1992: His Name Is Prince, For The Moment
After Diamonds And Pearls sold a few million copies, Warner was happy to sign an extension to Prince’s record contract with terms that were considered, at the time he signed them, quite generous. The details of that will become of interest in the next few weeks, but for now it’s enough to say that Prince was happy to get the paperwork out of the way so he could get back into the studio and on the road with new music as soon as possible.
For years, Warner Bros. had been trying everything they could think of to get Prince to slow down his output with no success whatsoever. The standard at the time was to let at least two years go between albums. The record company wanted time to release the album, several singles, produce and release videos, and then give the artist time to tour for at least a year, then produce another album and rev up the machine for another go. The more successful an artist, the longer this cycle would become. The most extreme example of this being the five-year interval between Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bad.
Prince allowed three months to elapse between the end of the Diamonds and Pearls tour and the release of his next album, 0(+>.
He Was Tryin’ To Rest, Y’all, When He Heard The Sound
Prince was starting to get restless. The one problem with samplers and sequencers was they all sounded too much alike. There’s a reason why so many “house remixes” from the early 90’s sound a bit like “Vogue.” It’s because the same gear using the same presets created all those tracks. So, yes, those early-90’s bongos are everywhere. As an artist, especially as he got older, Prince tended to burn through trends quickly, I presume because he recorded so much himself that he got bored faster than artists who moved at more realistic paces. He moved so quickly, in fact, that by December 1991, just two months after the release of Diamonds And Pearls, Prince was in the center of a storm of activity at Paisley Park recording a follow-up to his current album which would begin Prince’s process of abandoning several essential elements of that (already million selling) album’s sound. The computerized elements of Prince’s sound would be reduced dramatically over the next year, to the point where even the famous Linn would go virtually unheard until the turn of the century.
There were few few changes in the band between Diamonds And Pearls and 0(+>, the most notable of which was the departure of Rosie Gaines. It makes sense. Gaines wanted to do her own solo projects instead of being relegated to a side role for other artists. Being in the NPG was not exactly the best platform to spread her wings. True, she was prominently featured, but more often than not, she was featured as the “response” to Prince’s “calls.” Most of the time, her duties involve echoing the lines Prince just sang. She does it extremely well, but who could blame her for wanting to do something else? Morris Hayes took her place on keyboards for touring purposes, and he became Prince’s longest-serving band member, starting here.
The other big change was the addition of a semi-permanent horn section. This seems to have made some waves among Minneapolis sound die-hards at the time. The idea was that Minneapolis-style funk always skewed more toward the Funkadelic end of the scale where keys took the place of Parliament’s horns. Prince always took George Clinton’s own more holistic view, it was just that earlier in his career his skills as an arranger and touring budget did not extend to horns. Personally, I think Prince’s albums with horns are almost always more interesting to listen to and have a less dated sound.
The New Jack Swing of Diamonds And Pearls is more or less left behind, but another bit of Flyte Tyme’s bag of tricks is picked up: segues. Remember in the 90’s when albums had segues to give them a kind of concept-album feel? Janet is the first example of this I remember personally, but there are tons of examples, both before and after, and even Prince made more extensive (and effective) use of the technique than he did here. In all, the segues take up a little more than two and a half minutes. Two of them are separate tracks and one of them is tacked onto the end of “Damn U.” They try (and mostly fail) to create a kind of storyline for the album that revolves around a reporter chasing Prince for an interview about his new album and his new girlfriend.
The reporter, Vanessa Bartholomew, is played by, of all people, Kirstie Alley, who as I write this, died just yesterday. Until I came to research this essay, it always seemed odd to me that she ended up on a Prince album at all. Turns out they were pretty tight, and as usual with Prince’s friends, she didn’t talk much about their friendship to the press.
As she told the story in her book “The Art Of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente)”, (btw nice title, Ms. Alley) they met while doing work for the Special Olympics. I presume this was in 1991, when the Twin Cities hosted, and Prince was playing the opening ceremonies. They seem to have charmed each other a bit, and were friendly for the rest of his life. As usual with people whose company he enjoyed, he managed to get her on one of his records. I was surprised to find no suggestion of anything romantic between them. They just seemed to get along well. She also played Vanessa Bartholomew in the long-form video for the album, “3 Chains O’ Gold.”
To be honest, her performance on the album is not quite up to her usual standard. I think it’s safe to assume this is because she arrived in the studio, was handed a script and put in front of a microphone and expected to act instantly, as was Prince’s habit. Princevault says several more segues were recorded but were cut for time when “The Max” was added to the album at the last minute. I’m curious if those would make more sense of the story, but I’m inclined to doubt it.
One of the main reasons the story of the album fails so completely for me is that the storyline seems irrelevant to most of the thematic content of the album’s music. The story mostly has to do with Prince being hounded by the paparazzi over the apparent age difference between himself and his new girlfriend, who in the story was supposedly 16 years old.
The content of the album is rarely about that relationship as much as it is an examination of ego, identity, and temptation, all filtered through Prince’s self-directed, somewhat sophomoric lens. It’s largely Philosophy 101 stuff, but he does have interesting things to say about the material. Which is more than you can say for “Gett Off.”
A River You Say Will Never Run Dry
The real-life counterpart to that story is his relationship with Mayte Garcia. Their age difference is eyebrow-raising. They did meet when she was 16, when her mother managed to get an audition tape through to Prince. When she was 19, she went on the Diamonds And Pearls tour as a dancer. By the next year, she and Prince were dating. He was 34. There is no way to not make this at least a little suspect. Illegal? No. But come on, Prince. The best I can say for this is that his commitment to the relationship seems to have been absolutely genuine. There was none of his customary infidelity, and far less of his controlling behavior than I would have expected, until the end, but that’s another story. More than almost any other woman in his life, he seems to have been mostly content to let Mayte be her own person. I’m sure it helped that she was interested in the same things as him, but it did seem, at least for the moment, relatively stable.
But creepy, and irresponsible. Let us not forget that.
When You Hear My Music, You’ll Be Having Fun
Overall, I like 0(+> better than Diamonds And Pearls, if only because the music holds up better and there seems to be fewer low points overall. True, Tony M. is still here, but he is deployed less often, and he is seemingly buried in the mix a bit.
One of the sad things we have to accept at this point is the singles market is changing to the point where B-Sides are going to be few and far between from here on out. It is during these years that material in the vault once again piles up as remixes replace non-album B-Sides.
Overall, though, with a couple of exceptions (most notably the opening track), this is one of Prince’s great 90’s albums. It’s available on Tidal, and worth a listen, if you can deal with the NSFW language (see below).
Tracklist
My Name Is Prince
This is maybe the least compelling album opener in Prince’s entire discography. It is just…this is a song that does not need to exist. For a lot of reasons. First of all, seven months after this song was released, he refused to use the name Prince for eight years. It happened so quickly that the tour for this album was still underway. So one of the singles for this album could no longer be played because this already silly song had been made even more ridiculous. Also, on a song called “My Name Is Prince,” the last thing we need is a Tony M. rap. It never made much sense to have him on Prince records, but here is the pinnacle of the nonsense.
Sexy M.F.
I first heard this song on “The Hits 2,” a compilation I purchased at a Wal*Mart at some point in the late 90’s. I’m reasonably sure I still had my learner’s permit? People don’t seem to remember this anymore, but back in the day, Wal*Mart steadfastly refused to sell any music that had “bad language” in it. These were the days before white people were widely using such language in their music. There was no “Parental Advisory” sticker, so I assumed the song would be censored. Nope. Obviously, 15-year old Nick thought this was the coolest song ever recorded.
Musically, it has a structure akin to an early 70’s James Brown song. It’s mostly one chord, a quick turnaround, and back to the single chord again. There are people who can’t stand the song, and to be fair, Tony M. comes closer to deep-sixing this one than probably any other song he rapped on. Still, it’s a great little number, and really shows off what the original NPG lineup was capable of. Not even Tony M. could stop them.
The single, while now relatively popular among Prince’s songs of the time, was not a big hit at the time. Apart from the obvious reason of the language, there was also the fact that the single was released as promotion for 0(+> while the tour promoting Diamonds And Pearls was still underway. The U.K. release was actually only three weeks after the release of “Thunder,” the last single from Diamonds And Pearls.
Love 2 The 9’s
One of Prince’s lesser-known great vocal performances. This also shows off Prince’s new way of approaching his arrangements. Not only is every instrument played live, but every instrument, especially the drums and percussion, is miked and recorded and mixed in such a way as to sound acoustic, present and “live” to the listener. Up to this point, it has been unusual to hear Prince give such care to these sorts of fine little points. The bridge is a bit of a stumbling point, as it feels like Tony M. was contractually obligated to make an appearance in the song, regardless of whether or not such a thing would have been appropriate or not.
The Morning Papers
Another song that was the product of a dense set of recording sessions from December 1991, this song almost has the feeling of a Broadway musical to it, and it is all the better for it. Like “Love 2 The 9’s” this song has Prince creating arrangements for his expanded band that stretch the boundaries of what he has been able to create up to this point. There is almost a 50’s dance band quality to the arrangement. I hope in the next few years there are more songs like this to be brought out of the vault and released.
The Max
Prince went to some lengths to create room for this song on the album, and I’m not sure why. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with it, but it doesn’t seem worth sanding down the concept of your concept album in order to shoehorn this into the tracklist, that’s all. It’s a stomping dance song that has an interesting piano hook, a screaming guitar lick that was actually lifted from a song called “Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic” that wouldn’t be released until 1999, and Tony M. acting as a hype man. I’ve never seen a concert from this tour, maybe he really thought this would kill when played live so he felt it needed to be on the album?
Blue Light
If you ask people what kind of music they like, the standard response is to say you like all kinds. It’s never actually true. Myself, I cannot abide reggae. This song is as close as I can come to the hated genre and enjoy. I do like this song, however. Eric Leeds’ sax is particularly good stuff, and the lyrics are unusually funny for Prince.
I Wanna Melt With U
This is a song recorded in Spring 1992, and was apparently originally intended as a club mix / B-Side of “7” (hence the lyrical references), but Prince liked it enough to bump yet another segue off the album to make room for this song. This is one that I think is worth the loss of the story, it’s an interesting experiment for things to come.
Sweet Baby
I think Prince was going for a kind of mid-70’s Motown ballad vibe with this song, and he may even have hit the mark, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel very inspired for some reason. The whole thing feels very rote, except for some excellent work on the bass guitar by Sonny T. It’s a nice lull in the course of the album if you’re listening to the whole thing, but as an individual track, it doesn’t hold up as well as you could hope.
The Continental
There is a curious moment between 1988 and 2000 or so when you have a strange situation with regard to recorded music. The primary way people consume music is still physical media, but people have almost completely switched over to CDs. In spite of this, LP releases are still part of the business, and every album is also released on vinyl. This means that every single album’s flow has to be divided for the sides of vinyl and aligned for a single CD tracklist. With younger artists, I’m sure they thought primarily of the CD, but for artists who grew up on and first recorded in the vinyl-dominated years, how did they think? The jump between “Sweet Baby” and “The Continental” is definitely both the change of tempo you want in the CD tracklist and the sweeping opening you’d want for side 3 of a double album. Furthermore, it functions perfectly as the first number for the medley of four songs it opens. It’s difficult to know if this is a true coincidence or not.
In any case, this feels like Prince’s attempt at one of those later Beatles tracks (or indeed early Wings) that are more like two otherwise unrelated songs rammed together to see what happens. In this case, it works incredibly well, even the out-of-left-field rap by Carmen Electra that closes out the song.
Damn U
The best ballad on the album, and one of the best examples of Prince in full Curtis Mayfield mode, with Tommy Barbarella featured on some particularly sweet keyboard parts.
Arrogance
One of Prince’s more raucous, howling examinations of identity. It slaps, but ultimately it’s mostly just an intro for the next track.
The Flow
Apart from “My Name Is Prince,” this song is the one that most features Tony M. and it suffers for it. Just as early hip-hop has the cliché of its M.C.’s clearly introducing themselves and declaring what they are here to say, in the early 90’s, the cliché is that the audience might have their attention drawn to a point by being invited to “scope” or in particularly virulent cases, “peep” something. In “The Flow” we are invited to “peep” things several times. At one point, Tony tells us he is “Sleek neat creepin' gangk peepin'”. I’d love to know what the hell that means.
7
This is the big hit from the album, with good reason. Many of the songs from 0(+> would find their way into live sets through years as treats for the harder core fans, but “7” was much more of a staple. On his 2004 “comeback” tour it was a centerpiece of his solo acoustic set. It was crazy hearing ten thousand people sing the chorus live. Especially since I’m pretty sure none of us could have agreed on what the song means. There is an “acoustic” version on the single that is less truly acoustic as much as acoustic forward, but it does bring forward the Steele’s fantastic background vocals, and on that basis alone it's worth tracking down.
Also, I briefly mention the only other non-album track here. “2 Whom It May Concern” is often referred to as a separate song. It is not actually. It uses the groove from “7” and is essentially a commercial for the album.
And God Created Woman
I know I said “Damn U” was the best ballad on the album, but if you really wanted to fight me on the point and say this one was better, it would be hard to argue. Beautiful arrangement, especially the vocals, interesting lyrics, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, plus some really tasty rhythm guitar from Levi Seacer, Jr.
3 Chains O’ Gold
This track is hard to describe, but the shorthand is this sounds like Prince heard Bohemian Rhapsody, turned to his engineer and said “hold my beer.” It also has a guitar solo that signals Prince’s renewed interest in the instrument that would carry through for the next few years.
The Sacrifice Of Victor
Perhaps more than any other song on the album, “The Sacrifice Of Victor” hinted at things to come. The lyrics were both personal and political, the instrumentation rooted in 70’s funk, yet connected to Prince’s 80’s work and to his “big band” future. And it had the preoccupation with identity that would mark Prince’s work for the next few years. This is also the end of an era. The Steeles would be very infrequent contributors from here on, and this is the last appearance on a Prince record of Tony M. From here on, Prince’s raps would be performed by either himself or one-off guests.
The Act I and Act II Tours
The Diamonds And Pearls tour skipped North America. To promote both 0(+> (and The Hits) Prince toured the U.S. extensively in Spring 1993 on the “Act I Tour” and then took the show to Europe for the summer in the “Act II Tour.” This tour, while successful, took place during a time of serious turmoil between Prince and the press, as well as Prince and his record company. As has been hinted at before, Prince’s place in the music industry and pop culture was going to change whether or anyone liked it or not in the early 90’s. Such was the fate of all artists at the time, especially those who made their name in the 80’s. Prince, however, decided to take control of that change for better or worse.
Throughout his career, he had always seemed more willing to fail on his own terms than to succeed on someone else’s. In 1993, he set about proving that once and for all.
NEXT WEEK: 1993 - Prince self-destructs his career.
Comments