Yes, I know, three Prince: Track by Track posts in a row isn’t exactly a testament to my productivity, but I’m still aiming to get “Nasty Girl” out by the end of the week. Meanwhile, here’s me and Track by Track host Darren Husted on a nice little tune from Prince’s underrated 20Ten album:
Thanks for your patience as I continue to work on the next chapter!
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dance / music / sex / romance is fast approaching its third year, so to celebrate, we’re going…backwards? That’s right, to mark the 40th anniversary of Prince’s debut album, I thought now was the perfect time to go ahead with an idea I’ve been toying with for a while: our own sub-series of review podcasts looking at each of Prince’s albums in isolation.
I’m doing this for a few reasons. First, it’s a way to bring those of you who have been listening to the podcasts but not reading the blog into the loop on my chronological Prince project–and also a way for me to work through some of these albums before I can get to it with my glacially paced writing schedule.
Second, I’ve known from the beginning of this project that if I really wanted to do Prince’s catalogue justice, I would need to incorporate more voices and perspectives than just my own. We all have our biases and blind spots, and as a Prince fan I am acutely aware that one person’s sentimental favorite can be another’s unlistenable mess (and vice versa). That’s why I asked my friends Harold and KaNisa, both of whose encyclopaedic knowledge of Prince’s career dwarfs my own, to join me. I think you’ll find that our tastes and opinions both intersect and diverge in a lot of interesting ways, which allowed us–and hopefully, will allow you–to take a different perspective on some of these songs and the context in which they were created.
I hope you enjoy this new approach to an album that remains underappreciated in Prince’s catalogue. If you do, I hope you’ll subscribe to the podcast on your streaming app of choice (iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play), and if you’re so inclined, leave a review! No matter what, thanks for listening, and see you again soon.
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Settle in, folks, because today we’ve got not one, but two presenters from this spring’s Prince conference at the University of Salford: interdisciplinary artist/activist Felicia Holman and independent scholar/activist Harold Pride. Both were part of the organic community of Black artists and academics who came together in Manchester and, each in their own way, helped to reclaim Prince’s legacy as a specifically African American artist. The three of us talk about that, as well as their specific papers–Harold’s on the underrated, short-lived “Band with No Name” from 1987–88; Felicia’s on Prince’s autodidacticism and its connection to traditions of Black self-determination–and, as usual, a lot of other things along the way. It’s a great conversation that could have easily been twice as long; I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I still have a handful of these interviews lined up, and will be posting them at least through Labor Day. Appearances to the contrary, I’m also still writing: I’ll be back to the ol’ grind next week. See you then!