Dance / Music / Sex / Romance

Prince's pop life, song by song, in chronological order.

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Father’s Song

January 11, 2022

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in Ephemera, 1983

Prince conceptualized Purple Rain during a period of estrangement from his father; yet the specter of John L. Nelson haunted the project from the beginning.
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Controversy, Part 1: Am I Black or White?

August 10, 2018

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in Controversy, 1981

To summarize any artist with a single song is no small feat. To do so for an artist like Prince, who reveled in his ambiguities and contradictions, is even more impressive. The brilliance of “Controversy” is the way it places these ambiguities and contradictions at the center of Prince’s artistic persona: his indeterminacy becomes his…
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Sex Machine: Grand Central, 1973-1976

June 9, 2016

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by

Zachary Hoskins

in Ephemera, 1975-1976, Lacunae

Grand Central is easy to see as an anomaly in Prince’s career: probably because it seems strange for such a notorious control freak, even in his teenage years, to be a willing partner among equals.
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