What Prince Did

I recently reread some of Audrey Lorde's essays in Sister Outsider, and so with fresh eyes through Lorde's lens, I can see how women might be thought to have more access to power through the erotic sensibility than men. Maybe a producer at BET had done the same. BET gave Prince their 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award, and I saw the rebroadcast of the all-female tribute recently. The purple one was paid homage by older and younger artists, but no peers. A pregnant Alicia Keys thrusting her rendition of Adore, a shoeless Patti Labelle kicking out Purple Rain, a quirky newcomer jerking out Let's Go Crazy and another plucking off If I Was Your Girlfriend using an upright bass, these women were fun to watch and fine enough to listen to. Nobody knocked off my socks.

They changed the words and totally steered toward the lane Prince has been driving in for a decade now: the safe zone. You either sing If I Was Your Girlfriend right and risk the lesbian double entendres, or don't sing it. Otherwise, it's like pretending Prince didn't cleverly and deliberately blur lines of sexuality, spirituality, sexual orientation, gender, race and musical genre, for effect, and effectively. Even if you weren't doing it in real life as a teen or older person enjoying his music, his hope was you'd risk asking how much of your mind you had left and stop worrying about how much time you had left, right?

After the asking, there was supposed to be some stretching, I think.

There was not much stretching at the BET Awards, I don't think.

Prince, in his acceptance speech, told the younger artists that they did not have to do some of the things he'd done, or make the mistakes he'd made. While I know Prince could be talking about not making business mistakes that he made, I also think there's room to hear him saying stay away from the content (topics, style) of the music from the first half of his career - the music that defines the guy BET honored. The rock star. The seducer. The guy who wrote about signs, kisses and licking things. Last night made it seem like Prince was Ralphie from A Christmas Story who watched the kid stick his tongue where it didn't belong and for all the world to see, and not the risk taking auteur of guitar licks and others (or so one of his personas hints at at the end of Girlfriend).

I became a fan of Prince because I thought Prince was the kid. Didn't you? Was he only playing "the kid" in Purple Rain?

Even if the second half of his catalogue is going to be a series of tributes to, as he says, Jehovah, why can't it be funky like the Staple Singers' music? It's still the case that becoming great at something requires showing mastery of what's come before in the realm of your artistic exploration. I wasn't a Madonna fan, but she sort of did some of this, too, if not entirely with her music, certainly with her crafted media persona. Why can't Prince blaze that trail between number one sex symbol and old guy at the club without becoming boring or played out? And why can't younger artists help by raising their talents and their tributes to a higher level at these kinds of awards shows. The jerky girl rocked it; the others, not so much.

I guess I'm just also at a loss to imagine who I would rather have seen up there. I got it: Prince himself, Dr. Fink, Tommy Barbarella, Wendy and Lisa, Rosie Gaines, Levi Seacer, and the big guy who rocked the drums on Gett Off (from New Power Generation). I would have rather seen people who told me it was not only OK to enjoy Prince from the late seventies through the early nineties, but also that it really happened. When I say it, I mean the great instrumentation of the Come album and in singles like The Question of U and When Doves Cry. And I mean the religiosity of The Cross and the adolescent politics of Ronnie Talk to Russia. And the sadness of Anna Stesia and the collaborations like We Can Funk (with George Clinton, on Graffitti Bridge). And the best love song ever, for my money, Adore. Shoot: And the Batman soundtrack. And the album lyric sheets, the glyphs and other symbols...All that it, that wasn't on the stage at BET in any large measure at all. Anybody besides me remember It?

I think about it baby all the time, all right
In the bed, on the stairs, anywhere, all right
I could be guilty for my honesty, all right
But I got to tell you what you mean to me, all right
(Prince, "It," Sign of the Times, 1987)

While the BET tribute seemed safe, and tried to leave well-enough alone, Prince was the rare male figure artistically exploring that idea that the erotic was one road to an aspect of empowerment, and exploring it well, since back in the late seventies, and best in his heyday of the 1980s. Prince inspired rhythm and bluesers, rockers, and rappers. And as is oft repeated by those of that latter genre: if you don't know, now you know.