That changed when I was eight years old.
Dirty Mindhad been released before I was born, and my generation would not inherit Prince the sex symbol.
Simply put, I ended up grasping at a multifaceted figure.
Credit: Melville House
Hence the title, hence the and a pair of unshackled hands on the cover.
I remember expecting an album as good asPurple RainorDirty Mind, but instead found the album uneven.
It had the creative excitement and optimism of an artist tapping into an unbound imagination.
But it challenged the very notion of curation.
And it was that difference and its implications that made my quest that much more difficult.
One thing I did not have to aid me were words from Prince himself.
This stance goes back to even his earliest interviews.
The interviewer only includes, or is only allowed to include, a paltry number of quotes.
Ive been on both sides of that table; I have sympathy for both speaker and listener.
Reading these interviews now is to see just how much Prince adhered to this bang out of negotiation.
Prince responds:
Is it?
(laughs) Thats just the way you see it.
Even when he did, these conversations could be hard to come by.
Sometime after the dust had settled over his battle with Warner Brothers, Prince became more gregarious.
In the end, all she wanted was to be seen, he says.
Just for me to look at her.
She left and never came back.
Thats the trick, I suppose, at being someone like Prince.
You had to stay immersed in the unbelievable to achieve it.
Thats what you want, he tells the interviewer.
When that happens…oh, boy.
This thing happens when a musician dies where stories about them overflow and fill every corner of the internet.
No alcohol or drugs; he didnt even swear.
On Twitter, Talib Kweli recounted the story about DJing gangsta rap at a party that Prince had attended.
He approached Kweli to tell him: I aint get dressed up to come out and hear curses.
But he loved to be active and athletic.
And then there were those facts that simply defied logic.
It never came back down.
The moment that best captured his magic for me occurred during his 2007 Super Bowl halftime show.
But it was his performance of Purple Rain the finale to his performance that night which still gets me.
Prince was getting rained on just like everyone else packed into that football stadium.
It was there in his music, his visuals, his passions and his curiosities his humanity.
And toward the end of his life, it seemed the being human was his biggest shift yet.
there is no place else Id rather be than right now, Prince tells Hiatt.
I want to be talking to you, and I want you togetit.
This is the joy of Prince all of him.
Thats what brought Prince down to earth for me.
