Leather and Glitter

My Name is Prince. And I am funky. My name is…

The bourgeoisie. Da. Bourgeoisie. Yes, he always cribbed and spinned (and ghostwrote) Madonna’s lyrics to be (supposedly) better.

Of course he chose her catchphrase from her 2000 uber-mega-smash “Music.” A gay male anthem, a Y2k excuse to bump and grind in solidarity with the pre-MySpace vibe.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gvnjgx/prince-rip-gay-icon-clubbing

Michael Musto’s piece on “Da Bourgeoisie” (2013) (yes, I am referring to MM in 2024) called Prince a fabulous freak and dark dandy.

A “defiant outsider.”

As a former music industry employee – “outsider” struck me as cliche.

100 million album selling artists – and there aren’t that many (Celine, The Eagles, Taylor, Janet, to name a few) – are not outside. They are forever on our inside.

Outsiders in pop, funk, and hip-hop are the SOS Band. Confunkshun. Badu. Kim. Foxy. Kaytranada. Left Eye. Biggie. Tori. Dam-Funk. Margaret Cho has even made pop records.

Outsiders do not headline the Super Bowl. Nor score the soundtracks of blockbusters. Nor tour arenas for 32 years.

“Prince was a homophobe” is a popular narrative. One drugged out attention seeking comment to New Yorker on the way, one line in “Da Bourgeoisie” and he supposedly erases the hard-won visibility and progress of not just black or white gayness, not just blackness, not just fluidity; he found the venn diagram in between, exploited himself and exposed us.

Part 2…on the way.