This Week

Given the date, I decided to repost a throwback.

Ten years ago

Damn. When I began The Counterpublic Papers I was faced with a conundrum. I was in between projects, and didn’t have anything that had me writing every day. And writing is like breathing to me.  

I didn’t want to write a blog anymore, so that was out. But I didn’t want to just keep a private journal. 

So I decided on a newsletter. Easy enough.

I had a sense about what I would write about and a definite sense of what I would not write about. I didn’t know that within a short time I’d be writing so much about death. 

Prince is dead. Fuck. 

The universe must’ve really been playing with us in 1958. I mean, we all know that black men are hyper masculine, lazy, cockstrong, bald, six feet plus, with baritone voices. Black culture was produced in two places—either the urban urban hyper segregated north or the rural rural south. And whatever future we had in mind, didn’t have black people in it…if black people lived anywhere it was in the pre-industrial south. 

Who would’ve thunk that the coolest, blackest, mothafucka on the planet would hail from Minneapolis, stand only about 5’2, wear crushed velvet like blue jeans, and routinely sport heels.

Heels?

Heels.

It’s 1980 or thereabouts. About 7 or 8 years after the Supreme Court narrowly defines desegregation in a Michigan case against busing. Because of the ruling, it’s not really possible for black kids living in poor municipalities (like Detroit or Inkster) to get access to better public schools in other school districts. So someone came up with the idea of magnet schools—schools designed to attract the “smartest” and “most gifted” kids in failing school districts. I was one of those kids. For two or three days a week I would be bused from my neighborhood school in Inkster to a magnet school a few miles away. I still remember one of the poems I wrote for my creative writing class, “Time”. 

Anyway.

One of the last days of the 79-80 school year I remember my mother picking me up. 

“I Wanna Be Your Lover” was on the radio.

I didn’t know whether the singer was a boy or a girl. 

I was a bit more confused when my mother ended up buying the album. No boy has that much hair on his head. But no girl has that much hair on her (breast-less) chest.

Later that year, I saw him on American Bandstand being interviewed by Dick Clark. Arrogant as hell. He couldn’t have been old enough to drink by today’s standards. Clark asked him a question, maybe it was “how long have you been playing music?” And instead of saying “Five years” he (and yes, by then I realized he was a man), put up five fingers.

Who does that?

To Dick Clark?

On national television?

Two years after that I’m in a catholic school in Dearborn, Michigan, then one of the most racist cities in America (north or south). The  two or three days a week magnet school thing wasn’t really working out, as I was dead bored in regular school. So my parents decided to send me to Sacred Heart. There were probably just enough black kids to count on two hands and two feet. But seventh grade I remember one of the black students (Caprice Tye) sneaking a copy of Controversy into school. 

In barely 36 minutes Prince dealt with themes of freedom, love, nuclear war, masturbation, political organizing, Christianity, Satanism, political corruption, racism, parenting, and touched on the Atlanta Child Murders and ABSCAM just for kicks. Listening to “Sexuality” for the first time in years I noticed that although the song starts out talking about sex and sexual freedom not even half way through it transitions to a call to politically organize. Sonically the album was one of the first of the era to embrace the new wave (“Private Joy” and “Controversy” don’t sound like anything that came before them) while still being steeped in R & B (“Do Me Baby” while risqué is a traditional R & B love song).      

Up until Prince Teddy Pendergrass was probably our sexiest singer. Pendergrass was a powerful singer in his own right, one also taken too soon. But while he was innovative in his own right, he conformed to most of the stereotypes of what black masculinity was. His physical performance, his vocal range, he was what a black male was. 

Prince took those ideas of what we thought, well not we, about what being black was supposed to be, and flipped them on their heads. No modern pop artist was more productive, more influential. And, given reports now circulating about his anonymous donation to a variety of progressive causes, it’s possible no modern pop artist has made more space for political work. Certainly no modern pop artist has done more to support artistic rights against corporate ownership. 

His rise coincided with the rise of the vicious Reagan regime. Prince emerged as the nation became more and more hyper segregated, as Reagan sliced and diced the welfare state and the New Deal. Media wise, his rise coincided with the rise of MTV and the consolidation of the music industry. Because Reagan hadn’t quite deregulated the radio industry yet—that didn’t come until Clinton completed the neoliberal turn years later—Prince slipped through the cracks. 

(Think about it. Most radio stations now, even the black owned ones, are owned by a few conglomerates. Prince wouldn’t be Prince without independent radio stations like Detroit’s WGPR, and DJs like Detroit’s Electrifying Mojo. Given the rise of the internet it’s possible he would’ve made a path through something like YouTube or MySpace, but I’m not sure.)   

(On anonymity for a moment—it’s worth comparing Prince’s work to JayZ’s. It appears as if Prince not only gave anonymously but vigorously enforced his anonymity. On the other hand JayZ’s always seemed to leak….) 

We might as well divide the pop world into two moments, before Prince and after. 

Prince had to have hip replacement surgery years ago—in one of the last public non-concert appearances he was seen at a Golden State Warriors game walking with a cane. My father has had two such surgeries (hip replacements wear out and have to be replaced themselves every several years). It appears that as a result of persistent pain Prince became addicted to pain killers. His productivity came at a price. A steep one. 

After Michael Jackson passed away, I wondered how the world would respond when we lost Prince. But I didn’t think we’d find out this soon.   

Dissent asked me to write a piece about him. If they don’t think it’s crap, it’ll be published sometime this week. 

Prince is dead. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

It’s going to be a long while before I get over this one. 

If I do.

……..

This is from the first volume of The Counterpublic Papers. Some of you have been along for the whole ride. For you, this is a throwback. For some of you, you’re seeing this for the first time. If this is you, and Prince meant something, Condition of the Heart is as good a track as any to play today. Shout out to Jessica Lewis and Tiffany Dafoe. I cried so much when I found out that I had to leave the office early, and I’m pretty sure I ended up at Jessica’s apartment that evening, with her and Tiffany. And once I realized that Baltimore didn’t quite love Prince like Detroit did—as soon as the news spread a number of bars threw impromptu listening parties—Tiffany and I both decided that we needed to do it at the old H and H building. If I recall correctly, I think at least one marriage came out of it. (Seriously.)

Anyway. Back to regular stuff next time. Thanks for being here.