RIP Prince

(Written April 21, 2016)

Everyone has their Sir Paul, or their Bowie, or their Tupac. Musicians like these generally show up at a time of adolescent uncertainty, and for reasons that never really become totally clear until you read that they’ve died, they make you understand yourself a little better. Prince was that person for me, and he died today. Goddammit.

My formative years were so tied to Prince that it almost seems like I’m thinking of someone else in hindsight. I showed up to the school with “SLAVE” on my cheek in fifth grade, and believe me when I say that I had nothing against anyone at Warner Bros. I wrote the “Love Symbol #2” on every notebook I ever had. Somewhere in my parents’ basement, there’s probably a VHS tape of Prince performing “Betcha By Golly Wow!” on Oprah, which is a song that no one remembers but probably me and Mayte.

This isn’t to say that I liked Prince more than anyone or was somehow a better fan, since that’s obviously not the point. But what does matter is this: I was a pretty weird kid, and I didn’t know how to be weird in any sort of way that I was comfortable with. I didn’t aspire to be any sort of Prince-like musical genius; however, I did wanna get a handle on the lovesick, offbeat, expressive kid I was becoming, and Prince helped me do that.

I didn’t grow up on 1999 or Purple Rain, to be honest. It was the Love Symbol album — first appearance of the actual symbol itself, home to “Seven,” “Morning Papers” and “Sexy MF” — that gave me something I could dance solo to, identify with, and shamelessly call my own. Later, I circled back through The Hits 1 and 2, and then found The Gold Experience, still my favorite Prince album ever. (Listen to “Gold” and try to not to be astonished at the sheer majesty of it all.)

A lot of people didn’t hear some of his later albums, but that never mattered to me. I loved them, because they were weird, because they were obtuse. Fuck, I loved them because they were mine.

It’s well-documented how difficult Prince could be, and that when he felt like audiences or industries were turning on him, he turned his tiny little ass right back. He was amazing at it. It likely came down to one irrefutable fact, that he was untouchable live, and that he knew this more than anyone else. This became obvious with his halftime performance at the 2007 Super Bowl, his sit-ins at the Rock Hall a few years ago, and his forever-incomplete Piano and a Mic Tour.

The sad thing is, he was finally allowing people to embrace his genius on their own terms, which wasn’t something he’d ever been very good at doing. That’s the worst part for me: the accessible, late-period Prince that we’ll never get to experience now. That said, I’m grateful for all that I got to enjoy over the years. I had my turn.

It’s those weird kids trying to figure out just what sort of person they’re becoming that will really be missing out.

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