early guitarist. “We’d have long, deep conversations. . . . There was a deep hunger to be right with God.”13 Prince expressed his faith on subsequent projects with Jesus-centered songs like “4 the Tears in Your Eyes” and “The Cross.” His inner turmoil bubbled over in December 1987, just before the release of the dark, sexually explicit Black Album. As he would later recount to the media, Prince had a vision of the letters G-O-D during a night he called “Blue Tuesday.”14 The next morning, he called Karen Krattinger, who was his executive assistant and general manager of his company, PRN Productions. “He said, ‘Karen, you have to stop this album. It’s evil,’” she said.15

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Prince also called the project “angry and bitter” in an interview with Rolling Stone.16 Warner Bros. abruptly stopped the release of the project, but couldn’t prevent bootlegs from hitting the street. (The Black Album was officially released in 1994 to fulfill Prince’s contract, but the artist asked the label to stop producing copies after a couple of months.)17 Months after pulling the Black Album, Prince released the spiritual Lovesexy in May 1988. It was named for a feeling of “falling in love not with a boy or girl, but with the Heavens above.”18 The project was inspired in part by Ingrid Chavez, whom he’d met at a club on Blue Tuesday. She is credited as “Spirit Child” in the liner notes, and recites poetry on the album. Chavez and Prince shared an immediate spiritual connection, and embarked on a three-month period of collaborating, with Prince writing music to accompany Chavez’s new poetry. “We were almost like two kids who were exploring these ideas and themes of love and God,” said Chavez, whose debut album May 19, 1992 also drew from the material.19 Though they had a platonic relationship, the two also examined their thoughts on sexuality. Chavez could see a change in Prince’s perspective on sex between albums. “When I look at the Black Album and I look at Lovesexy, it’s that the heart and the mind is in the right place [on the latter],” she said. “The act is the same, but it’s more meaningful. You’re having a union with someone as opposed to each one just satisfying each other. . . . He wanted to connect on a spiritual level.”20 Indeed, on Lovesexy, Prince discusses sex within the context of a loving, monogamous relationship. According to the song “When 2 R in Love,” “nothing’s forbidden and nothing’s taboo” inside a committed relationship. On “Glam Slam,” he talks of a bond that “seems to transcend the physical.” Lovesexy also stands out for its direct, Christian message. Prince proclaims his belief in Heaven, Hell, the Lord, and the Devil on the song “Eye No.” He also expresses his commitment to Jesus on “Anna Stesia.” And on the tour, he played a set of his old, explicit hits; staged the death of the “old Prince”; and closed with a set of Lovesexy material—symbolizing his spiritual awakening. “I was reliving this metamorphosis every night,” Prince told USA Today.21 Prince had also been vocal about his beliefs in interviews preceding Lovesexy. In 1985, he told Rolling Stone his home was a shrine to Jesus.22 That same year, he told a TV reporter he believed in one God and the afterworld.23 In 1986, he told Ebony there was power in talking to God.24 But he also arguably foreshadowed Graffiti Bridge. In the interview with Rolling Stone, he implied his belief in God helped him get through a period of depression. “[It] changed me and made me think

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differently about how and what I wrote and how I acted toward people,” he said. “I’m going to make a film about it.”25 He alluded to the movie again with Ebony. “God is inside of us,” he said. “You’ve got to find out who you are and what you stand for, and learn the difference between right and wrong. . . . I’m going to do a film, hopefully one day, about someone’s struggle through that.”26 *** “Graffiti Bridge” takes its name from a former bridge in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.27 Once featuring peace symbols during the Vietnam War, the landmark may have been important to Prince, given his “make love, not war” messaging. He also presented “Graffiti Bridge” as a spiritual state, or “a reason to believe that there’s a heaven above,” on the title track of the soundtrack. It’s a reflection of the Kid’s spiritual quest in the movie. The journey to the screen was turbulent. Prince initially had trouble selling the film, which he originally envisioned as a vehicle for The Time.28 He changed the focus of the film to the Kid, but insisted on writing the script alone. His staff and, later, critics felt it was not up to par. “It was pretty bad,” said Krattinger, who helped Prince with the document. “I remember typing script after script after script.”29 In fact, Madonna, whom Prince originally cast, called it “the worst piece of literature she’d ever read,” according to Krattinger.30 When Madonna passed on the project, Prince cast actress and thengirlfriend Kim Basinger,31 but she changed her mind. As a result, first-time actress Ingrid Chavez was recruited. Filmed in part on the Paisley Park soundstage, the set was “cheap,” Prince told Rolling Stone. And Prince oversaw the editing and dubbing of the film between shows on his 1990 Nude tour, lamenting that he’d like to, one day, tackle one project at a time.32 “[Prince’s] attention span is short,” said the film’s coproducer, Craig Rice. “To stay focused on one thing—it’s hard for him to do for long periods of time.”33 Set in Seven Corners, Minneapolis, the film picks up where Purple Rain left off. The Kid’s father apparently died by suicide, and his mother is in a nursing home or psychiatric facility. The Kid has replaced his band, the Revolution, with the New Power Generation. Billy, who owned the First Avenue Club in Purple Rain, has left the Glam Slam club to both the Kid and rival Morris Day in his will. The Kid agrees to surrender control of the club to Day if his band, the Time, can beat the NPG in a music battle. Supporting

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roles are played by artists George Clinton, Mavis Staples, Tevin Campbell, and Jill Jones. From the beginning, it’s apparent the Kid’s music has taken a more spiritual direction, which is not popular with audiences. And without alcohol to fuel the party—the Kid doesn’t serve it in the club—crowds dwindle by the night. “People tell me you’ve been making that spiritual noise again,” Day says to the Kid in an early confrontation. “You know I can’t make no money that way.” Day later proclaims that the Kid’s music will “never change anybody.” The perception may have been one that Prince internalized as his reallife commercial and critical success had shifted following Purple Rain. For example, his album sales had steadily declined, with Lovesexy dipping below the platinum mark at 750,000 copies sold in the United States. It was his lowest-selling album since his debut record.34 Reaching number eleven on the Billboard 200, the album was also his first to fall below the top ten since 1981’s Controversy.35 And, according to reports, attendance for the U.S. leg of the Lovesexy tour was disappointing.36 Multiple factors may have contributed to the change in Prince’s popularity, but it must be noted that his music had become increasingly religious, with Lovesexy being his preachiest to that point, and, for some, his most convoluted. “More than a few fans were confused by some of the album’s more obtuse references,” said Alan Leeds, then vice president at Paisley Park Records.37 Rolling Stone writer David Browne called Lovesexy an “indecisive” album that couldn’t “begin to answer its questions of sex, love, God and morality.”38 Prince’s saxophonist Eric Leeds added that the good versus evil theme “went over a lot of people’s heads.”39 Between Lovesexy and Graffiti Bridge, Prince’s Batman album was a welcome reprieve. It reached number one on the Billboard 200, and generated a number-one single with “Batdance.”40 It also sold two million copies in the United States.41 However, the album benefitted from its tie to the massively successful Tim Burton film. And the content was based more on the movie’s plot and characters than Prince’s spiritual ideology. With Graffiti Bridge, he could more freely engage his insecurities. “Nobody likes my music,” the Kid tells Aura, the angel, in the film. And in one scene, she finds sheet music of Prince’s real-life spiritual songs, including “The Spiritual World” and “God is Alive,” a duet with soul and gospel singer Mavis Staples. It is implied that the Kid has been holding those songs back, and, in real life, Prince never released them. Aura encourages the Kid to stay true to his music and assures him he will win the battle if he doesn’t give up.

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Just as she was “Spirit Child” on Lovesexy, Chavez’s Aura character is nicknamed “Child of the Spirit.” Her role reflects her influence on Prince during those winter months leading up to Lovesexy. “I can’t imagine anybody else having played that part,” Chavez said. “The Spirit Child and Aura, to me, were the same person.”42 Aura’s presence is also proof for the Kid that God exists. “That’s what I need,” he tells her in the film. “Some kind of sign. Some kind of green light that says it’s OK. It’s OK to continue. Somebody’s up there listening.” In real life, Prince’s time with Chavez seemed to give him insight into his spirituality, but Jesus was never specifically mentioned. “There was never like a Christian theme attached to any of our conversations,” said Chavez, who grew up in the Baptist church, but was no longer a Christian when she met Prince. “It was more of a feeling.”43 Of course, Prince went on to refer directly to Jesus on the Lovesexy project, establishing that Jesus is God, and God is love on the song “Anna Stesia.” However, Chavez speculated that Christianity may have simply been a frame of reference to express a complex feeling. “When you’re trying to relay something to the masses, you’re going to try to find some language that they can understand,” she said.44 In Graffiti Bridge, instead of choosing to explicitly mention Jesus, Prince chose to personify “love” with his lyrics. For example, while performing “Elephants & Flowers” and “Still Would Stand All Time,” Prince sings about “love” creating life and “opening its arms,” respectively. So, while Chavez may not have shared in his religious doctrine, Prince seemed more confident in his Christian faith following their time together. And although Graffiti Bridge doesn’t include any scenes of the Kid talking specifically about Christ, there are enough codes and character behavior that indicate Prince was drawing on Biblical themes. One of those is the emphasis on love over lust. Though Prince is physically attracted to Aura, he abstains from having a sexual relationship with her. “[It’s] a different kind of movie,” Prince said of the PG-13 film in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Nobody gets laid.”45 Unlike the Kid, Morris Day attempts to bed Aura, who takes it upon herself to save his soul as well. “Two souls fight,” Aura says in the film. “One wants money, one wants light. Child of the Spirit neither can ignore. Here to show them Heaven’s door.” In her attempt to guide Day to righteousness, Aura mentions she’s searching for the “spiritual substitute for sex.” The comment harkens back to Prince’s message on Lovesexy, of falling in love with God and having spiritual bonds with romantic partners.

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Day’s character, an arrogant, macho, vulgar womanizer who makes music about partying and sex, can easily be interpreted as another aspect of Prince’s real-life personality—and the profane side of himself that he was trying to put behind him after his spiritual awakening. Unfortunately, Aura is unable to get through to Day with her words, and the Kid temporarily abandons his path, performing the lewd “Tick, Tick, Bang,” and losing the first round of the battle with Day. Ultimately, Aura sacrifices her life—she dies in a car accident—to change Day’s heart and give the Kid confidence to stay true to his music and spirituality. In the final scene, the Kid performs the gospel song “Still Would Stand All Time,” backed by the Steeles gospel choir, and wins the battle against Day. It’s a commentary on Prince’s approach to his music since he began to express his struggle with the sacred and profane in the mid-1980s. Though his music grew more spiritual, he still included risqué songs on his projects—though considerably toned down in explicit language and imagery. For instance, while Sign o’ the Times praises Jesus in “The Cross,” it also praises the flesh in “It.” And even the highly spiritual Lovesexy still contains lyrics like “I’m so horny” and “come a butterfly straight on your skin” on “Glam Slam.” And on Lovesexy’s title track, Prince sings, “When I touch it, race cars burn rubber in my pants.” To be fair, the album is promoting sex within a committed, monogamous relationship, which brings to mind the Bible’s description of marital sex as holy, and as a way to avoid sexual immorality.46 Given Lovesexy’s definition of being in love with the Heavens, it can be argued that the title track is comparing Prince’s spiritual ecstasy to the sexual ecstasy he once experienced. However, the lewd references are still present on the album. Years later, when Prince was fully indoctrinated into the Jehovah’s Witness faith, he would refrain from using any explicit language. Graffiti Bridge provides a look at Prince’s conflict by sharing what the Kid loses with his spiritual music (large audiences, money), and that he sometimes gives into temptation, falling back on explicit songs (like “Tick, Tick, Bang”). But the overall message is that he will prevail if he stays the course—which is why he won the battle with Day with a gospel ballad. And by maintaining a wholesome relationship with his beautiful guardian angel, he stays true to his desire for love and spiritual union above casual, sexual gratification. “I don’t think people were understanding what he was trying to say or do,” Chavez said. “I think he was really trying to express this [message] from Lovesexy in a different way through film like, ‘Oh, you guys didn’t get it, let’s try this again.’”47

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*** The Graffiti Bridge soundtrack provides a deeper dive into the film’s themes of spirituality and love. Prince also, arguably, addresses his critics and shifting level of fame. The Biblical tone is set by the album art, created by Prince’s longtime art director Steve Parke. In addition to the Kid, Aura and Morris Day, the painting features angels, lightning—a symbol associated with both God and Satan in the Bible48—and a fig tree. Jill Jones’s character is portrayed wearing a toga tied with fig leaves. The latter image is especially significant. In the Book of Genesis, the fall of man occurs after Adam and Eve disobey God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Realizing their nudity, the couple cover themselves with fig leaves.49 Since the mid-1980s, Prince had been oscillating between thanking God directly in his liner notes, and writing, “May u live 2 see the dawn.” That he chose to include the latter on the Graffiti Bridge album—and in the movie’s end credits—is still an indication of his spiritual mindset. According to a late1990s interview with Minnesota Monthly, he defined “the dawn” as “a time of greater consciousness and spiritual understanding.”50 The songs—performed by Prince, The Time, George Clinton, Mavis Staples, Tevin Campbell, and others—are presented in the same order that they occur in the film. But sitting with the full versions of the tracks on the album allows for a more efficient analysis of the music, which is rife with Biblical allusions. The album opens on a joyous note with “Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got.” During the song, Prince sings, “I’m talking about an everlasting light.” The lyric brings scripture to mind; in the Bible, the prophet Isaiah says, “For you will have the LORD for an everlasting light.”51 Prince might have been attributing the source of his joy to the deity. And it’s not the only time the implication occurs on the album. On the gospel ballad “Still Would Stand All Time,” Prince sings, “You better run to the light, leave your past behind.” Given that Jesus describes himself as “the light of the world” in the Bible,52 Prince might be encouraging his audience to turn to Him. Later, Jesus is mentioned directly by guest rapper T. C. Ellis on “New Power Generation (Pt. II).” In his tale of personal redemption, Ellis likens his previous behavior—“I was headed for the kill, steal, destroy and die”— to the Bible’s description of a false prophet.53 He also says, “The flesh is weak and the spirit is strong,” bringing to mind the Bible’s warning against temptation.54

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“Can’t Stop” is followed by “New Power Generation,” a more urgent announcement of Prince’s new mindset. “We are the New Power Generation, we want to change the world,” Prince sings. “The only thing that’s in our way is you.” Prince coined the term “New Power Generation” during the Lovesexy period, proclaiming the start of a new spiritual era, marked by God’s presence and peace.55 By applying the name to his new band on Graffiti Bridge, Prince placed them on the right side of the battle of good and evil, especially in comparison to rivals The Time. The NPG’s task of “making love and music” not only harkens back to Prince’s familiar “make love, not war” credo, but continues his two-fold perspective on love from Lovesexy: Lovemaking between two monogamous partners is more desirable than casual sex; and love and God are interchangeable. Prince urges listeners to “open up” to love and “just believe,” setting the stage for the personification of the emotion that would occur later on the album. Prince also uses “New Power Generation” to alert listeners that he won’t be told what to do. He also rejects “old-fashioned music” and “old ideas.” It’s likely a response to the criticism he’d been receiving. In addition to ramping up his spiritual messaging, Prince had spent the last five years taking musical risks. He was criticized for 1985’s Around the World in a Day album, the post-Purple Rain departure that incorporated psychedelic sounds, strings and unique instruments like the oud and darbuka. With each subsequent project, Prince received more flak for allegedly failing to match the musical standards set by Purple Rain. Even a project like 1987’s Sign o’ the Times, widely considered a masterpiece, received some harsh criticism upon its release. In his review for Rolling Stone, Kurt Loder admitted the album was good, but it could’ve been better. “Simple virtuosity—mere brilliance, one might also say—seems too easy an exercise, at this point, for someone of Prince’s extraordinary gifts,” he said.56 Loder also expressed his hope that Prince would make a “Great Statement,” combining musical styles and sexual and spiritual themes. “But in the wake of Purple Rain, he has drifted,” Loder said. “Now comes Sign o’ the Times, and the Great Statement remains unmade.”57 Some say the notion of Prince’s “rise and fall” is more representative of the human tendency to characterize the lives of popular figures in that framework. “Everyone loves that narrative arc,” said Prince’s engineer Chuck Zwicky, who cited examples throughout time, from ancient works of literature like The Epic of Gilgamesh, to VH1’s Behind the Music. “So when Prince started getting huge, critics are like, ‘Yeah, he’s done,’” Zwicky continued. “They started saying that [during] Around the World in a Day. They started saying that after every major success.”58

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As Prince moved away from traditional R&B and funk styles, and initially dismissed the rise of hip-hop, he was also accused of abandoning his African American roots. “Prince was aware . . . that his black audience was drifting away from him,” Prince’s engineer Susan Rogers said in an interview. “[He] was making a conscious effort with Sign O’ the Times to win back some of his original audience.”59 As he would later explain in his Lovesexy tour guide, the Black Album— which some listeners nicknamed the Funk Bible60—was another attempt to “silence his critics.”61 The dark dance record was driven by bass and percussion and incorporated hip-hop, though Prince continued to treat the style with derision through lyrics on songs like “Dead On It.” Prince was also keenly aware that he was losing his stronghold on his status as a rebel—which would explain his return to profanity and lewd content on the Black Album. Even after his spiritual awakening, he insisted he wasn’t a “bluenose,” but that he’d “changed his outlook on how to present his still eros-heavy creations,” according to Rolling Stone.62 Facing all of those challenges, Prince approached Graffiti Bridge less angry, but determined to stay current in the industry on his own terms. He incorporated R&B, funk, gospel, and his own brand of hip-hop (without the derision). There were explicit songs on the album, which earned it a Parental Advisory designation, but Prince embraced the label with a newfound maturity. “I think parents have a right to know what their children are listening to,” he told Rolling Stone.63 Because Prince’s primary goal was to praise God, it makes sense that, with the exception of “Tick, Tick, Bang,” most of the risqué moments occur on The Time’s songs, like “Release It,” which follows “New Power Generation.” Prince not only praises God, but makes it known that he is seeking God. Following “Release It,” Prince serves up the contemplative “The Question of U,” asking questions like, “Which way do I turn when I’m feeling lost?” The song could be interpreted as Prince’s appeal to a lover, but he could just as easily be looking to a higher power. In the movie, the song occurs right after he tells Aura he’s looking for a sign from above. There is no question that the next song, “Elephants & Flowers,” is about God; Prince sings, “There will be peace for those who love God a lot” during the chorus. He also characterizes the deity as “love,” and an entity that gives power, listens when others won’t and creates everything, from elephants to flowers. Prince also tells a story about a lonely boy looking for an angel or savior, as well as a place to dance on a summer night. Though the season is different, the tale can be interpreted as a recounting of meeting Ingrid Chavez on Blue Tuesday.

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Additionally, he sings about “falling in love” and eliminating “confusion, tears, sorrow and pain.” Prince may be referencing his definition of “Lovesexy” (falling in love with the Heavens), as well as scripture. According to the Bible, God “will wipe away every tear” and “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” after Jesus’s return.64 Tevin Campbell’s song about pursuing one’s dreams, “Round and Round,” bridges “Elephants & Flowers” and George Clinton’s “We Can Funk,” featuring Prince. The latter is one of the most risqué songs on the album. However, Prince sings, “Sex between two people is all right if all the love in the world is what they got.” It’s reminiscent of the message from “When 2 R in Love,” which sanctions copulation within a committed relationship. It’s also an effective lead into the love song “Joy in Repetition,” which plays in the movie as Prince is falling for Aura. If “Joy” represents Prince’s love for Aura, the subsequent “Love Machine” represents Morris Day’s lust for the angel. The song occurs as Day and Jerome Benton are trying to seduce her in Day’s club—the beginning of an alarming series of events that leads to attempted date rape. It is one of the most difficult scenes to watch in a film that hasn’t aged well. (Luckily, Aura is rescued by the Kid.) Next on the soundtrack are “Tick, Tick, Bang,” The Time’s dance song “Shake!” and “Thieves in the Temple.” The latter’s spiritual imagery extends beyond the title. Painting himself as a man “looking for his soul,” he asks “love” (or God) to “come quick” and help him be better. Morris Day, on the other hand, is not interested in self-improvement. On “The Latest Fashion,” he plays the role of a bitter man, deceiving others before they can deceive him. The most intriguing part of the song is a guest rap from Prince. He insists “he’s still the king” and that he’s “back and harder than a heart attack.” “Ain’t nobody funky like me,” he says. The defensive verse further confirms Prince’s intention to prove his relevance in a shifting music landscape, where gangsta rap pioneers like N.W.A. were gaining popularity. On his next album, Prince would continue to explore hip-hop, utilizing his own resident rapper, Tony M. However, though he and the NPG employed hip-hop slang and fashion in their music and imagery— including the infamous gun-shaped microphone—they would establish themselves as a more upbeat “gang.” For example, on 1991’s “Gangster Glam,” Tony M. raps, “Everything we do is on a positive tip.” The last four songs on the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack radiate positivity and spirituality. Named for Mavis Staples’ character in the film, “Melody Cool” is a fiery gospel number by the vocal powerhouse. In the movie, Cool is another moral guide for the Kid, and she performs the song—backed by the Steeles— as The Time attempts to gain ownership of her club. Cool’s spiritual connection with the Kid was likely a reflection of Staples and Prince’s real-life bond, like mother and son. In addition to recording

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the unreleased “God is Alive” with the singer, Prince produced two of her albums, which included spiritual songs like “The Undertaker” and “A Man Called Jesus.” And according to Craig Rice, Prince wanted to make a gospel album with the singer.65 Next, the battle-winning “Still Would Stand All Time” tells of “a love that reaffirms that we are not alone.” It’s a message Aura had shared with the Kid on a heart-shaped note in the film, promising that love was “just around the corner.” Singing Aura’s words in the gospel ballad following her sacrificial death, the Kid confirms he has found that love in God. The power of God’s love is solidified on the penultimate track, “Graffiti Bridge,” performed by Prince, Mavis Staples and Tevin Campell. “Everybody’s looking for Graffiti Bridge,” they sing. “Everybody’s looking for love” (or God). “There’s people I’ve worked with who just think it’s the dumbest song,” said Prince’s engineer Michael Koppelman. “To him, it was sincere. [In my opinion], he sees his role as being a messenger of God.”66 Finally, the “New Power Generation (Pt. II)” reprise, carried by rapper T. C. Ellis, summarizes the theme of the film and soundtrack with the line, “Success is something that we all want, but the truth is what we need to reach our point.” Though the Kid could have brought in a bigger crowd and more money to the Glam Slam by performing more dance-oriented, party music, he decided to stay true to his spiritual direction. Similarly, Prince could have returned to his former, rebellious image and musical direction for Graffiti Bridge, but he decided to use the project to spread his message about God’s love. *** Released on August 21, 1990, a couple months ahead of the film, the Graffiti Bridge album fared relatively well. Unlike Lovesexy, it cracked the top ten of the Billboard 200, peaking at the sixth spot. Its lead single, “Thieves in the Temple,” reached number six on the Hot 100.67 Generally, critics responded positively to the album, though some felt it lacked boldness and progression. “At times it seems like he’s going through the motions, distilling the ideas and themes that made him famous,” Chris Willman wrote in the Los Angeles Times.68 While some journalists had been confused or dissatisfied with Lovesexy’s spiritual message, others found the Graffiti Bridge content to be more accessible. “So sure and catchy, though, are the tunes and so cleareyed (for Prince) the words that his omnivorous mysticism is newly convincing,” Paul Evans wrote in Rolling Stone. “One of rock’s greatest actors comes off as desperately real.”69

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In his November 1990 interview with Rolling Stone, Prince shared his excitement that journalists were paying attention to the Graffiti Bridge lyrics in their reviews. “They’re starting to get it,” he said.70 In that moment, for Prince, it seemed he might have broken through in a way he hadn’t with Lovesexy. But he was not bringing fans with him in the way that he had when he was preaching sexual freedom. Like Lovesexy, the Graffiti Bridge album sold under a million copies.71 Two months later, the movie came out and flopped. It debuted in eighth place at the box office,72 and dropped 66 percent in sales during its second week.73 Reviewers cited problems with the script and Prince’s directing ability. And though they acknowledged his spiritual message, they challenged his execution. For example, in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington wrote that Prince presented his conflict between spirituality and commerce in “garish, over-broad terms.” However, he noted Prince’s “heart-catching music” was the film’s saving grace.74 According to those who knew him, Prince seemed to take the negative feedback in stride. His ex-wife Mayte Garcia, who met him in 1990, wrote about the reaction to the film in her book, The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince. “When you’re working at a certain level, you find that people live through you,” Prince told Garcia. “If you don’t act like they expect you to, you’re the bad one.”75 “I think he might’ve been a little bit hurt,” Ingrid Chavez recalled. “But I think he seemed to stay very positive about it.”76 The USA Today interview confirms that notion, as Prince refused to call the film a failure. “They trashed The Wizard of Oz at first, too,” he said.77 According to Garcia, Prince’s mind was already on his next project.78 *** Soul singer Al Green once said, “Black people in America have always been torn between walking with Jesus and wandering in the world, clear back to the times of slavery when we either cried out in captivity by singing the blues or held out for a better hope by singing spirituals.”79 Coming into prominence in the 1970s, the artist himself straddled the line between the church and the roadhouse before a crisis of conscience prompted him to become a gospel artist and preacher. Before Green, Little Richard hung up his rock ’n’ roll persona to become a minister. After Green, Marvin Gaye died before he could reconcile his sexual appetite with his own calling to serve God. Prince entered into this long tradition of African American musicians torn between the sacred and profane. Some might say that he played in both

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worlds simply to gain attention; his fourth album, with its strong Christian imagery, was called Controversy, after all. But if his subsequent conversations with God onstage and on record, along with the perspectives of those close to him, are to be taken seriously, Prince was conflicted about his art beginning in the mid-1980s. Blue Tuesday seemed to be the ultimate test of whether or not Prince would exalt the flesh or God. He decided on the latter by replacing the Black Album with Lovesexy. And in the face of declining commercial success and increasing criticism, he doubled down on his religious message in Graffiti Bridge. Prince’s spiritual awakening did not prompt an overnight change. The presence of sexual lyrics and profanity—though mainly performed by other artists—on the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack is evidence of his ongoing interest in the profane. But the project also illustrates Prince’s willingness to expose his internal struggle to the audience and, ultimately, express spirituality and love are more important than sexual freedom. “All of the questions of my life will be answered when I decide which road to choose,” Prince sings in “The Question of U.” With Graffiti Bridge, he clearly chose the sacred over the profane, and it served as a triumph for him. Some would say it was temporary, as he’d release more explicit songs like “Gett Off” and “Come” throughout the next decade, before he was baptized into the Jehovah’s Witness faith. But, according to Prince, they’d be wrong. Though he had setbacks, and even explored other religions, he still stayed on the spiritual trajectory that began with his awakening in the late 1980s. “Lovesexy was a state of mind I’ve come to, and I know it is still there,” he said in a 1991 interview. “If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t make records anymore. When you have that . . . you know who you are.”80 NOTES 1. 1 John. 4:8 (AV). 2. Edna Gundersen, “In Prince’s Palace: A Personal Peek inside Paisley Park,” USA Today, September 11, 1991. 3. “Tavis Smiley, Guest: Prince—Exclusive, PBS,” YouTube video, 1:29, from an interview televised by PBS on April 27, 2009, posted by “PBS,” April 27, 2009, accessed June 4, 2011, http:​//www​.yout​ube.c​om/wa​tch?v​=agD9​qVUVH​rI. 4. According to the Seventh-Day Adventist religion, “Christ sends the Holy Spirit and the loyal angels to guide, protect, and sustain [His people] in the way of salvation.” “Salvation: The Great Controversy,” accessed January 1, 2017, https​://ww​ w.adv​entis​t.org​/en/b​elief​s/sal​vatio​n/the​-grea​t-con​trove​rsy/.​ 5. Interview by the author with Shauntel Manderville, September 10, 2012, by Facebook.

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6. Interview by the author with Art Erickson, August 2012, by telephone. 7. Interview by the author with Howard Bloom, July 3, 2011, Brooklyn, New York. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Robert Siegel, “Tipper Gore and Family Values,” NPR, January 11, 2005, accessed April 10, 2013, http:​//www​.npr.​org/t​empla​tes/s​tory/​story​.php?​story​Id=42​ 79560​. 11. Prince and the Revolution Live. Performed March 30, 1985. Syracuse, NY: Warner Music Video, 1985. Videocassette (VHS), 1 hour, 56 min. 12. Ibid. 13. Interview by the author with Dez Dickerson, May 24, 2017, Manchester, England. 14. Gunderson, “In Prince’s Palace: A Personal Peek inside Paisley Park;” Neal Karlen, “Prince Talks,” Rolling Stone, October 18, 1990, 60; “Prince Lovesexy ‘88,” Lovesexy Tour Program, 1988. 15. Interview by the author with Karen Krattinger, December 17, 2016, by telephone. 16. Karlen, “Prince Talks,” 1990, 60. 17. David Browne, “Fade to ‘Black,’” Entertainment Weekly, December 2, 1994, accessed September 19, 2014, http:​//www​.ew.c​om/ew​/arti​cle/0​,,304​771,0​0.htm​l; Gary Graff, “Legendary ‘Black Album’ is Just a Little Timeworn,” Detroit Free Press, November 20, 1994, 10H. 18. Prince, liner notes, Lovesexy, Warner Bros. Records Inc., 1988, compact disc. 19. Interview by the author with Ingrid Chavez, April 20, 2018, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 20. Ibid. 21. Gunderson, “In Prince’s Palace: A Personal Peek inside Paisley Park.” 22. Neal Karlen, “Prince Talks,” Rolling Stone, September 12, 1985, 28. 23. Prince Interview, 1985, Purple Dove Interviews, DVD (Petal Productions, 2007). 24. Lynn Norment, “Ebony Interview with Prince,” Ebony, July 1986, 36. 25. Karlen, “Prince Talks,” 1985, 30. 26. Norment, “Ebony Interview with Prince,” 36. 27. “Graffiti Bridge,” John A. Weeks III, accessed March 1, 2017, http:​//www​ .john​weeks​.com/​miscb​ridge​s/pag​es/gr​affit​ibr.h​tml. 28. Jon Bream, “Prince Fires His L.A.-based Managers,” Star Tribune, January 6, 1989; Alex Hahn, Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince (New York: Billboard Books, 2003), 156, 159; Karlen, “Prince Talks,” 1990, 59. 29. Interview by the author with Karen Krattinger. 30. Ibid. 31. Marlow Stern, “Kim Basinger on ‘The 11th Hour,’ Why the First ‘Batman’ Is Best, and Her Wild Time Dating Prince,” The Daily Beast, June 5, 2015, accessed December 23, 2015, http:​//www​.thed​ailyb​east.​com/a​rticl​es/20​15/06​/05/k​im-ba​singe​ r-on-​the-1​1th-h​our-w​hy-th​e-fir​st-ba​tman-​is-be​st-an​d-her​-wild​-time​-dati​ng-pr​ince.​html.​ 32. Karlen, “Prince Talks,” 1990, 60.

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33. Interview by the author with Craig Rice, July 1, 2014, by telephone. 34. Hahn, Possessed, 128. According to the Star Tribune’s writer Jon Bream, “[Prince’s] Critically Acclaimed ‘Lovesexy’ Album Was Not a Best Seller.” Bream, “Prince Fires His L.A.-based Managers,” 2B. 35. “Prince Chart History,” Billboard, accessed January 12, 2019, https​://ww​w.bil​ lboar​d.com​/musi​c/pri​nce/c​hart-​histo​ry. 36. Hahn, Possessed, 153; Bream, “Prince Fires His L.A.-based Managers,” 2B. 37. Alan Leeds, liner notes, Prince: The Hits/The B Sides, Warner Bros. Records Inc., 1993, compact disc. 38. David Browne, “Growing Up with Prince,” Rolling Stone, June 16, 1988, 120–21. 39. “Paisley Park & the Late ‘80s: Chapter 2,” Star Tribune, March 13, 2004, accessed May 5, 2013, http:​//www​.star​tribu​ne.co​m/tem​plate​s/Pri​nt_Th​is_St​ory?s​id= 11​50876​6. 40. “Prince Chart History”; “Prince’s 40 Biggest Billboard Hits,” Billboard, June 7, 2013, accessed June 8, 2013, http:​//www​.bill​board​.com/​artic​les/c​olumn​s/cha​rt-be​ at/48​3652/​princ​es-40​-bigg​est-b​illbo​ard-h​its. 41. Gary Trust, “Ask Billboard: Prince of Album Sales,” Billboard, September 11, 2009, accessed June 6, 2014, http:​//www​.bill​board​.com/​artic​les/c​olumn​s/cha​rt-be​ at/26​7411/​ask-b​illbo​ard-p​rince​-of-a​lbum-​sales​. 42. Interview by the author with Ingrid Chavez. 43. Interview by the author with Ingrid Chavez. 44. Ibid. 45. Karlen, “Prince Talks,” 1990, 59. 46. 1 Corinthians 7:1–2 (AV). 47. Interview by the author with Ingrid Chavez. 48. The Bible states, “His lightnings enlightened the world.” Psalm. 97:4 (AV). It also compares Satan to “lightning fall from heaven.” Luke 10:18 (AV). In the song “Eye No,” Prince references “lightning all around me” when singing about the influence of the devil, or “Spooky Electric.” 49. Genesis 3:7 (AV). 50. Martin Keller, “Portrait of the Artist as a Native Son,” Minnesota Monthly, March 1997, 147. 51. Isaiah 6:20 (AV). 52. John 8:12 (AV). 53. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” Jesus says of a false prophet. John 10:10 (AV). 54. The Bible states, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:41 (AV). 55. “Prince Lovesexy ’88,” Lovesexy Tour Program, 1988. 56. Kurt Loder, “Prince’s Baffling Brilliance,” Rolling Stone, April 23, 1987, 146. 57. Ibid., 145–46. 58. Interview by the author with Chuck Zwicky, April 29, 2016, by telephone. 59. “Susan Rogers on Prince’s Sign O’ the Times (Part 1),” Daddy Rock Star, February 24, 2013, accessed August 6, 2014, http:​//dad​dyroc​kstar​.tumb​lr.co​m/pos​t/ 438​85486​088/s​usan-​roger​s-on-​princ​es-si​gn-o-​the-t​imes-​part-​1.

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60. On the Black Album’s opening track, “Le Grind,” Prince uses the term “the Funk Bible,” which some listeners adopted as a title for the album. Black Album, Warner Bros. Records Inc., 1994, compact disc. 61. “Prince Lovesexy ’88,” Lovesexy Tour Program, 1988. 62. Karlen, “Prince Talks,” 1990, 60. 63. Ibid. 64. Revelation 21:4 (AV). 65. Interview by the author with Craig Rice. 66. Interview by the author with Michael Koppelman, February 13, 2018, by telephone. 67. “Prince Chart History.” 68. Chris Willman, “Prince’s ‘Graffiti Bridge’ to the Past,” Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1990. 69. Paul Evans, “Prince Crosses the Bridge to Glory,” Rolling Stone, August 23, 1990, 126. 70. Karlen, “Prince Talks,” Rolling Stone, 1990, 58. 71. Hahn, Possessed, 162. 72. Pat H. Broeske, “Weekend Box Office: ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ on Top Rung,” Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1990, SDF2. 73. Pat H. Broeske, “The Also-Rans,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1990, T32. 74. Michael Wilmington, “Movie Review: ‘Graffiti Bridge’: A Bridge Too Far,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1990. 75. Mayte Garcia, The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince (New York: Hachette Books, 2017), 91. 76. Interview by the author with Ingrid Chavez. 77. Gunderson, “In Prince’s Palace: A Personal Peek Inside Paisley Park.” 78. Garcia, The Most Beautiful, 91. 79. Al Green and Davin Seay, Take Me to the River (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000), 6. 80. Chris Heath, “The Man Who Would Be Prince,” GQ, April 21, 2016, accessed January 13, 2019, https​://ww​w.gq.​com/s​tory/​princ​e-int​ervie​w-ins​ide-p​aisle​y-par​k.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Garcia, Mayte. The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince. New York: Hachette Books, 2017. Graustark, Barbara. “Prince: Strange Tales from Andre’s Basement and Other Fantasies Come True.” In The Rock Musician: 15 Years of Interviews, The Best of Musician Magazine, edited by Tony Scherman, 107–28. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Green, Al, and Davin Seay. Take Me to the River. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000. Hahn, Alex. Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince. New York: Billboard Books, 2003.

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Interview by the author with Art Erickson, August 2012, by telephone. Interview by the author with Chuck Zwicky, April 29, 2016, by telephone. Interview by the author with Craig Rice, July 1, 2014, by telephone. Interview by the author with Dez Dickerson, May 24, 2017, Manchester, England. Interview by the author with Howard Bloom, July 3, 2011, Brooklyn, New York. Interview by the author with Ingrid Chavez, April 20, 2018, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Interview by the author with Karen Krattinger, December 17, 2016, by telephone. Interview by the author with Michael Koppelman, February 13, 2018, by telephone. Interview by the author with Shauntel Manderville, September 10, 2012, by Facebook.

Chapter 8

When God Appears, Everything Changes Prince and Pentecost Rev. Suzanne Castle

DEARLY BELOVED Have there ever been such gloriously true and radically welcomed words as those penned by Prince to begin his anthem “Let’s Go Crazy”? “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.”1 Those words have great meaning to a community of likeminded artists and spiritual journey-ers in Fort Worth, Texas. A group of God-followers, crafting stories of faith that unleash love and creativity into the world, transforming the mundane into sacred spaces around the table. This group, affectionately calling themselves Refuge, during the season of Pentecost in 2016 crafted a worship gathering in a creative arts studio. It had been mere weeks since the passing of Prince, and this community routinely created worship that fused cultural realities, stories, music, and norms with the ancient pattern of spiritual life. It seemed only fitting on a holy day, such as Pentecost, to lift up the life of Prince, his fire and zeal. The beloved of Refuge were focused on God’s fire of witness, service and grace and how those gifts lead one into a new life. In fact, the mantra for the evening became: We love, radically. We feed, generously. We hope, unabashedly—as we gather on this bit of water and dirt in the grand design of this particular star system, as beloved creatures, and we pull together to do this thing called life.2

This becomes the context for this chapter: a creatively quirky sort of church gathering for a high holy day merged with the sounds and words from Prince.

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I guess you could say that Fort Worth, Texas is not the mecca of places that pop into people’s minds when they consider creative worship gatherings, but this group of justice-minded, culturally conscious folks are passionate about doing life together. One regular attender routinely described our ragtag fellowship as “the Sunday family dinner version of church” and so we are.3 Living life out loud over grand feasts, multisensory worship experiences and artful engagements in the community. Often we still refer to one another as “family and Refuge as our home.”4 As its curator, my role was to craft engagements in uniquely artistic ways, and so, each month, these souls would gather for activities like pop-up art in the street, starting a robust discussion of culture and church in a local bar, gathering birthday party supplies to hand out at the local food pantry, and worshiping alongside each other. This chapter will focus on how this group of people created a service around theophanic moments with the music of Prince as its playlist. Different aspects of the worship gathering will be highlighted, with anecdotes and musings on the power of the word, music, and visual components to create a life where “Beloved” is the moniker. WHEN GOD APPEARS, EVERYTHING CHANGES April 21, 2016, started out like any other Thursday with the hurrying up of human children, accompanied by a furry one, to get breakfast down, get in the car, get to school, and start the commute with the pup in the backseat and my tunes blaring. I was listening to my satellite radio, jamming away to some dance beats when I heard that Prince had been found unresponsive in his home. Immediately the channel began to play Prince music, with musings from people calling in expressing their grief. Within minutes my cell phone was blowing up, as the have-you-heard-this and the I-can’t-believe-Bowieand-now-Prince text messages from friends and loved ones came flooding in. I’m not ashamed to say the death of Prince threw me for a loop, as I knew how actively he was engaged in producing, writing, and continuing to push the boundaries of sound. Somewhere in the midst of my foggy reverie, the sounds of a mourning guitar without a bass line burst through and the goosebumps commenced as one of the biggest hits from the album Purple Rain sang deep into my soul. “When Doves Cry” was able to sound out my grief. Speak my grief into the air. Console and move me when I was still processing the news of yet another death in the music scene that would alter how music is woven for years to come. By the end of the day, I was not alone as many of the Refuge people began messaging that we absolutely must begin to consider how to honor the music and movement of Prince.

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We began to conspire and knew that May 15, 2016, was the perfect date: a high holy day in the church calendar, Pentecost Sunday, when we would be celebrating the many manifestations that church had taken. Soon, it became apparent to our creative team that a visual symbol of fire alongside a retrospective of Prince’s music would be the way forward. Through his music, fire imagery, and liturgical elements we would explore what happens when God appears, most notably through fire, and how nothing is the same afterwards. THEOPHANY + PRINCE We dove into our creative assignment with almost a crazed grief: processing, writing, dreaming, imagining, and the project became a balm of sorts to the collective mourning. As we developed our worship imagery, we delved into the nature of theophanic events and explored instances that are not solely limited to the biblical narrative. The reported appearance of God/gods to humans is found in many instances of literature such as Greek myths, and in popular culture, such as the smoke monster that has a special connection with the character John Locke in the popular television series Lost.5 It was in these epiphanic moments of theological and cultural exegesis that we began to notice patterns of theophany in the works of Prince: his grand usage of pyrotechnics in performances, his word choices of being God in Flesh throughout his body of work, and his wish to be seen as a symbol and not letters constructed as a name. In the chapter “I’m Your Messiah,” author Touré expounds how Prince regularly writes and sings as if bearing the presence of God to humanity.6 His ballad “I Would Die 4 U” sings of Prince being a messiah and comes full circle in verse 3: “I’m not a human. I’m a dove. I’m your conscious. I am love.”7 In the party anthem “1999” the same holy-come-to-earth visions abound as Prince takes on the voice of God and assures us that we won’t be hurt because “I only want you to have some fun,”8 and as Touré explains, “even if you don’t know or notice all the Biblical allusions, when Prince gives us his voice as the voice of God . . . it subtly acculturates us into thinking of Prince as akin to God.”9 It became clear that our playlist would need to craft an arc of celebration, confession, and communion for our theme to emerge. We settled on designing our worship around moments of embracing God’s presence in story and how our songs and reflections would move us from despair to hope. We dove into our creative project and prepared, as only mere days were left until our gathering, knowing that “at Refuge, you [are] loved for just being you” and that we needed to offer space “for people to share creativity and talents . . . clergy or non-clergy, all are welcome to share their story.”10

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LET’S GO CRAZY We dove into our creative process and quickly realized that our space design would be crucial to the overall experience, and so we took our rectangular, strip-mall creative arts studio and made a flattened oval of chairs to encircle the space, with a table as one component of the circular structure, that included our visual monitor, and another table placed in the center, covered completely in various unlit candles of different sizes and colors, draped in shades of red and purple. Being together in a circle seemed most appropriate as we were gathered, anticipating the Holy among us, and holding on to each other in our reality. Around the edge of the chairs, there were large candlestands, filled with lit candles. Being on the inside of a light circle created a deeper mystery that evening, and as one person shared “made me feel as if nothing I was facing in my week ahead could keep me from the embrace of our Creator.”11 At one edge of our space were red, orange, and yellow balloons, strewn about on tables and floors. At another edge were tables spread with the loveliest array of cakes, munchies, olives, cheeses, wine, beer, and water. You could not help but walk into our venue with a prickling on the skin, knowing something special was being birthed: “It’s as if we are here to celebrate in our funky way, without the shallow trappings of a funeral or kid’s birthday party.”12 Indeed the atmosphere was quite palpable, with people from tweens to the retired buzzing around sharing how the week had gone, plates overflowing with edible delights and the humdrum of electronic funk playing softly in the background. As our team shepherded people to seats, I strode to the center table, raised my wine glass with a warm welcome, shouted “Happy birthday Church!” and then together we clinked glasses as we said “Grace!” Grace as a toast has become a habit of these people; a moment to stare into the eyes of another beloved, share a bit of the pain and joy of the days since we last gathered, and lay over each of us that elusive gift of grace for what has been, is and will be. It’s a redeeming moment each time we gather and the perfect launching point for the experience of Pentecost. Quickly I sought to share the visuals of what it means to imagine God as a flame/ember/evening fire/roaring fire/wildfire and how this was the image we were holding together for Pentecost. We briefly conversed about how when a flame appears, everything changes: cold becomes warm, the dry brush becomes lit, the dark becomes enfolded in light. Our reflection ensued as we were surrounded in candlelight and a visual screen of a burning car. After a few moments, each of us were invited to consider what in our world needed to be set on fire: expectations, stress, grief, and so on, and before we could move on with our being together, we must let those things burn away to be present in the here and the now.13 In the moments that followed, all that was

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heard was the churning sound of metal being consumed by fire, as worshippers were left alone with their thoughts. Without fanfare, a reader began to recite Exodus 3:1–5, altered by the creative team, which ended with the instructions to “take off your shoes . . . we stand before the fire of God’s presence.” Each person removed their shoes and placed them together near the centered altar table in an act of submission, while each candle was lit on the table. When all was completed, voices shared in a unison prayer of welcome: The word of the Lord is a fire in my heart and a hammer in my bones. May the fire embrace us. May the fire deliver us. May the fire purify us. May the fire enliven us. May the fire roar. May the fire spread. Fire of God, we welcome you.14

Then our music leader responded: “We are singing the music of Prince, an artist who felt passion deep in his bones, whose lyrics cried out for Presence, Light and Love. Together let us be before our God in a sense of joy, belonging and praise” and the sounds and videos began, calling everyone to praise with Prince’s anthem “Let’s Go Crazy.” The voice of Prince merging with us, the people, over the church organ and rock band was intense. The song set a deliberate trajectory as we chanted about temptations bringing us down and coming together to a world of joy where “you can always see the sun, day or night.”15

FLAMES OF HOPE AND ACCEPTANCE The energy was amazing! Laughter abounding, people dancing; the atmosphere was truly electric as joy filled every crevice. The worship leaders took the environment seriously and allowed for it to dissipate at will, slowly, awkwardly in an attempt to place each worshiper in a vulnerable place. As the sounds quieted and people began awkwardly shifting their feet, I invited everyone to take a moment away from the party, and be open about sadness and longing. Clustered in groups of two or three, worshipers began to share their hearts openly as arms embraced, and hands were held. One worshipper noted that encounters like this one “provided me a safe and non-judgmental space to worship despite my faults.”16 After a few minutes of sharing, the long wailing vamp of “When Doves Cry” began to fill the space, over which

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we were reminded that Prince often noted that this song was an anthem for tragedy and loss, and that we live in hope for better days. We also shared how Prince kept actual doves at his home in Minnesota, named Majesty and Divinity. Without fail, each person began to sing along, some with tears welling up. In those moments it seemed that joy and sorrow could easily commingle, for we were not alone. As the song ended, and our voices drifted away, silence was shared for one minute, with nothing but the sounds of a fire crackling. A small dove fluttered on a dark screen with the words, “Be with the Holy in silence as you consider the flames of hope.” Once again a reader began to recite scripture, this time using Isaiah 6:1–7 from The Message and inviting us to reclaim our shoes and put them on.17 Afterwards, we were invited to write on a piece of paper something we were holding onto that created guilt and unease, and to place it in a large glass cylinder. The reflection was composed to use magician’s flash paper. Using this special paper would allow us to ignite it into a brilliant flame when touched by a lighter, without any residue left behind. When everyone had completed placing their papers into the container, I lit them on fire, and after they disappeared, recited, “The fire of God’s acceptance.” It was a powerful moment. We had just heard how the seraphim had flown near the lips of the prophet Isaiah and cleansed Isaiah’s sins with a warm coal. Without any shame-speak or yelling, a simple reflection allowed people to consider the power of God’s flames to bring hope into any situation. The youngest worshiper present that evening recalls this service as a reminder that “worship doesn’t have to be in a church; and you don’t have to be a part of a certain community to be welcomed. Everyone comes just like they are and it’s beautiful.”18 LIVE 4 LOVE The Voice is an English translation of scripture by the Ecclesia Bible Society that gathered Bible and language scholars, other writers, poets, and artists to create a Bible that seems like a story, often in a screenplay format, including narration and notes.19 The creative team decided its rendition of the Acts 2 Pentecost story was appropriate, and thus we gathered a narrator, three Pilgrims, three Skeptics, and a person to portray Peter in a reader’s theater format. Each character was given a sign to wear with their “name” on it, and they clustered around the center altar for the reading of the passage. Surrounded by candles, balloons, and a video monitor with flickering flames, the reading challenged us to harken back to a chaotic day, when there was great mistrust among different groups of people, and political chaos. The sermon began with me reading my blog post “Dearly Beloved,” paying tribute to Prince after his death:

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Surely it can’t be true. Hours after the news has broken that the artist known as a symbol and a name, Prince, died of complications from influenza I’m still in shock. I’m in a haze. I don’t know if it is because of my cultural icons that were formative in my growing up years are leaving the planet, or if it is because I’m feeling my age, or if it is because we are a culture obsessed with anything BUT death, but I’m in a funk. . . . And not the kind Prince and the Revolution played. Have there ever been such gloriously true and radically welcomed words as these: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.” What a way to gather people. What an invitation to be who you are. What a simply perfect phrase to even out the playing field of the game of life. Here we are, gathered on this bit of water and dirt in the grand design of this particular star system, beloved creatures, and we are to pull together to do this thing called life. To love, radically. To feed, generously. To hope, unabashedly. For today, it was nice to hear Prince tunes and memories instead of the political nonsense. Today, we the beloved, gathered. And it was holy.20

Of course I had to recognize that we had learned, in the weeks since his death was first reported, that Prince died of what was likely an unintentional drug overdose of Fentanyl. It was important to share the pain management realities so many were facing, and the hard effects on loved ones. The sermon waxed and waned from images of fire and chaos, to the relief of community to hold all things together. “How can we expect for the social landscape of pain, loss, and confinement to cease, when we are too busy hoarding our love? Silos of love won’t last, and will indeed grow darker and darker unless we unleash our love as the only thing that will help life continue to prosper as the beloved of God, beyond our own agenda, our own family, our own ways.”21 Each movement was building upon the thought that when God appears, everything changes. I peppered various anecdotes about Prince throughout the sermon, to lay the groundwork for sharing a song that would bring the community to the Table of Love, our communion feast.

GHETTOS AND FLOWERS One of Prince’s least performed tracks, “The Cross,” became a seminal component of the gathering created for Pentecost. Originally this song was part of the triple-album anthology that was to be titled Crystal Ball, but the project was pared down and became one album called Sign o’ the Times

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released in 1987. Our team found it interesting that in later years, after Prince found the Jehovah’s Witness tradition, he would change the title of this song in the few times he performed it live, and would refer to it in a set list as “The Christ.”22 As the sermon wound down, and I invited the hearers to consider how God’s embers were burning in the least likely places and the nooks and crannies of our lives, I turned to begin sharing how God’s grace is there, even when we seem surrounded by darkness, chaos, and upheaval. “Even Prince,” I continued, “did not go spouting the name of his God from stadiums and clubs, but nevertheless, had a way with language to create imagery that carried you into his deeply held beliefs that God always shows up, your life changes and redemption becomes your mantra.”23 In those moments, the video began in the quiet and the lyrics to this song were passed out among the celebrants, as each person was asked to reflect on how relief comes among God’s blessing, when you unburden yourself of the chaotic norm and instead become a part of something bigger than the one. For this, I preached, is the Pentecost reality: “to recapture a sense of the light of God within you and others, that builds together and warms a world so ready to throw you away.”24 And the song began. And we collectively smiled through our tears as his voice tore through our reality and moved us into the realm of God: Ghettos to the left of us, Flowers to the right.25

And when the song faded off, and our tear-stained lyric sheets had been put aside, a member of our team stood among us and invited us to be witness to the flame of the Holy inside each of us, ready to be reignited once more as the agents of hope to the world. Her brief communion meditation forced us to consider the role we would each play to represent the realm of God to the world: so as we feed on the gifts from God, we go and gift back to the world. As we prepared to gather around the table, we shared this version of the Lord’s Prayer: Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven: The hallowing of your name echo through the universe! The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world! Your heavenly will be done by all created beings! Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.

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With the bread we need for today, feed us. In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us. In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us. From trials too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us. For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever. Amen.26

Slowly, as “I Would Die 4 U” began to croon in the background, worshipers gathered together in the center of the flame-edged circle to partake of bread and wine, hugs and tears, hope and renewal. Mystically, communion was finished before the song completed, and suddenly voices filled the space as together, unexpectedly we had our own Spiritbathed moment. Each of us began to jump into the final stanzas of “I Would Die 4 U,” and before long the track wasn’t heard, but only voices singing together: “I’m not a human, I am a dove.”27 Slowly we unwound from our unanticipated visit from the Holy, assured of hope, and together we ventured to a prayer station of balloons. In this area of the room, we were asked to jot down a hope we had and to pray over that hope. Then I gave our final blessing, “God is not about ashes but newness, and we are embers of grace and hope.” As people prepared to continue in fellowship, asking questions about what schedules were ahead, considering jobs and school, each person was asked to take a balloon that held someone else’s hope, and attempt to unleash that hope into the world in some way during the week. Stories emerged of individuals’ favorite Prince songs, and many more recollections of how his music had been an important part of our lived reality. One such worshiper noted later that “worship at Refuge brought what seemed purely secular into the realm of the sacred in creative ways that helped me to see and understand that all is sacred.”28 DREAM, IF YOU CAN, A COURTYARD In retrospect, as the curator for this experimental fusing of Prince and liturgy, I wish I had been exposed to some of the findings in his vault that are just now coming to light. How powerful would his own words have been as a piece of the sermon with his own “sermon” originally streamed in 2000 but largely unheard until it was re-released online by Revolution Television in 2017? His prelude to “One Song” includes his own theological exegesis of the power of choice and the impact our choice to love would have on the world as we

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begin a new era: 2000. He states that the world needs to be brought out of its man-made state of “chaos, disorder, and illusion,” and then claims to have the answer: “Returning the leadership back in2 God will allow mankind 2 achieve its original collective goal which is union with God. Ideas contrary 2 this goal should not b blamed or persecuted––just simply ignored.”29,     30 And two-thirds of the way through his exploration, Prince sings in a theophanic interpretation as the voice of God: “I am the one song, And that one song is free.” As one of the co-creators for this service asserted, “[this] church unleashed the creative spirit with amazing worship that deepened the spiritual connection with God!”31 Sharing our powerful testimony of the encounters we have with the Holy One gives access to what some deem the mystical and unbelievable realm. Could we imagine that courtyard, gathered together, where dreams collide in never-ending happiness, where 200 balloons go up, where the great tree shades all under her branches as we feast together, sharing our love without limits and singing of the One-Who-Lives?32

NOTES 1. Prince and the Revolution, “Let’s Go Crazy,” Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984. 2. Opening ethos statement for Pentecost worship, Refuge, 2016. See worship notes at end of chapter. 3. K. Rand, female, early thirties. 4. J. Jones, female, sixties. 5. From Zeus to Semele in Greek Mythology, various instances recorded in the Iliad and the Epic of Gilgamesh all note theophanic encounters of the divine with the human. The television series Lost was aired on ABC for six seasons from 2004 to 2010, and includes allusions to several forms of mythology. 6. Touré, I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon (New York: Atria Books, 2013), 111–43. 7. Prince and the Revolution, “I Would Die 4 U,” Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984. 8. Prince and the Revolution, “1999,” Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984. 9. Touré, I Would Die 4 U, 116. 10. C. Kahlmorgan, male, thirties. 11. C. James, female, fifties. 12. B. Bishop, male, forties. 13. Burning Car is a film work by Superflex in which a car is being set on fire. The empty car starts to burn, the cabin is filled with smoke and fire, car-paint is bobbling, tires explode. Towards the end the car is burned out completely. Superflex, “Burning Car,” online video, 11 minutes, 2008, https://www.superflex.net/burningcar/.

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14. Mark Pierson and Mike Riddell, The Prodigal Project (London: SPCK Publishing, 2001). Responsive words for a worship service at Parallel Universe, Cityside Baptist Church, Auckland NZ. Revised by Café Church, Sydney as described in chapter 4. 15. Prince and the Revolution, “Let’s Go Crazy,” Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984. 16. A. Lopez, late forties. 17. Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1993–2002). 18. A. Rolen, female, teenager. 19. Ecclesia Bible Society, The Voice Bible: Step into the Story of Scripture (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014). 20. Suzanne Castle, “Dearly Beloved,” suzannecastle (blog), April 22, 2016, https​ ://su​zanne​castl​e.wor​dpres​s.com​/2016​/04/2​2/dea​rly-b​elove​d/. 21. Suzanne Castle, “When God Appears Everything Changes” (sermon, Refuge, Fort Worth, TX, May 15, 2016). 22. Per Nilsen and JooSt Mattheij, The Vault: The Definitive Guide to the Musical World of Prince (Linghem, Sweden: Uptown, 2004); and “The Cross,” PrinceVault. com, accessed May 1, 2016, http:​//www​.prin​cevau​lt.co​m/ind​ex.ph​p?tit​le=Th​e_Cro​ss. 23. Suzanne Castle, When God Appears Everything Changes, sermon. 24. Ibid. 25. Prince, “The Cross,” Sign o’ the Times, Paisley Park Records and Warner Bros., 1987. 26. Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia, A New Zealand Prayer Book (Christchurch, NZ: Genesis Publications, 2005). 27. Prince and the Revolution, “I Would Die 4 U,” Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984. 28. K. Parker, female, fifties. 29. Prince, “One Song,” love4oneanother.com, 2000, https​://we​b.arc​hive.​org/w​ eb/20​00030​21229​44/ht​tp://​www.l​ove4o​neano​ther.​com/o​neson​g-tex​t.htm​l. 30. Prince, “One Song,” streaming video, NPG Music Club, January 1, 2000. 31. C. James, female, fifties. 32. Ibid.; Prince and the Revolution, “Let’s Go Crazy,” Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984; Prince, “200 Balloons,” Batdance, Warner Bros., 1989.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. A New Zealand Prayer Book. Christchurch, NZ: Genesis Publications, 2005. Ecclesia Bible Society. The Voice Bible: Step into the Story of Scripture. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014. Peterson, Eugene H., trans. The Message. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1993–2002. Touré. I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon. New York: Atria Books, 2013.

Epilogue Continuing Revelations Jonathan H. Harwell

SIDE A: SKINNY, CROOKED TEETH, WITH A HIGH VOICE At its essence, Prince’s lived story is that of a misfit who intentionally leveraged his formidable musical talents in bold ways, while delivering a narrative of spiritual meaning through the passions of his own humanity, and became perhaps the coolest person on Earth. This helped many others, musicians or not, to make meaning of, and to find confidence in, their own complicated lives. As Revolution drummer Bobby “Z” Rivkin reflects, Prince had “spoken to so many people on a level that I think saved a lot of lives. He appealed to the oddball and the underdog because he was an oddball and an underdog. It’s just a beautiful thing.”1 As I’m writing this, I’ve just seen two people in a Prince-related Facebook group naming him as their “spirit guide.” Suzanne Castle’s chapter in this book illustrates some of the effects he continues to have on lived theology, individually and in community. However, Prince himself doubted his worthiness as a role model. In the song “Vicki Waiting” from the 1989 Batman soundtrack (a song attributed to Bruce Wayne in the liner notes), he vulnerably shares, “Talk of children still frightens me/Is my character enough to be/ One that deserves a copy made?” *** He was a role model for many people, including me. The Purple Rain soundtrack was one of the first albums I bought, and I was excited to practice the snare part on “Let’s Go Crazy” for the marching band; but a new band 145

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director arrived during the summer and changed the halftime show. My brother and his friend had already been into Prince for a while by the time I finally took a deep dive into the rest of his music in 1987, borrowing the Sign o’ the Times cassette, followed by everything else I could possibly get my hands on. I scoured music stores for albums with songs he had written for others. The lyrics, the screams, and the music captured me, and so did the persona. The confidence exuded by this man with a strange voice, shape-shifting looks, and an insistent spirituality were demonstrating to me and a few close friends that we could somehow find our places in this world, too. From an early age I sensed I didn’t belong. The other kids on the school bus thought I couldn’t speak. I was always shy and uncomfortable in a crowd. In a photo from my third birthday party, I was surrounded by brothers, cousins, and neighbor kids with huge grins in front of my home-decorated cake, while my eyes were looking down and to the side with a frown resting on my face. I was reading at fourth-grade level when I was four, so the principal recommended I skip kindergarten. Although I was glad to have an extra year at home, I discovered afterwards that I was suddenly the new kid in school on the first day of first grade. I knew no one in my class, and they all knew each other from kindergarten. I was an outsider from day one. I come from a family of ministers and journalists on one side and subsistence farmers on the other. I grew up in a small, conservative town in Lower Alabama, in small, conservative Southern Baptist churches where my father was a music minister. We attended church three times a week throughout my childhood. The year I was born, the film series A Thief in the Night debuted. The final installment came out when I was eleven. During the Cold War, when we were being taught in school to fear Soviet nuclear bombs, kids from around the county were bussed to our church to watch these four films dramatizing the Rapture and the Tribulation. Many Gen Xers like us grew up with nightmares inspired by these movies.2 Later while I was in middle school, I attended a “youth rally” at another small church that featured guest evangelists who gave us flyers with a list of musicians and why each one was sinful. I had never even heard of the Blue Oyster Cult before. One day in my own church, the pastor shouted until he was red in the face about how “everybody from Amy Grant on up” was causing cancer with their “African voodoo rhythms” in rock music. As far as I was aware, most people in my hometown were Baptist, Methodist, or Pentecostal. There was a small Catholic church in town, but I knew of no one who attended. My early exposure to different traditions was limited to visiting kids’ revivals at my cousins’ Assembly of God church. However, my religious environment was not entirely monolithic, and outsiders were always part of my world. For example, I have known lesbian ministers all my life. A close relative was a Southern Baptist woman music minister for forty-five

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years, who abhorred the use of the word “gay” except in its traditional sense, but who had a lifelong woman partner. Fast forward to the late 1980s in the high school band, where I was the captain of the percussion section; to college, where I was an RA (resident assistant, a peer counselor in the residence hall); and to my two years teaching in Albania that would seal my self-confidence. I would soon become a librarian (happily married to another librarian), and eventually also a cultural anthropologist, studying Quakers in the American Deep South. What had happened between the school bus and the band? Mostly Prince. My stepmother gave me a simple navy trench coat for Christmas which, like moving up from the bass drum to the snare in marching band, made me feel a bit sharper and less awkward. I still wear it. I also became, instead of the silent kid on the school bus, the one on the band bus who knew all the lyrics to the Sign o’ the Times album, and which moments to turn the volume down for the cuss words. I had taken a break from church for a few years after my mother passed away at the age of forty-six, following a two-year battle with breast cancer—an event that would have lasting effects on my family’s mental health. I was thirteen, the youngest of four sons. It was a couple of years later that I had found my way into Prince’s music. I was listening to hymns at home on Sundays, like “God,” “The Ladder,” and “The Cross.” I did make my way back into church later in high school. (I was once caught making copies of magazine interviews with Prince on the church photocopier, with help from the pastor’s son. His dad was shocked. I prepared for the worst, but thankfully his awareness of Prince’s subversiveness was superficial. “Did you know he gives out condoms at his concerts?!”). As a young and impressionable college student, I became active in Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as Cru), a friendly, multiracial, interdenominational group. I attended weekly worship and weekly small group Bible studies. Looking back, it probably wasn’t coincidental that I stopped buying Prince’s music around the same time, after the Diamonds and Pearls album, and even threw away some of the more risqué albums. With my friends in Crusade, I participated in mission trips in Florida and Mexico over spring break. In Daytona Beach, we were trained to administer “surveys” to random people on the street, and if their answers were not sufficient, to narrate the “Four Spiritual Laws” tract to them. This tract is the most common evangelistic tool developed by Campus Crusade. In Ciudad Juarez, we were directed to give bags of candy with the same tract in Spanish, to children in squatters’ villages. These were the sole activities of the mission work. Recently I have seen similar tracts placed on cars near Cru summer camps, such as one called “Steps to Peace with God” from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Franklin Graham is the president and CEO of that

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group, with the same role in Samaritan’s Purse, a charity ironically named since he has become infamous for hate speech against people of other faiths, among others.3 The campus ministers with Campus Crusade kept files on each student who attended, with regular meetings in which they would assess our spiritual growth or lack thereof. When I became too busy with work and classes to attend weekly worship or Bible studies, my leader told me this meant I was not growing spiritually. By that time, having also heard disconcerting experiences from friends, as well as encountering overt racism within the group, I was ready to be done with Crusade. I served as a missionary with the Southern Baptist Convention the following summer. Two women ministers who worked with our team were a couple. After college, I served for two years as a missionary in Albania, a homeschool teacher supporting a family doing agricultural development work (not an evangelist), with another mission agency, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. This was still a new organization, known as a moderate splinter group that had left the SBC (many under duress) in support of women in ministry. My aunt (active in the related group Baptist Women in Ministry) and uncle (a prominent Baptist journalist) were strong supporters of the CBF. A lesbian minister friend wrote to me in Albania that she felt like she could be involved with the CBF because I was working with them. She had already recognized me as an ally. There was much support from LGBTQ+ individuals for this new mission agency, until several years later when they voted to adopt a hiring policy that discouraged hiring gay people, in order to make the organization more palatable to conservatives.4 I was holding the hand of my minister friend when the vote took place. She was crying as she whispered to me that they wanted her for company, but only on the back porch. I was always drawn to other outsiders. During the years I wasn’t collecting or fully connecting with Prince, I was exploring other musical seekers, some of whom were flitting around the edges of the contemporary Christian music (CCM) scene, such as Mark Heard, Sam Phillips, Lost Dogs, Swirling Eddies, Buddy and Julie Miller, and some with a discernible Prince influence, like Patsy Moore and Victoria Williams. I also went deeply into a broader range of folk and what is often misnamed “Americana” (it’s not confined to America). Many of these artists have also influenced my spiritual outlook, including Lucinda Williams, Vic Chesnutt, Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Cassandra Wilson, Sinead O’Connor, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bruce Cockburn, Van Morrison, U2, and Mavis Staples (who became like a mother to Prince).5 As with Prince, it’s not just the music that moves me but also the person, as revealed in interviews, concerts, writings, and conversations I’ve had with a few of them. I’ve also seen how musicians can be just as influential to one another, not just musically but personally. The first time I spoke

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with the late Vic Chesnutt after his Charlotte show in 1997, I mentioned his friend and collaborator Victoria Williams, and he looked at me intently and said, “She is joy.” I also dove into Flannery O’Connor’s writings while living in Albania, reading her Complete Stories6 at a time when I was forming my identity in a world completely different from any I had ever known. O’Connor, a literary illustrator of Southern Catholic allegories, famously called the South a “Christ-haunted” place.7 Even while I wasn’t in tune with Prince’s everevolving music, I was still Prince-haunted. There was no way I was going to live overseas for two years without packing a few of his cassettes. I would eventually find my way back into his music after watching the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2004, when he not only performed a few of his own tunes but also gave a legendary guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” in memory of George Harrison, who was inducted the same night. How many guitar solos have oral histories?8 After that night I started filling in the blanks with the music I had missed (at least what I could find). I had heard bits and pieces over the years, including part of the Rainbow Children album on the radio, the Emancipation album that was a hand-me-down from my brother, and the Black Album I found in a Georgia flea market, immediately recognizing the song titles on the disc from all the Prince reading I had done in high school. But I no longer felt moved by what I was hearing from him until the TV performances in 2004. As it happened, Prince would be playing the Musicology Tour in Birmingham, Alabama, where my wife and I were living, only a month and a half after the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. So we were able to attend our one and only Prince concert. A couple of my nephews grew up in a fairly sheltered environment, in home school and a Southern Baptist church. Once when they were visiting us during their young teen years, these polite boys got a taste of Prince’s music in my car. The older one looked at me and said, “That’s some weird music, Uncle Jon.” I said yeah, it is different, right? His voice rose a little. “No, I mean that music is really weird!” Years later, a text from his younger brother was my first notification that Prince had passed away. He couldn’t believe it either. Sometimes we resist fulfilling other people’s assumptions about us. As a case in point, I grew up in church and resisted the water baptism ceremony (a hallmark of the Baptist tradition) for years. I had learned from Sunday school lessons that it was a symbol of salvation.9 I saw no use for a symbol like this. By the time I was in high school, most people at church assumed I had been baptized. As I had done with the kids on the bus who thought I couldn’t speak, I was content letting them make that assumption. It was only when I was appointed as a missionary that I agreed to have the ceremony, mainly to

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allay any concerns on the part of the mission agency. When I interviewed, the missions director asked me when I had been baptized. I was honest and said I never had been. He asked whether I would have any problem with doing so, and I said that would be fine; I just never saw a need before. So I finally got immersed in my home church, shortly before I packed for Albania. Now that I have studied Quaker culture, I realize that perhaps I always had a little of that spirit in me, as they are known for eschewing rituals.10 Of course I had also learned one of Prince’s implicit lessons, which was to always subvert expectations.

SIDE B: STILL SPEAKING In the circa 1985 song “Dream Factory,” released on the Crystal Ball album in 1998, Prince tells the story of a man calling him a saint. “Much to their surprise,” he says, “I can’t live up to the picture that they paint.” The contributors to this book are doing the work of theology as it relates to an artist who was intentional about spirituality while embracing his humanity. Prince would reject attempts to label him as a divine figure. The messages he delivered via musical notes, rhythms, screams, colors, symbols, clothing, and words were from one flawed human to others. The theological idea of “continuing revelation” supposes that, in the words of the United Church of Christ’s slogan, “God is still speaking.” In other words, the scriptures are not the final word from the divine.11 Here I apply the term to what we continue to learn from and about this human artist since his passing in 2016. Prince is still speaking too. The works in his legendary vault continue to be catalogued, and some gradually released. He had been working on a new album, Black Is the New Black, around the time of his death.12 Some of his other unreleased music has neared release but been blocked by legal means (the Deliverance EP).13 Books continue to appear. In recent years we have learned more about Prince’s life and spirituality through memoirs published by ex-wife Mayte Garcia,14 ex-fiancee Sheila E.,15 and others. Neal Karlen will publish Prince: Off the Record in April 2020 with St. Martin’s Press. He has written briefly before about deep and honest conversations he had with his friend, including about Prince’s fear of dying alone.16 Prince’s own incomplete memoir, The Beautiful Ones, originally planned for 2017, was published on October 29, 2019, by Penguin Random House, under the Spiegel & Grau imprint that has already been shut down.17

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Erica Thompson, one of our chapter contributors, is currently writing a book on Prince’s spirituality, informed by interviews with his associates. She is posting updates on her blog, “A Purple Day in December.”18 Joseph Vogel’s book, This Thing Called Life: Prince, Race, Sex, Religion, and Music, is an insightful read with a chapter on Prince and religion, including a section on the theology that inspired the song “7.”19 Touré writes about this song’s theological background as well, and its Seventh-Day Adventist roots, in I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon.20 Carla Schriever examines para-religiosity in Prince’s fan/fam community in a recent book chapter (Religion and Popular Music).21 Chapter contributor Will Stockton is co-editor of The 33 1/3 B-sides: New Essays by 33 1/3 Authors on Beloved and Underrated Albums (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), including his own essay on the Emancipation album.22 And the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, an ecumenical graduate school in Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis/St. Paul, has published an online journal filled with articles on the theology of Prince,23 and an accompanying online gallery with art and poetry.24 Prince biographer Laura Tiebert has been blogging her experience in “Crazy Amazing: The Year of Living Like Prince.” She writes on Facebook, “Living like Prince has deepened my faith in unexpected ways. As we celebrate Passover and Easter, here are 3 lessons I’ve learned: Be a friendly neighbor; If God gave you a gift, share it; What seems weird might be holy.” She explains more in the blog.25 New Prince documentaries are in the works, including Mr. Nelson: On the North Side, and untitled films by Ava DuVernay and Apple Music (the former a multipart series, and the latter focusing on the August 3, 1983, concert at First Avenue when Wendy Melvoin first performed with the Revolution).26 Prince scholars and fans are continuing to gather. A symposium in the series organized by De Angela Duff will be an event focusing on Graffiti Bridge in the spring of 2020 at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Meanwhile a panel on Graffiti Bridge has been featured as part of “Celebration 2019,” a multi-day event at Paisley Park in their annual series. And Kirsty Fairclough is following up the 2017 “Purple Reign” conference in the United Kingdom with a 2020 event in Minneapolis examining the Dirty Mind album. Previously unreleased music continues to be published, albeit at a much slower pace than fans/fams would prefer. In April 2019, the Prince estate released Ultimate Rave on CD/DVD, including a formerly limited release of Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic, which had been a supplement to the 1999 album Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic; and the Rave Un2 the Year 2000 concert film that includes Prince testifying Jehovah’s Witness theology while performing alongside his spiritual mentor Larry Graham (“The Christ,” a renamed version of “The Cross”). A special edition of the Sign o’ the Times concert film

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also appears in 2019, including a documentary, interviews, and other bonus footage. As mentioned earlier, Prince had at least one album in the works when he passed away. In what was perhaps his final album project, Black Is the New Black is said to be primarily instrumental. The title connects with the Black Lives Matter movement. According to Erica Thompson’s interview with saxophonist Adrian Crutchfield who worked on the album, Prince was in a highly activist mode during this time.27 The estate has not announced plans for release. Deliverance was to be posthumously released by Rogue Music Alliance, an independent label focusing mainly on Christian music. The title track includes a gospel choir, and the lyrics of the tracks are spiritually focused.28 The Prince estate has not announced any plans to release this EP. In 2018, the estate released an audio recording of a piano rehearsal, called Piano & a Microphone 1983. Included in the rehearsal is the traditional spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep,” including lyrics from “Strange Relationship” (which would be released in 1987). Of course Prince performed not only covers of spirituals and gospel songs (e.g., “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” “I’ll Take You There”), but also others he wrote himself, as described in this book. Among the many known unreleased tracks are gospel songs such as “God Is Alive” (circa 1988), with versions by Prince and Mavis Staples on lead vocals. 2019 brings The Originals, with Prince’s guide vocals on fifteen songs released by other artists, including the hymn-like “Love . . . Thy Will Be Done” (released by Martika on Martika’s Kitchen, 1991), followed by the deluxe version of the 1999 album from 1982.29 Then there are the works that might exist in the vault. In 1989, Prince was reportedly working on a film project, The Robert Johnson Story, about the fabled blues musician who had, the legend says, sold his soul to the devil.30 The film never materialized, perhaps because of the small audience that his 1990 film Graffiti Bridge found. In March 2019, at the Batdance Symposium in Atlanta, the opening keynote was an interview by De Angela Duff with Chuck Zwicky, a sound engineer who worked on Prince’s Batman soundtrack released in 1989. I asked him later whether he knows about any recordings for the Robert Johnson project. As far as he is aware, none were made at that time. It had struck me that during the symposium, multiple speakers had been referencing Robert Johnson in connection with Prince’s artistry. Johnson’s legacy continues to inspire musicians. His life, centered in a spiritual legend, appears to have influenced Prince as well. Prince’s collaborators would tell you he was far from perfect. He had control and abandonment issues, which perhaps were results of his troubled childhood.31 However as a visionary musician, particularly as a guitarist, he

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was perhaps without peer during his career. His influence on music, popular culture, and fashion, and indeed on spirituality continues, and as new works and information come to light in the future, the revelations will continue as well. Every year since his passing, on June 7 (Prince’s birthday, although as a Jehovah’s Witness he didn’t celebrate or count birthdays32), we have hosted a radio show on WPRK at Rollins College. We feature an hour or two of the least-known tracks (no bootlegs), including some of his collaborators. You are invited to listen live at http://wprk.org/ and continue to celebrate Prince Day with us. NOTES 1. Simone Cazares, Brian Oake, and Jill Riley, “Bobby Z and Dr. Fink Help Keep Prince’s Legacy Alive with the Revolution,” The Current, April 18, 2019, https​://ww​ w.the​curre​nt.or​g/fea​ture/​2019/​04/18​/bobb​y-z-d​r-fin​k-and​-the-​revol​ution​?fbcl​id=Iw​ AR3qn​ZPCF8​w67nV​sAplj​xXim3​dM2gq​BjYyc​AEtKG​u8PBw​y_R7Y​fs60S​9zCA.​ 2. Fred Clark, “A Thief in the Night: Rise of the Antichrist Movie,” Slacktivist, November 9, 2012, https​://ww​w.pat​heos.​com/b​logs/​slack​tivis​t/201​2/11/​09/a-​thief​ -in-t​he-ni​ght-r​ise-o​f-the​-anti​chris​t-mov​ie/. 3. Eliza Griswold, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 83–119. 4. This policy has since been revised. See the update by Bob Allen, “CBF Relaxes Policy on Hiring LGBTQ Staff, but Maintains Some Restrictions,” Baptist News Global, February 9, 2018, https​://ba​ptist​news.​com/a​rticl​e/cbf​-rela​xes-p​olicy​ -hiri​ng-lg​btq-s​taff-​maint​ains-​restr​ictio​ns/#.​XNHUV​45KhR​Y. 5. Greg Kot, I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom’s Highway (New York: Scribner, 2014), 235–41. 6. Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (London: Faber, 1991). 7. Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), 44. 8. Finn Cohen, “The Day Prince’s Guitar Wept the Loudest,” New York Times, April 28, 2016, https​://ww​w.nyt​imes.​com/2​016/0​4/28/​arts/​music​/prin​ce-gu​itar-​rock-​ hall-​of-fa​me.ht​ml. 9. Sheila D. Klopfer, “From Personal Salvation to Personal Baptism: The Shaping Influence of Evangelical Theology on Baptism,” Baptist History and Heritage 45, no. 3 (Summer–Fall 2010): 65–79. 10. Peter Collins, “The Problem of Quaker Identity,” Quaker Studies 13, no. 2 (March 2009): 212. 11. Jeremy Smith, “When ‘Continuing Revelation’ Becomes the Plain Reading of Scripture,” United Methodist Insight, March 26, 2015, https​://um​-insi​ght.n​et/pe​rspec​ tives​/jere​my-sm​ith/w​hen-%​27con​tinui​ng-re​velat​ion%2​7-bec​omes-​the-p​lain-​readi​ ng-of​-sc/.​

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12. MonoNeon, “Interview with Bassist MonoNeon, One of the Last People to Play with Prince,” interview by Trent Moorman, KEXP, https​://ww​w.kex​p.org​/read​ /2016​/5/6/​inter​view-​with-​bassi​st-mo​noneo​n-one​-of-t​he-la​st-pe​ople-​to-pl​ay-wi​th-pr​ ince/​. 13. Jon Blistein, “Engineer Ordered to Pay Prince Estate Nearly $4 Million over Posthumous EP,” Rolling Stone, April 9, 2019, https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/m​usic/​ music​-news​/geor​ge-ia​n-box​ill-p​rince​-deli​veran​ce-ep​-laws​uit-8​19974​/. 14. Mayte Garcia, The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince (New York: Hachette Books, 2017). 15. Sheila E., The Beat of My Own Drum: A Memoir (New York: Atria Paperback, 2015). 16. Neal Karlen, “Letters from Prince: A Minneapolis Writer Remembers His Relationship with a Lost Star,” StarTribune, April 29, 2016, http:​//www​.star​tribu​ ne.co​m/let​ters-​from-​princ​e-a-m​innea​polis​-writ​er-re​membe​rs-hi​s-rel​ation​ship-​with-​ a-los​t-sta​r/377​55595​1/. 17. Claire Shaffer, “Unfinished Prince Memoir The Beautiful Ones Will Be Out in October,” Rolling Stone, April 22, 2019, https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/m​usic/​music​ -news​/prin​ce-me​moir-​the-b​eauti​ful-o​nes-8​25320​/. 18. Erica Thompson, A Purple Day in December, accessed May 3, 2019, http:​// www​.apur​pleda​yinde​cembe​r.com​/?m=1​. 19. Joseph Vogel, This Thing Called Life: Prince, Race, Sex, Religion, and Music (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 145–67. 20. Touré, I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon (New York: Free Press, 2013), 142–43. 21. Carla Schriever, “I’m Your Messiah and You’re the Reason Why: Para-Religiosity in the Fandom around Prince,” in Religion and Popular Music: Artists, Fans, and Cultures, ed. Andreas Häger (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 107–19. 22. Will Stockton, “Introduction: Superfluous, Redundant, Enduring – Prince’s Emancipation (1996),” in The 33 1/3 B-sides: New Essays by 33 1/3 Authors on Beloved and Underrated Albums, ed. Will Stockton and D. Gilson (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). 23. United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, Theology of Prince Journal, January 10, 2019, https​://bl​og.un​iteds​emina​ry.ed​u/the​-canv​as/th​eolog​y-of-​princ​e-jou​ rnal.​ 24. United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, Theology of Prince Gallery, May 9, 2018, https​://co​ntent​.unit​edsem​inary​.edu/​theol​ogy-o​f-pri​nce-g​aller​y?utm​ _sour​ce=hs​_emai​l&utm​_medi​um=em​ail&_​hsenc​=p2AN​qtz--​vhFSq​Gae_5​BESQ2​ x_mTF​LSel8​Uq3FZ​60155​VG1IM​Eqfo_​E3pQH​DWZ3Z​SFcLS​5TeMB​qbon.​ 25. Laura Tiebert, “3 Spiritual Lessons I Learned from Prince,” Crazy Amazing: The Year of Living Like Prince, April 19, 2019, http:​//lau​ratie​bert.​com/2​019/0​ 4/19/​3-spi​ritua​l-les​sons-​i-lea​rned-​from-​princ​e/?fb​clid=​IwAR1​mMjpT​HkLjU​PPGi5​ CEvsM​d697E​FUdMO​jVgl_​wcsNZ​s_yRv​QPMJR​5uM-j​k. 26. Jon Bream and Chris Riemenschneider, “Coming Soon from Prince’s Vault: New Originals Album, Documentaries and More,” StarTribune, April 25, 2019, http:​//www​.star​tribu​ne.co​m/com​ing-s​oon-f​rom-t​he-pr​ince-​vault​-a-ne​w-alb​um-ca​

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lled-​origi​nals/​50900​9862/​?fbcl​id=Iw​AR06o​jb4vI​qzf36​DB7p3​XTz4y​JYpXt​FVeaa​ yYNqN​kb9Zc​yRUCe​XfuSN​HFb4.​ 27. Adrian Crutchfield, “Black Is the New Black,” interview by Erica Thompson, A Purple Day in December, February 22, 2019, http:​//www​.apur​pleda​yinde​cembe​r.com​ /2019​/02/b​lack-​is-ne​w-bla​ck-in​tervi​ew-wi​th.ht​ml?m=​1. 28. Robert Ham, “Deliverance Interrupted,” The Stranger, November 8, 2017, https​://ww​w.the​stran​ger.c​om/mu​sic/2​017/1​1/08/​25552​114/d​elive​rance​-inte​rrupt​ed. 29. Bream and Riemenschneider, “Coming Soon.” 30. Paul Grein, “Prince: Back to the Movies,” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1989, https​://ww​w.lat​imes.​com/a​rchiv​es/la​-xpm-​1989-​08-06​-ca-4​59-st​ory.h​tml. 31. Chris Heath, “Prince’s Closest Friends Share Their Best Prince Stories,” GQ, December 8, 2016, https://www.gq.com/story/prince-stories. 32. Hank Shteamer, “Flashback: Prince Lays out His No-Birthdays Policy,” Rolling Stone, June 7, 2016, https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/m​usic/​music​-news​/flas​hback​ -prin​ce-la​ys-ou​t-his​-no-b​irthd​ays-p​olicy​-3841​5/.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Collins, Peter. “The Problem of Quaker Identity.” Quaker Studies 13, no. 2 (March 2009): 205–19. E., Sheila. The Beat of My Own Drum: A Memoir. New York: Atria Paperback, 2015. Garcia, Mayte. The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince. New York: Hachette Books, 2017. Griswold, Eliza. The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Klopfer, Sheila D. “From Personal Salvation to Personal Baptism: The Shaping Influence of Evangelical Theology on Baptism.” Baptist History and Heritage 45, no. 3 (Summer–Fall 2010): 65–79. Kot, Greg. I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom’s Highway. New York: Scribner, 2014. O’Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. London: Faber, 1991. ———. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. Schriever, Carla. “I’m Your Messiah and You’re the Reason Why: Para-Religiosity in the Fandom around Prince.” In Religion and Popular Music: Artists, Fans, and Cultures, edited by Andreas Häger, 107–19. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Stockton, Will. “Introduction: Superfluous, Redundant, Enduring—Prince’s Emancipation (1996).” In The 33 1/3 B-sides: New Essays by 33 1/3 Authors on Beloved and Underrated Albums, edited by Will Stockton and D. Gilson. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Touré. I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon. New York: Free Press, 2013. Vogel, Joseph. This Thing Called Life: Prince, Race, Sex, Religion, and Music. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Index

“1+1+1=3” (song), 90 “3 Chains o’ Gold” (song), 104 “3rd Eye” (song), 100, 105, 107 “4 the Tears in Your Eyes” (song), 115 “7” (song), 32–33, 151 1999 (album), 6, 20, 25–26, 88, 101, 115, 152 “1999” (song), 4, 7, 13, 25, 85, 135 20TEN (album), 39 “3121” (song), 105 abortion, 91 “Act of God” (song), 39 Adam and Eve. See Genesis, Book of “Adore” (song), 96, 101, 109 afterlife. See eschatology and end times agape, 54, 59, 70, 76 AIDS, 26, 28, 30, 33, 38, 41, 72 Ali, Muhammad, 36–37 “America” (song), 6, 27 “And God Created Woman” (song), 70–72, 105 angels and the angelic, 7, 32, 96, 101, 104, 106–7, 109, 113–14, 118–21, 123–25 “Animal Kingdom” (song), 90–91 “Anna Stesia” (song), 74, 116, 119 “Annie Christian” (song), 6, 99–100, 105, 107

Antichrist, 6, 99–100, 105 apocalypse. See eschatology and end times Armageddon. See eschatology and end times Around the World in a Day (album), 6, 9, 27, 33, 89, 122 “Arrogance” (song), 67, 104 Art Official Age (album), 83 atheism, 80, 83–84 Augustine, Saint, 72, 75 Aura (character in Graffiti Bridge film). See angels and the angelic “Baby I’m a Star” (song), 56–57 “Baltimore” (song), 20, 34, 39–40 “Batdance” (song), 98, 118 Batman (album), 118, 145, 152 Batman (film), 98 The Beautiful Ones (book), 150 “The Beautiful Ones” (song), 51–53 Benton, Jerome, 124 Black Album (album), 9, 114–16, 123, 127, 149 Black Is the New Black (album), 150, 152 Black Lives Matter, 152 Black Prophetic tradition, ix, 19–41 Branch Davidians, 4 157

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Index

Brown, Michael, 40 Bush, George H. W., 32 Bush, George W., 6 Camille, 73 Campbell, Tevin, 118, 121, 124–25 “Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got” (song), 121 Champagne (band), 114 Chavez, Ingrid, x, 114, 116–17, 119–20, 123, 126 “Chelsea Rodgers” (song), 80, 82 “Christopher Tracy’s Parade” (song), 90, 98–100 “Cinnamon Girl” (song), 6, 38–39 Clinton, George, 83, 117–18, 121, 124 “Clouds” (song), 83 Coleman, Lisa, 50, 53, 61, 92 Come (album), 89, 96, 98, 108 “Come” (song), 88, 127 communion, 12, 45, 48–49, 56, 58–61, 72, 89, 135, 139–41 “Computer Blue” (song), 51–57, 105 confession, 13, 74–75, 98, 108–9, 135 Controversy (album), 5–6, 20–24, 85, 97, 99, 118, 126–27 “Controversy” (song), ix, 23–24, 26, 97, 108 conversion, 2, 8, 10–11, 34, 56–57, 68, 72–73, 76, 80–81, 83–84, 88–89 Cool, Melody (character in Graffiti Bridge film), 124 “The Cross”/“The Christ” (song), 8, 30, 89, 95, 103, 115, 120, 139–40, 147, 151 Crystal Ball (album), 150 “Crystal Ball” (song), 105 Cymone, Andre, 99, 114–15 “Damn U” (song), 103 “The Dance Electric” (song), 99–100 “Dance with the Devil” (song), 98–99 “Darling Nikki” (song), 52–55, 57, 101–2, 106, 108, 115 Day, Morris, 50–52, 57, 61, 113, 117, 119, 121, 124

“Dead on It” (song), 123 “Dear Mr. Man” (song), 6–7, 19–20, 37–39 death, viii–x, 2–4, 7–15, 23, 25, 28–30, 32–33, 38–40, 45, 50, 56–60, 72, 79, 81–82, 84–85, 87, 90, 99, 101, 103, 105, 116–17, 120–21, 124–26, 134–35, 138–39, 141, 147, 150 De-elevator, or the elevator. See Devil “Delirious” (song), 85 Deliverance (EP), 150, 152 demons and the demonic, 7, 10–11, 14, 53–56, 96, 98–102, 105, 107, 109 devil, x, 5, 7–8, 27, 36–37, 49, 54, 72, 81–82, 85–87, 90, 95–96, 98–102, 105–9, 116, 121, 152 Diamonds and Pearls (album), 6, 8, 20, 31, 33, 80, 147 “Diamonds and Pearls” (song), 69 Dickerson, Dez, 115 “Digital Garden” (song), 105, 107–8 Dirty Mind (album), 5, 20–23, 71, 91, 115, 151 “D.M.S.R.” (song), 85 “Dream Factory” (song), 150 “Dreamer” (song), 38–39 drugs and alcohol, 25–26, 28–30, 79, 82–83, 92, 105, 118, 139 “Electric Chair” (song), 101 “Electric Intercourse” (song), 100–101 “Elephants & Flowers” (song), 88, 113, 119, 123–24 Ellis, T. C., 121, 125 Emancipation (album), 20, 34–35, 39, 79, 81, 88, 149, 151 “Emancipation” (song), 34–35 environmentalism, 19, 37–38, 82 “Erotic City” (song), ix E. Sheila, 14, 29, 150 eschatology and end times, ix, 1–16, 25, 32, 36, 48–50, 60, 62, 67, 74, 81–82, 84–86, 91–92, 96, 99, 101, 103–7, 116–17, 119, 140, 146 evangelical Christians, 8, 80–81, 86, 88–90, 92, 114, 119, 146–50

Index

“The Everlasting Now” (song), 92 Exodus, Book of, 84, 88, 98, 103, 109, 137 “Eye No” (song), 83, 89, 98–99, 105, 116 “Face Down” (song), 98 “Family Name” (song), 20, 35–37, 39, 105, 107 fashion, style, and clothing, viii, 21, 23–24, 26, 31, 47, 50–52, 57–58, 67, 71–72, 85, 115, 124, 147, 150, 153 First Avenue (nightclub), 48, 117, 151 “Forever in My Life” (song), 30 For You (album), 21, 114 “Free” (song), 6 freedom. See liberation theology “Gangster Glam” (song), 124 Garcia, Mayte, 33–34, 71, 88, 114, 126, 150 Gaye, Marvin, 75, 126 gender, ix, 5, 7, 9, 22–23, 28, 45–47, 49–52, 57, 59–60, 63, 67–76, 80, 85–86, 99–101, 104 Genesis, Book of, 6, 35, 70–72, 80–81, 86–88, 92, 100, 103, 105, 107–8, 121 “Get on the Boat” (song), 91 “Gett Off” (song), 69–70, 74, 80, 89, 127 “Girl” (song), 105 Glam Slam (nightclub), 113, 117, 125 “Glam Slam” (song), 116, 120 “God” (song), 95, 99, 115, 147 “God Is Alive” (song), 118, 124–25, 152 “Gold” (song), 76 The Gold Experience (album), 71, 76 Gore, Tipper, 54–55, 95 Graffiti Bridge (album), 113–27, 151 Graffiti Bridge (film), x, 113–27, 151–52 “Graffiti Bridge” (song), 105, 117, 125 Graham, Larry, 88, 151 Grand Central (band), 114 Gray, Freddie, 39–40

159

greed, 5–6, 20, 37, 39, 108 Green, Al, 126 Harrison, George, 149 “Head” (song), 115 Heaven and Hell. See eschatology and end times heterosexuality, 23, 50–51, 59, 61, 67–76, 97 HitNRun Phase 2 (album), 20, 39–40 holograms, 3, 10, 14 “The Holy River” (song), 34–35, 89 homosexuality. See queer theology Hurricane Katrina, 20, 34, 38 “If I Was Your Girlfriend” (song), 69, 73 “I’ll Take You There” (song), 152 inerrancy, biblical, 4 Isaiah (prophet), 40, 86, 121, 138 Islam, 38 “It” (song), 120 “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night” (song), 30 “I Wanna Be Your Lover” (song), 21 “I Wanna Melt with U” (song), 69 “I Wish U Heaven” (song), 103 “I Would Die 4 U” (song), 7–8, 13, 45–46, 50, 56–60, 103, 105, 135, 141 Jefferson, Thomas, 36–37 Jehovah’s Witnesses, vii–viii, 2, 4–5, 10–11, 34, 38, 68, 72–74, 76, 80–83, 86, 88, 90–92, 96, 106–8, 120, 127, 140, 151, 153 Jesus Christ, 1, 3, 5, 7–9, 11, 15, 24, 27, 30, 32–33, 45–46, 48, 50, 54, 56–60, 63, 69, 74–75, 82, 89, 92, 98, 101–2, 107, 115–16, 119–21, 124–26, 140, 149, 151 Johnson, Robert, 152 “Joint 2 Joint” (song), 79–81, 88–89 Jones, Jill, 117–18, 121 “Joy in Repetition” (song), 124 Judaism, 36, 45–46, 59, 70, 92, 103

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Judgment Day. See eschatology and end times karma, 91 The Kid (character in Purple Rain and Graffiti Bridge films), 8, 48, 50–53, 56–58, 61, 108, 113, 117–21, 124–25 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 20, 22, 25, 36–39, 48 Kotero, Apollonia, 48, 51–53, 56, 58 “The Ladder” (song), 9, 27, 89, 101, 105, 108, 147 “Lady Cab Driver” (song), 9, 101, 105, 107 “The Latest Fashion” (song), 124 Lee, Spike, 32, 90 Lennon, John, 13–14, 100 “Letitgo” (song), 96, 98, 108 “Let’s Go Crazy” (song), vii, 5, 7, 12, 26–27, 48–50, 63, 99–100, 133, 137–39, 145 “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” (song), 85, 101–2, 115 “Let’s Work” (song), 87 liberation theology, ix, 5–6, 14, 20–26, 28–29, 34–36, 39–40, 45–46, 48–50, 59–60, 74–76, 85, 96, 105, 109, 113–15, 126, 140–42 “Little Red Corvette” (song), ix, 85 “Live 4 Love” (song), 31–32 Lord’s Prayer, 6, 23, 26, 85, 97, 115, 140 Lotusflow3r (album), 38 “Love Machine” (song), 124 Lovesexy (album), 9, 73–74, 95, 99, 103, 106, 114, 116, 118–20, 122, 125–27 Lovesexy (concert tour), 109, 118, 123 “Lovesexy” (song), 73, 120, 124 Love Symbol, 73 (album), 20, 31–33, 67, 69–70, 74 “Love . . . Thy Will Be Done” (song), 152

“The Love We Make” (song), 83 “A Man Called Jesus” (song), 125 Manichaeism, 106, 108–9 Martika, 152 “Mary Don’t You Weep” (song), 152 materialism and mass consumption, 7, 24–27, 33, 37, 50–51 Matthew, Gospel of, 6–7, 19, 38, 102 May 19, 1992 (Ingrid Chavez album), 116 “Mellow” (song), 90 “Melody Cool” (song), 124 Melvoin, Wendy, 48, 50, 53, 61, 92, 151 Millenarianism, 1, 3–4, 11 millennialism, 2, 4–5 Minneapolis, Minnesota, 11, 14, 21, 48, 100, 113–15, 117, 151 “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” (song), 6–7, 31–32 morality, 4–7, 9, 39, 53–54, 57, 70, 82–83, 85–86, 88, 97–98, 106, 109, 118–20, 124 “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” (song), 71, 88 “Mountains” (song), 98–99 M. Tony, 31, 124 “Muse 2 the Pharaoh” (song), 106 Musicology (album), 6, 20, 38 Musicology (concert tour), 106, 149 “My Name Is Prince” (song), 96–97, 103–4 mysticism, 59–60, 89–90, 125, 141–42 “New Power Generation” (song), 122–23 New Power Generation/NPG (band), 113, 117, 122, 124 “New Power Generation (Pt. II)” (song), 121, 125 Nude (concert tour), 117 “The One” (song), 89

Index

One Nite Alone . . . Live! (album), 36–37 “One of Us” (song), 35 “One Song” (song), 141–42 The Originals (album), 152 “Others Here with Us” (song), 101, 109 “Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden” (songs), 105 Paisley Park (building), 11, 79–81, 87–88, 117, 151 “Paisley Park” (song), 96, 105 Parade (album), 90, 99 “Partyup” (song), 5, 115 patriarchy, 54–55, 59, 74 Paul (apostle), 45–46, 59, 88–89 peace, 3–8, 19, 23–33, 36–41, 58, 62–63, 82, 89, 97–98, 105, 113, 115, 117, 119, 122–24, 140, 146–47 Pentecost, x, 133–42 PETA, 90 Peter (apostle), 80–81, 86, 138 Piano & a Microphone (concert tour), 108 Piano & a Microphone 1983 (album), 152 Planet Earth (album), 80, 92 “Positivity” (song), 99–101 poverty, 6–7, 19–20, 26–27, 29–34, 36–38, 41, 76 Prince (album), viii, 21 proselytizing, 1–2, 5, 13, 106, 109 purple (color), 49, 57, 136 “Purple Music” (song), 83, 100 Purple Rain (album), viii–ix, 12, 20, 25–28, 33–34, 45–63, 99, 101, 115, 118, 122, 134, 145 Purple Rain (concert tour), 115 Purple Rain (film), viii, 8, 30–31, 45, 47–48, 50, 56, 108, 113, 117 “Purple Rain” (song), ix, 13–14, 56–57, 61–63 queer theology, ix, 10, 21, 23, 45–63, 67–76, 80, 91–92, 97, 146–48

161

“The Question of U” (song), 123, 127 Questlove, 14–15 race and racism, ix, 6, 19–41, 51–52, 55, 57, 71, 85, 97, 100, 105, 107, 123, 126, 146, 148, 151–52 The Rainbow Children (album), 20, 35, 73–74, 90, 92, 96, 106–8, 149 “Rainbow Children” (song), 100, 107 Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic (album), 151 Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (album), 151 Rave Un2 the Year 2000 (film), 151 Reagan, Ronald, 6, 23–24, 29, 97, 100 redemption, 4–5, 7–9, 15, 27, 30–31, 34–35, 39, 46, 48, 51, 57, 74, 88–89, 96, 99, 101–3, 105–6, 109, 115, 119, 121, 136, 140, 149–50 “Release It” (song), 123 Resistor. See Devil The Revolution (band), 21, 50, 52, 92, 117, 139, 145, 151 Revelation, Book of, 3–5, 7, 32–33, 85, 99–100. See also eschatology and end times “Resolution” (song), 92 “Revelation” (song), 40 Richard, Little, 26, 89, 126 righteousness. See morality Rivkin, Bobby ‘Z’, 145 Rogers, Susan, 95, 123 “Ronnie Talk to Russia” (song), 6, 23–25, 29 “Round and Round” (song), 124 “The Sacrifice of Victor” (song), 98, 104, 109 salvation. See redemption Satan. See Devil “Saviour” (song), 103 “Scarlet Pussy” (song), 89 Serpent. See Devil Seventh Day Adventists, 2, 4–5, 8, 82– 86, 88, 92, 114, 151. See also White, Ellen G.

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Index

“Sexuality”/”Spirituality” (song), 24–25, 28, 85, 106 “Sexy M.F.” (song), 89 “Shake!” (song), 124 “She Loves Me 4 Me” (song), 90 “Shockadelica” (song), 102 Sign o’ the Times (album), 20, 28–30, 33, 73, 109, 120, 122–23, 139–40, 146–47 Sign o’ the Times (film), 29–31, 151–52 “Sign o’ the Times” (song), 6, 28–30, 83, 95, 105 “Sister” (song), 115 slavery, 34–39, 45–46, 59, 107–8, 126 “Soft and Wet” (song), 21 “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” (song), 152 “Sometimes It Snows in April” (song), ix “Space” (song), 96, 98, 108 “The Spiritual World” (song), 118 Spooky Electric, 95–96, 99–101, 106, 109 “S. S. T.” (song), 20, 38–39 Staples, Mavis, 117–18, 121, 124–25, 148, 152 The Steeles (musical group), 120, 124 “Still Would Stand All Time” (song), 119–21, 125 “Strange Relationship” (song), 152 Super Bowl, ix, 3, 11–15 “Take Me with U” (song), 52 “Temptation” (song), 27–28, 89–90, 100–102 Ten Commandments. See Exodus, Book of Testolini, Manuela, 90

theophany, 134–37, 142 A Thief in the Night (film series), 146 “Thieves in the Temple” (song), 124–25 “Thunder” (song), 7–8, 89 “Tick, Tick, Bang” (song), 120, 123–24 Timberlake, Justin, ix, 3, 9–15 The Time (band), 50–52, 113, 117, 121–24 Trump, Donald, 32 The Truth (album), 90, 100, 107 “The Undertaker” (song), 124–25 Under the Cherry Moon (film). See Parade (album) “Uptown” (song), 5, 21–22, 24, 26, 28, 105, 115 utopias, 49–52, 57–58, 76, 96, 105, 109, 115 veganism and vegetarianism, 79–92 “Vicki Waiting” (song), 145 Victor, 98, 104 war and violence. See peace Warner Bros., 9, 34–35, 41, 116 “We Can Funk” (song), 83, 124 West, Cornel, 19–20, 22, 24–25, 27, 30, 34–41 “When 2 R in Love” (song), 116, 124 “When Doves Cry” (song), 56–58, 134, 137–38 “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (song), 149 White, Ellen G., 84–86, 92 “The Word” (song), 100 “The Work Part 1” (song), 106–8 Zwicky, Chuck, 122, 152

About the Editors and Contributors

Jonathan H. Harwell is head of collections and systems and associate professor at Rollins College’s Olin Library. Before becoming a librarian, he served for two years as a Baptist missionary in Albania. As an anthropologist, he has provided cultural-historical research to Quaker meetings in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. He has edited articles for the Open Library of Humanities and published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, the Journal of Electronic Publishing, Against the Grain, and the Journal of Access Services. His reviews of recent books on Prince have appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of Religious & Theological Information. He holds the MA in social science from Georgia Southern University and the MLIS from the University of Alabama. Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins just entered her nineteenth year in college chaplaincy. She serves as dean of religious life at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Prior to her arrival at Rollins, she held positions at Illinois College and Bentley University, respectively. Rev. Jenkins holds a BS in speech communication from Syracuse University, and received her Master of Divinity from Andover Newton Theological School. She was ordained by The American Baptist Churches, USA, in 2002. Rev. Jenkins is originally from Stratford, Connecticut. As a writer, speaker, and liturgist, Rev. Dr. Suzanne Castle’s desire is to call to life the creative spirit in herself and others. She has served for two decades as an ordained minister in the Christian Church, (Disciples of Christ), and holds her Doctorate in Worship and Liturgy from the Institute for Worship Studies. An accomplished public speaker and guest lecturer at colleges 163

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About the Editors and Contributors

including Brite Divinity School and Pacific School of Religion, Suzanne has written extensively for the Ecumenical Stewardship Center and Center for Faith & Giving, in addition to creating interactive worship experiences for ecumenical camp programs through Inside Out. She continues to craft and lead liturgies for denominations, special events, and churches nationwide, and to coach individual creators through www.suzannecastle.com. Her first book, Brim: Creative Overflow in Worship Design, was released in 2013, and its latest volume is due to arrive in 2020. Racheal Harris completed her bachelor of historical inquiry and practice, bachelor of arts (Hons.), and master of arts at the University of New England (Australia). She is currently undertaking her PhD with Deakin University. Racheal has contributed to several edited collections on popular culture, including chapters on theological concepts in James Cameron’s Terminator franchise and folklore in the CW series Supernatural. Her first singleauthored volume is released in 2019 by Emerald Publications as part of the Death & Culture series, published in partnership with the University of York (United Kingdom). Titled Skin, Meaning, and Symbolism in Pet Memorials, it considers contemporary death practices related to mourning and memorializing companion animals. Her second volume in the series, Framing Death, is scheduled for release in mid-2020. Racheal also has a title on the Syfy series 12 Monkeys, published in 2019 by McFarland Press. Dr. Zada Johnson is an anthropologist and associate professor of urban community studies at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Johnson’s research includes African diaspora ritual performance, African American performance traditions, New Orleans parading traditions, and popular culture. Her publications on Prince include essays in the Journal of African-American Studies, the Journal of Theology and Culture, and a forthcoming anthology on Prince and the Minneapolis Sound. Dr. Emily McAvan is an Australian academic and writer. Her research centers on the intersection between the secular and the religious, focusing on the aesthetic, gendered, and sexual implications of the sacred. She is the author of Jeanette Winterson and Religion (2019) and The Postmodern Sacred: Popular Culture and Spirituality in the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Urban Fantasy Genres (2012). Her work on religion and culture has appeared in numerous journals such as Literature & Theology, The Bible and Critical Theory, and The Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Dr. Stefan Sereda holds a PhD in literature and film studies from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His dissertation, Cinema

About the Editors and Contributors

165

in Scare Quotes: Aesthetics and Economics in American Art Cinema, which was funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant, won a Graduate Gold Medal for Doctoral Study in the Arts. His publications on Hollywood and independent cinema include “Mean Streets as Cinema of Independence” in A Companion to Martin Scorsese (2014) and “Cinema of Simulation: Hyper-Histories and (Un)Popular Memory in The Good German and Inglourious Basterds” in The Memory Effect: The Remediation of Memory in Literature and Film (2013). He teaches American film history, genres, and auteurs. Dr. Sereda also researches media from Africa and its diaspora, with publications including “Curses, Nightmares, and Realities: Cautionary Pedagogy in FESPACO Films and Igbo Videos,” a comparison of “traditional” African art cinema and the Nollywood video boom appearing in Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (2010). His article on the Nigerian novel, “Riffing on Resistance: Music in Chris Abani’s Graceland,” appears in ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature (2008). Before beginning his academic career, he was working part-time in a five-and-dime. Dr. Will Stockton’s latest books include Jesus Freak (2018) and the edited collection The 33 1/3 B-Sides (2019). His work as a creative writer and a translator has appeared in journals including Asymptote, The Bennington Review, and Kenyon Review Online. He is a professor of English at Clemson University. Find him at willstockton.com. Erica Thompson is Assistant editor at Columbus Alive, a weekly arts and community magazine serving Central Ohio. Her articles have also appeared on Billboard.com and Mic.com. She has been awarded by the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Thompson has a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University’s acclaimed E. W. Scripps School of Journalism. She has presented her research on Prince and spirituality at multiple academic conferences, including the “Prince from Minneapolis Symposium” at the University of Minnesota in 2018. She has been published in Theology of Prince, a journal by the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is currently finishing her first book, a comprehensive study of Prince’s spiritual journey. Dr. Joseph Trullinger has been assistant professor of honors and philosophy at George Washington University since 2014. Before that, he taught at Mississippi State University, where he finally had the good sense to open his ears to Prince’s music. He is the author of several articles on Kant’s philosophy of religion, published in a variety of places, including The Review of

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About the Editors and Contributors

Metaphysics. He also has written several pieces on the revolutionary politics of free time, utilizing the insights of the Frankfurt School, primarily the writings of Herbert Marcuse. At the moment he is working on a book juxtaposing Kant’s hope for an afterlife of perpetual moral development with Latin American liberation theology. When he is not on his own in the coffee shops of Washington, DC, he can be found discussing the true, the beautiful, and the good with brilliant young minds in the classroom, for which he continues to feel immense gratitude.