Analysis: Prince “One Song”
With One Song, Prince Leapt Into Uber-Religiosity
The illusion of choice & consequence of pacifism, & the truth about Jehovah’s Witnesses influence on Prince, his music, and newfound life purpose. Prince’s dogmatic songwriting caused a possible drop in his audience, yet he found a new home between the album sales and the pages of the New World Translation of the bible.
Author note: While much of the time frame discussed here was when Prince went by O(+>, I will refer to him as Prince.
On the very first day of 2000, I began to believe that, just perhaps, Prince — the genius musician, composer, singer, and swift elder — or rather O(+> as was his moniker at the time, was on a path of virtual insanity; possibly even a literal one. His statements about record companies, “CONtracts” and masters in the 90s had made sense to me. His name change to O(+> made sense. I got it. His way of telling it by deed and action was downright poetic. His walk, his clothing, his speech — it was all calculated, purposeful, and honest. He was willing to sacrifice himself for his art. He was walking art. He was Shakespearean: tragic, and heroic. He wanted to effect change. And I accepted his arguments and his dilemma. I supported him as much as I could. I attempted to understand (and stand under) him and what he was trying to accomplish. I wasn’t an artist like he was, nor did I have a contract with anyone. I understood his fight, in the best way I could as a fan. I wanted my favorite artist to be happy, free and making great music as always. We could see he was desperate in many ways. This went beyond throwing a tantrum. It was more. It felt weighted, heavy, substantial. He was crying out. His fanbase was the proverbial shoulder on which he buried his face to cry it out. Our pats on the back for him manifested forms of echoing his displeasure with Warner Bros. and propagating his rhetoric about being free.
Jim Walsh, music critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, wrote the liner notes for Prince’s 1995 The Gold Experience album. He mentions how there was a “palpable sense of urgency” throughout the record, theorizing that Prince knew “time is running out for all of us to make connections with ourselves and the outside world.” Then he makes his case, in full. He asks the reader to cue the scream in the middle of “Endorphinmachine” and the guitar solo in “Gold” — songs that bookend the album — and take a hard listen to them back to back. Walsh sensed desperation as well as hopeful liberation. It was Prince’s “we shall overcome” or “fight the power.” Walsh ends with saying Prince “isn’t showing off; he’s searching… like never before.” Once he became free of his contractual obligations with Warner Bros. Records, the fan base sort of thought, “well, that’s it then. We’re good. Everything is fine. We all made it out alive.”
Yet. It wasn’t fine. It wasn’t as good as we hoped for with the perceived success. It would seem Prince would almost immediately set off on an even more purposeful and determined path that — a new fight — possibly unknown even to himself; one that he would never turn away from again. His forties would look very different from any past era of his life thus far. The battle with Warner Bros. would be a whimper compared to the new voice Prince would find.
Hindsight gives us a more unobstructed view of Prince’s fight with Warner. We now see it as an innovation in the record industry, one of change, and the artist community as a whole, whether it’s regarding financial compensation, ownership and artist’s rights for the created works, or simple treatment as a fellow human being. Corporations were put on notice by a man who didn’t live on either coast permanently, had terrific success, some very public failures, but still had the clout and support to force the hands of his employer. He pled his case to anyone who would listen. Whether he was bluffing for the sake of a contract renegotiation or seriously considered being a free agent, he meant business. Sure, some of it was posturing for a better contract the next time around, when it was time to renew it. But through it all, Prince preached freedom. Physical and sexual freedoms produced freedom of thought and expression.
Free your mind, and your ass will follow. While Warner never tried to censor his content, they held him in financial bondage. He was promised advances on the next record if the current record sold X amount. Prince didn’t sell a lot of records in his career as he did with Purple Rain. Some sold better than others, but many averaged around 3M-4M. Over time those numbers would inevitably rise, but during the campaign for the album, the numbers were fractional compared to past success. He would always have to work a little harder and go a bit further to get the same money he’d gotten two albums ago (which, in Prince’s case, was usually just two years ago since he released an album per year on average). It was a trap, as most record contracts become no matter the status of the artist. Another whole essay could be written on the commercial viability of Prince’s music versus what the fanbase always saw as perfection. Many times, Prince didn’t have the numbers he, or Warner, wanted. It put him in precarious situations with his bosses at Warner. He grew unhappy quicker than not. The weight of the contractual and financial obligations he found himself yolked to began to be too much. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Heavier is the price of the artist’s freedom.
While Prince used to preach free expression, he soon realized that also came with doing the practical work. It’s a damn near anarchical type ideology in his music; to balk at giving in to the system of normality and accepting the humdrumalities of life was the choice of anarchists who sought autonomy and independence from governments. Prince’s government was Warner Bros., but he was the mayor of Paisley Park; it was a position that was arguably in title only since a larger figurehead continued to manage the reigns of ownership and corporate policies. Whether it was God, sex, love, or a healthy mixture of all three, it was clear that Prince was not only marching to his own drummer but also asking us to journey with him. He challenged you to clear your path. He seemed to take the same supporters through his fight with Warner and, almost by proxy, ushered them into a new cause, a new era, and a new purpose. Prince, as mayor, wanted to secede from Warner and become his an independent state. As most Prince fans, we were on board. At first.
From the time his contract with Warner expired in late 1996, until the beginning of 1999, Prince would permanently wipe slave from his face, release multiple albums and singles, co-produce albums for others, open himself to collaborations with artists outside the Paisley bubble, make numerous TV appearances, embark on multiple tours, and generally enjoy his newfound freedom.
In 1998, during a weird interview on Vibe, hosted by comedian and actor Sinbad, somehow, Larry Graham and his wife Tina ended up on the couch next to Prince and his then-wife Mayte Garcia. Graham had been the bassist for Sly and the Family Stone, then headed his group Graham Central Station, as well as enjoyed a solo career. The men on the couch started to dip into the semantics of Christ’s crucifixion, and whether he was put on a typical T-shaped cross. They argued he wasn’t, that he was crucified on “an upright stake or pole.” The interview turned into a bible study. The term for such a deathly impaling was stauros; a word that would arguably become the bane of the fan’s existence. Along with the audience, Mayte felt the universal cringe as Graham put his arms over his head, hands clasped, visually demonstrating being hung in an upright plank position. Graham’s wife, Tina, seemed to cheerlead and reiterate her husband’s presentation. Garcia tried to squeeze Prince’s hand, to possibly break up the proverbial Jehovah’s Witness doorbell ringing unleashed on the audience, but Prince’s attention was squarely fixed on Larry Graham.
Looking back at the video, it appears Prince had a crush on Graham. Not sexual, but an otherwise clear and steady budding bromance. Prince went on for a minute about what he saw, from a new enlightened self-perspective; one no doubt germinated and polished by Graham’s beliefs. But it was different. He wasn’t just sharing. It felt like he was dictating, commanding. It didn’t seem like Prince to say “now, you can cut that how you want, but it’s the truth,” as if no other options were available to anyone. It was gently tyrannical, mapping jurisdiction boundaries over other people’s free thought. It felt odd, unusual; out of character; it felt like a one-off. Garcia would later express her distaste for the interview in her book, The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince. She had notes of animosity toward Graham for his influence on her husband that bled into their marriage. During the interview, she said she felt like “a fire alarm” went off inside her head. (Us too, girl. Us, too.) She felt awkward, almost embarrassed during the interview. Fans balked at the impromptu bible lesson on internet forums, and the audience’s eyes surely glazed over with confusion and mild resentment (as she also noted). Yet even through all that, and the hashing out of it all on the internet, Prince fans were forgiving. It’s Prince, after all. And like most Prince moments or phases, it would likely fade fast. We letitgo.
In February 1999, he released a new recording of his hit “1999”, called 1999: The New Master; it was a nod to owning the new recording of one of his biggest hits. (Despite Warner Bros. owning his master recordings, if an artist (not under contract) re-records a song, the artist owns the new version, thereby side-stepping the record company’s claim to ownership of something they didn’t create, not any previous record company. It stands to note artists like Ace, Journey, and Def Leppard have re-recorded hit songs for this purpose.) Since it was 1999, he hoped a new version of the year’s default theme song would be played on radio stations across the world. His continuing message of musical freedom would be in the title of the EP, and would thereby be spoken to the masses by DJs across the country. One would think Prince would cash in and make a slew of appearances to promote his new recording. But he didn’t. He said little about it. In fact — for all practical purposes — he didn’t say anything at all. DJs didn’t play the new song, either.
The years from Emancipation until the end of the millennium (unless you argue that 2001 was the new millennium, and you wouldn’t be wrong), shaped up to be quite productive, lucrative, and expressive for Prince. He was doing his thing, and we all loved him for it.
Through all these late 90s activities leading to up to a new decade, Prince had also started to experiment with releasing songs over the internet, sometimes for streaming only and often in inferior Real Player quality; possibly a purposeful action to detract bootleggers, perhaps the limitations of technology and the still-burgeoning landscape that was the world wide web and music streaming. These tracks were still recorded by fans and passed around for everyone to enjoy. It was during this time that Prince was testing the waters of the internet and music. Though now considered normal, Prince releasing music on the internet was revolutionary. Whether it was exclusively digital-only (as most all his NPG Music Club tracks were, except the preview of The Rainbow Children which was later released in hard copy) or as an early sneak-peek to a larger project, it certainly signaled how we listen to music today. These were the days of newsgroups like alt.music.binaries.prince, apps like Napster and Kazaa, message boards like prince.org and Housequake, all of which allowed people to freely share music on the internet, without cost; and without compensation to the artist. Prince saw the world of music, and more importantly, the value of music and work, quickly go down the drain. People began to devalue music, because — as he argued later — people don’t value what they don’t pay for. Songs transformed into harddrive tchotchkes.
Most of 1999 was, aside from the February and November releases, void of anything Prince. After the release of 1999: The New Master, we were asking ourselves, “Where is Prince?” As Warden Norton said in The Shawshank Redemption, “the man just up and vanished like a fart in the wind!”
Prince had disappeared.
While most of us were waking up with hangovers or possibly just getting to bed after partying like it was, quite literally, 1999, Prince quietly wiped all other content on his Love 4 One Another website clean. January first, two-thousand-zero-zero found us logging into our computers, checking email and pulling up Prince’s site only to find nothing was there, except one lone video. For a hot second, we wondered if the rumors about Y2K were true. What happened to Prince’s website? Where is everything? Do I have a virus? Does Prince have a virus? Is the year 2000 a virus? Our second cup of coffee made us sit up and take notice. A RealPlayer embedded video, called “One Song” sat there, like a wise Tibetian hermit on a mountain top patiently waiting to bestow knowledge or truth on us with or without a prompt. It held something we wanted, although we had no idea what it was. The video waited for us to click it and listen. For a man who didn’t believe in the concept of time, he took advantage of the change in date. Prince presented a new square one. He was on a new journey. “And away…we… go.”
“One Song” is a nine-minute track, divided into a six-minute monologue and the remainder as the actual music track. In the monologue, Prince speaks about art imitating life, how politics are pointless, breaking ranks, and thinking outside the proverbial box. It was a challenging listen, and most fans saw it as yet another princely whim, with whiffs of familiar quasi-spirituality and subjective political ridicule. I wanted to adhere to and endorse what one of my top favorite artists of all time was saying. My soul grimaced when I listened to the monologue and watched the words on the screen. Not because I agreed or disagreed with them, but because I wondered what the hell he was thinking.
Looking back, I realized it was a few years prior that Prince began his new spiritual journey. One that would take him deeper in the woods; further than he had ever been before. It would challenge every line about God, sexuality, and carnality’s bliss he had previously indulged in and sought to endorse. Depending on who you asked, it would either eliminate or significantly augment his dogmatic approach to lyric writing. As a child, his leanings were rooted in the Seventh-Day Adventist sect. It’s a belief structure he leaned on less as an adult, pulling the parts he found comfortable yet provocative enough to sprinkle into his music. He discovered his proverbial fence to straddle.
By the time Controversy was released in 1981, Prince had found a successful formula for the gentrification of his religious beliefs, or his music depending on how you saw it. He wasn’t afraid to recite the Lord’s Prayer or reference God in his music, and he wasn’t scared to itemize a list of places where blowjobs were permissible. It all seemed fine. It’s what made Prince “Prince.” A little bit of God, a little pussy, and all were well in the twin cities. It quickly became part of his mystique and allure as an artist. His quasi-spiritual pointing to the ceiling during certain songs increased following an alleged moment seeing the devil (although the popular story was that he saw God); an event that led him to record and release Lovesexy. That spit take of Zen and meditation lasted as long as the album. Prince always leaned to his religious background here and there when it suited him. Lovesexy had a more churchy swagger. A year later, by the time Batman came out, you’d never have known Prince had been doing virtual short story sermons just months prior on the Lovesexy Tour. God took a back seat to the Dark Knight and the Joker.
Fast forward a decade. Enter Larry Graham. Graham had been a long time Jehovah’s Witness. Graham’s bands were something Prince looked up to — dare I say idolized — as a young, black musician. One of Prince’s early bands was called Grand Central Station, named after Graham’s post-Sly band. When we first heard of Graham, along with Chaka Khan, joining up with Prince to record and play music, then tour, we were excited. Legends tripping over each other in the studio, working together, making music in a free environment? Sign me up! It was the first time Chaka Khan was without a record contract after her fourteen-year run with Prince’s old bosses at Warner Bros., going out as a free agent. (Graham was also a former Warner Bros. artist, even singing their praises on “It Ain’t Nothing But A Warner Bros. Party” in 1975.) Prince had wiped SLAVE off his face at the end of 1996. Larry Graham hadn’t made an album of new material for longer than anyone cared to count, sticking mainly to independent live releases. The three of them together appeared to be a virtual musical utopia; the thrust of what Paisley Park was supposed to become since its inception in 1985. No contracts, just a handshake, a love of music, mutual respect and appreciation, and the lion’s share of album sales. Prince didn’t charge Graham or Khan for using Paisley Park studios. They recorded for free, which kept their overhead to a bare-bones minimum. It was the first real test of Prince being in his element as a musician operating 100% by his own rules. Prince would release NewPowerSoul under the New Power Generation moniker (the last album under that name), Khan released Come 2 My House (arguably the best of the three records with Prince’s being a close second), and Graham’s GCS2000, a less-than worthy release under the Graham Central Station name.
It was an environment Prince had never experienced before, despite his stratospheric fame and record sales, and keeping himself purposely in Minneapolis more than Los Angeles or New York. His long-standing, and ever-growing, feud with Warner Bros. Records germinated as far back as 1981. It only came to the public’s full awareness around thirteen years later. Prince made tons of music, but his bosses at Warner only saw one album a year as a reasonable period for a release. It’s no surprise that Prince sought to create and nurture other groups — like Jill Jones, The Family, New Power Generation, Madhouse, Mazarati, Vanity 6, Apollonia 6, and Sheila E. — as a vehicle to release more music. Maneuvering through his Paisley Park Studios without the worry of an executive calling would certainly give Prince new footing and traction for his music. Gone would be the days of feeling like he was a slave to a master, and that he was — at best, to them — the house negro. He could feel respected, even admired, by those around him in a whole new way.
Prince became quickly enamored with Larry Graham, who was twelve years older and had been playing music since he was as many years old. Prince was undoubtedly more aware of himself as an artist and a human being than ever before. However, he still lacked a direction in his spiritual life. During his name change years (which, technically, he was still in as he wouldn’t change his name back to Prince until 2000), he often spoke about how his name change to a symbol was spiritual. Prince was “dead” to him. He had long separated himself from all things Prince, seeing it as a time of bondage, and his mind was under lock and key. “Prince” was a slave, so he became someone else now, which just happened to have a symbol as a name. “Prince” represented a person who refused to stand under (understand) Warner Bros’s spell of master ownership. If Prince were ever to be Lazarus’d up, his pseudo-resurrection would be as a free man. Graham met Prince years before they started working together. He would undoubtedly play healer to a struggling musician of whose name we do not speak and help him rise again. Prince needed a new direction. Dare I say; he needed a new breed leader to stand up; organize! Larry Graham seemed to offer solutions.
Prince himself said that Graham helped settle unsolved issues trying to reconcile his beliefs in God and unanswered questions he carried. When Prince started putting Graham’s dogma, the Jehovah’s Witness alteration of the Bible (called the New World Translation), and near-theological arguments, peppered with some of the most racially and politically charged declarations of his career, into his music, the hair on my neck prickled. I had a knot in my stomach. I got that chilled heat on my skin that you get when red and blue flashing lights are in your review mirror. I was worried. Where was the Prince that would say “fuck” as much as he would say “God”? Had we lost him for good?
We, as fans, could see what was going to happen, and we found it unbelievable and often disturbing. Prince quickly absorbed the doctrine as his own and, subsequently, fully converted to a Jehovah’s Witness. He was even photographed at a Jehovah’s Witness meeting, sitting next to the Grahams. All things Watch Tower Society and Kingdom Hall began to infect his music. Remember that scene in The Matrix, after Neo takes the pill, and touches the mirror? The glass liquefies and slowly travels up his arm, eventually overtaking his whole person. That.
Fans blame Graham for inherently changing Prince’s music, the way he talked, and how he maneuvered through, what would be, the rest of his life. They blamed him for changing Prince. Prince stopped cursing. Prince would begin talking about a woman’s place in the world, chanting “theocratic order” and other Kingdom Hall idioms at his concerts, and otherwise proselytizing about his faith. Prince was as excited about his new religious leanings as Prince fans were about a new Prince record; telling everyone about it, sharing it with friends, playing it at parties, noting the highlights and nuances not to be missed. Through his conversion, he started making watered-down, generic, message music. Everything was about religion. Everything felt like a sermon, a history lesson, and exhausted even the most faithful of fans. He wasn’t provoking us to think about something new. He inflamed us to reconsider our status as a future fan. Everything was God this or Jehovah that. Every. Single. Thing.
The Rainbow Children was released in 2001, and it was the first full album of original and current material under the moniker of his birth name “Prince” since 1993’s O(+> album. It was chocked full of the new Jehovah’s Witness dogma. (Come was released as a Prince album, during the O(+> years since the music was mostly recorded while he was still Prince). I won’t review The Rainbow Children here, but suffice it to say it created a great divide in the Prince fanbase. (I will pull from the lyrics later, though.) Some fans hailed the organic and velvety production as a masterpiece. Others, more focused on the lyrics, saw it as a beer coaster, at best. Some may have even gone to Hobby Lobby to buy a clock kit to up-cycle the CD as a timepiece.
As years progressed, and Prince continued his religiously murky, yet clearly defined, sometimes-lackluster sometimes-pretty decent output post-2001, I began to reconsider his New Year’s Day “One Song” message. I went back to it and took another look. Fans continued to be divided trying to maintain their love for Prince yet quickly growing tired of being preached at, browbeat, told they’re sinners, and sitting through heavier versions of the spiritual tirades we saw during the Lovesexy Tour, rattling on about God this, and Jesus that.
“One Song” itself isn’t anything musically exciting, nor are the lyrics particularly inspiring for the listener. But with more time between now and my initial reaction in 2000, I reexamined the opening monologue.
1999… and the illusion continues. One begs 2 ask —
“when will it end?”Unnatural disasters happen seemingly every week. Train crashes, shootings, nuclear accidents; is there any place of refuge one can flee from this insanity? Very few of mankind’s creations r designed 2 make u feel good, unless u get pleasure from seeing the human body desecrated by guns, explosions, fights, and any other things these so-called “artists” create. In the name of freedom, many have used art as a means 2 destroy the human mind. As an excuse 2 continue we hear “Art reflects society”. How many times has this lie been repeated: “creations r not real”, they say and yet any one of these people can call 2 mind images and complete scenes of horror in graphic detail. They will carry these so-called “unreal” creations around with them 4 the rest of their lives. These images r now a part of their being. In the name of RECREATION these people in fact r re-creating themselves in their own images.
SOCIETY THEN REFLECTS ART.
Prince challenged man’s creations, but I must break this down even more for my benefit. I believe that perhaps the clearer sense of self, the need for control, power, and possessions is more what Prince is addressing when he takes on “mankind’s creations.” Moreover, he could easily mean the government. Man created a government, not God (atheists have a seat for a moment, please). Christ often balked at government and religious leaders. By way of big pharma lobbyists, the state has validated poisonous drugs, artificial agents and chemicals to be put in foods, drinks, water, and the air around us, most of which we know are bad for us. Because of the plethora and sheer magnitude of them, it’s hard to escape them entering our bodies. Those creations are either meant to alter us or kill us. Either way, we probably won’t end our lives the way we started it. They certainly wouldn’t leave us how they found us. So Prince’s fingering of mankind’s creations can point to many things, physical, psychological, spiritual, or otherwise.
Prince also makes more specific notes of news and media’s coverage of, as well as the film industry’s love affair with, violence. When we see mankind being blown up, shot, or treated less than human, we begin to think that this is an acceptable form of interaction with our fellow human beings. We are desensitized to a gunshot wound or a missing limb. We don’t flinch much when we see a person’s head exploding, or a missile obliterating whole villages and communities. School shootings became as regular as the wind blowing. Does art reflect society, or do societal ills of mental and spiritual malnourishment get reflected in so-called “art?” Has humankind taken such a downward turn that the only reflection isn’t one of what could be, but rather what will be? The question of one, art or reality, not only reflecting but perpetuating the other — reality or art — is posed. He also notes that the more you view these sorts of images, the more it becomes part of you. You absorb the information around you. It’s long since been scientifically proven that the brain forever retains any information we consume, whether visual, aural, tactile or otherwise. It’s our recall that we have problems with, but the information is there. Taking that as truth, then inevitably, the soul has an increasingly larger and larger data bank to source for actions and reactions, thought processes, and motivations.
Therefore, the art becomes only a reminder of who we’ve become, because of the art. Art doesn’t stand on its own as a unique creation. It becomes a definition of humanity. We mimic what we see. We see love, and we mimic love. We see violence, and we act out violence. We see infidelity, and we often turn to another when we vowed to stay with one. We become the thing which we should never have — untrue to ourselves. We mimic the art that reflects us. It’s a bit of who came first, the chicken or the egg. Instead of art being some extraneous element to enjoy or critique, the effects of said art become inherent in our very being, shapes us, influences us, defines us, and ultimately ends us. That effect on our lives, in turn, affects the art we create.
It’s a dichotomy that Prince created art, yet reflected how art could infiltrate the mind permanently. As far back as “Annie Christian” and “Sexuality,” Prince retold the stories he saw in media. “Annie Christian” is particularly relevant, as it talked about John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, and how he had a fondness for taking taxicabs; about Wayne Williams, a twenty-three-year-old man, who spent three years on a murderous spree ultimately killing twenty-eight black children in Atlanta while driving a blue car; and about the assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan; and ABSCAM. Prince was continually troubled by the world around him, which speaks to a great level of compassion he carried with him, yet seemed helpless to do anything about it. He would even cry out to Reagan in “Ronnie, Talk 2 Russia”, practically begging for change. A reminder that Prince was only twenty-three at the time yet very aware of the larger world around him.
It’s been reported that Prince considered destroying the masters to recordings like “Head” and “Sister” because he felt such guilt and dismay at creating songs about oral sex or incest. Perhaps Prince saw himself as part of the problem, creating art that would — as he saw it — destroy people. The more people listened to his x-rated material, the more that information became part of the listener, making Prince an accomplice in society’s entropic well-being. While I’m not sure how a blowjob ever killed anyone, Prince saw that singing about it was sinful; it was something he wanted to extrude out of his life.
In typical Prince fashion, the pendulum swung from one extreme to the other when he stopped cursing, stopped performing his more sexual songs, and refit some of his sauciest lyrics into a bland oatmeal brand of funk. He sought to become the solution. He wanted to do something about the troubled world in which he lived. He saw God as the missing element. And he did everything shy of putting a title of Pastor, Elder, or Bishop before his first name.
In man’s decision 2 further separate from God, his re-creation of himself leaves him in a dysfunctional state of confusion. The mind becomes a burial ground 4 dead waste. Isolated from the wholeness of God, Earth and his fellow brothers and sisters, this man seeks solace in activities he thinks will stimulate his mind. He begins downloading in2 his brain a series of manmade creations designed 2 destroy it. All manmade creations originate from one of 2 sources: the Tree of Knowledge or the Tree of Life. One of these trees contained deadly fruit, the other — Fruit of Everlasting Life. The one who disregards this fact recreates himself and his kind in2 extinction.
Prince surmises that the more we partake of any art or other input, the more we become that thing we see. We recreate ourselves by what we ingest; whatever we permanently let into our minds. You are what you eat. It further lends to the theory that he was shaken by looking back at his creations in music, and perhaps traumatic events in his life, and while trying to expunge himself of them he was attempting to erase it from those who have listened to it for three decades. Did he figure that if fans live for and through his music, that if he banished the parts of his music he felt was sinful that those who listened would be saved, and thereby redeem his soul in the process?
In the Bible, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden of Adam and Eve by God. If they ate of its fruit, they would die (spiritually and eventually physically, which seems to suggest that man would never die in either capacity had Adam and Eve not partaken of the fruit). Adam and Eve were products of their environment, a peaceful existence totally in tune with God in his infinite presence. Prince correlates the evil by removing the more sinfully toned songs from his onstage repertoire, thereby not assisting new fans in being tempted by what he saw as bad fruit like “Head,” “Sister,” “Jack U Off,” or “Dirty Mind.” His garden of Eden was a concert venue, and we were all Adam and Eve. God told the couple they could eat freely from any tree, except for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Prince’s music is played freely at shows and is curated for everyone to enjoy, except for his proverbial tree of knowledge. Prince saw his music as part of the manmade creations used by the devil to destroy people. He didn’t purposely set out to destroy anyone, nor did he purposely leave himself open to the devil’s influence, but he saw his work as a tool of the devil, of someone too ignorant of God’s will to ever produce anything worthy of enlightenment. While fans would argue they learned from Prince that there is freedom in sexuality, Prince permanently replaced it with spirituality; rather than combining both as he previously had mixing sex and spiritual bliss into one. He would change lyrics in songs like “I Feel For You” from “it’s mainly a physical thing” to “it’s mainly a spiritual thing”; one of many examples of which fans recoiled.
Prince points to God as the ultimate being to partake of, as God is moral, just, and pure, never changing in those traits. Prince’s fascination with computers and the internet years before “One Song,” are evidenced in his play on words of “downloading in2 his brain.” The partaking went from physical to digital and subliminal. While it’s a metaphor, it’s also true in its realist form. The Jehovah’s Witness New World Translation Bible says,
“Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are of serious concern, whatever things are righteous, whatever things are chaste, whatever things are lovable, whatever things are well-spoken-of, whatever things are virtuous, and whatever things are praiseworthy, continue considering these things. The things that you learned as well as accepted and heard and saw in connection with me, practice these, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Philippians 4:8–9 (NWT)
I find it intriguing that Prince believes these manmade things, namely his songs, would ultimately destroy us. He implies a purposeful intent of the creator to destroy the consumer, and the artist becomes the murderer of the viewer or listener. In some regards, he’s correct.
Let me use smoking as an example. It was revealed long ago, and the text from said meetings was put into anti-smoking ads on television, that tobacco companies purposely set out to get people addicted to their product early on in their life. An early customer is a life-long customer, was their unspoken yet motivating rule of thumb. Tobacco companies were purposely using ad campaigns to target children with characters and mascots. Joe the Camel, Virginia Slims “you’ve come a long way, baby,” and the Marlboro Man — who was the epitome of masculinity that every other boy was taught was normal — were a few glaring examples. More simplistically argued, cigarettes aren’t designed for pleasure; they’re designed for addiction. The customer’s pleasure is the byproduct, not the goal. It’s the wrapping paper to tempt a potential customer into trying the product. Just as the serpent beguiled Eve, people are tempted by fitting in and looking cool. The goal was set by the tobacco companies to get people addicted. Tobacco companies have a vast array of scientists and medical engineers onboard to test the human body, and thereby create a product that can easily and quickly be manipulated to their benefit. They don’t care that cigarettes are dangerous, which makes their intent ill-inspired.
Addiction can destroy one’s life (whether drugs, alcohol, gambling, cigarettes), but the destruction isn’t the tobacco company’s concern, per their own words. For every one customer that dies, another two will smoke their cigarette for the first time. It’s a manmade evil, an illusion of pleasure. It’s a purposeful intent to harm the customer by way of the bondage of addiction. The customer is dependent on a cigarette to maintain an even keel throughout the day and they have long bypassed trying to fit into the cool crowd. Now, they’re just addicts.
Prince points at God’s words about there only being two sources from which things are created: By Him (God), or by man. Prince directly references God’s choice to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Tree of Knowledge was a tree that would open their minds to all things including sin or evil — things which were not of God. The Tree of Life, God said, is the fruit you can eat from endlessly at (free) will. God put both trees there because He gave mankind free will. He hoped they would choose the good things before them and ignore what could destroy them. Why put the Tree of Knowledge there at all, some may ask? To only have one tree would go against God’s idea of creating free-willed beings. To give a being the free will to choose, then offering no options to choose from or only one option disguised as multiple choices would be illogical and make God a liar. It stands to reason that if we eat only rotten fruit, we will eventually die a slow, painful, and torturous death. If we partake of healthy and fortifying fruit, we live much longer (if not forever), in a perfect environment. To have the choice of fruit is what’s important.
Prince confesses to his separation from God in the past, and how he found solace in artificial things to entertain himself, proverbially choosing lousy fruit. Perhaps this lends to his consistent need for connection, lamenting of loneliness, and his self-imposing solitude. (It could even, prophetically, speak to Prince refusing a doctor’s care, isolating himself with painkillers and no one to snap him out of that deadly cycle.) Prince locking himself away at his yellow home on Galpin, or later at Paisley Park is undoubtedly seen in the words to “One Song,” where even him making music possibly served as an artificial stimulant to his mind. He perhaps felt he had been eating of the Tree of Knowledge far too long.
U r reading these words on a machine created by man. As u read, u hear a voice speaking 2 u the words that u perceive. They make sense 2 u because u understand (stand under) the SPELLing. The words r what binds this SPELL 2 ur illusion. When u hear the truth, like a memory — u recognize it and this recognition releases u from ALL illusion. Many languages r brilliant in their attempt 2 CONfuse u. CON meaning: against, fuse meaning: 2gether. Words and their SPELLbinding illusions have the power 2 keep man separate from God. U were born in an all-knowing state of mind. The first words spoken 2 u begin the SPELL. The words come from one of 2 sources: the Tree of Knowledge or the Tree of Life. In ignorance or simply lack of respect 4 God, many use words that CONfuse the minds of humans and turn them in2 projections of their own illusions. Because of this fact, many people grow up and blindly assume their pre-selected role under a dictatorship without even being aware of it. When asked what they r doing here on earth, most will answer with statements that do not reflect their natural God-given desires.
Prince references something in the Bible that we are all born with the knowledge of God’s being and presence.
They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. — Romans 1:18–22 (New Living Translation)
So for us to deny God’s existence is futile, and a disservice to ourselves, and as noted before — we become untrue to who we are, as humans. It’s the same way God would have become untrue to himself had he not given man choices when he first gave him free will to choose. The only thing Adam and Eve had to do was not choose the Tree of Knowledge to survive. It was judgment hanging on a branch. Prince notes that as we repeatedly hear the speech, words, and doctrines around us, our brains become engorged with those truths or non-truths. We start to believe what someone tells us and we fall under a spell (e.g. “Iraq and 9/11”, “no collusion,” “no new taxes,” “I did not have sex with…”, etc.). He believes that sometimes we are under such an umbrella of earthly desire and man-made illusion, that truth and illusion become one, thereby forfeiting default truths with lies or alternative facts. It’s the lies we tell ourselves long enough that we begin to believe. I’m too fat. I’m ugly. No one loves me. I’ll never be worth anything. I should kill myself. Everyone hates me. I’m worthless. My eyes are too far apart. My hair looks terrible. I am so awkward. “Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.”
It harkens back to the lines in “The Future,” and “Sexuality,” where children are clean slates until adults and/or the media start to create and describe the illusion of the world. It forever writes on the slate of who that child will be in life.
Pretty pony standin’ on the avenue
Flashin’ loaded pistol, 2 dumb 2 be true
Somebody told him playin’ cops and robbers was cool
Would our rap have been different if we only knew?
“The Future” — Batman (1989)
They’re all a bunch of double drags
Who teach their kids that love is bad
Half of the staff of their brain is on vacation…Don’t let your children watch television until they know how 2 read
Or else all they’ll know how 2 do is cuss, fight and breed
No child is bad from the beginning
They only imitate their atmosphere
“Sexuality” — Controversy (1981)
Children are raised in oppressive religious households, racist environments, with bigoted and privileged ideologies. It’s all they know, so how can we expect them to act differently? Children understand what we tell them, which means they understand what they were taught (the spell) of truth, yet they stand under the spell of illusion.
If our nature is moral by birthright (meaning we have no concept of right or wrong at birth, and sin and morality are taught to us either through action, deed, or speech), then our true self, at birth, is moral. It’s the things we see, and learn, that form us into who we become. These concepts aren’t new to Prince’s philosophy.
This ILLusion Prince speaks about highlights people blindly accepting their role in society, whether that be a parental endowment (meaning, it is given to you by your parents; “You should do this, not that”), or a role that is chosen by the public (tall black men should play basketball, blond women should be models, all Indians should own a casino, only white men should be a CEO.) He sees this as a sickness since the ILL in illusion is capitalized. Those roles by the public are those things which are touted as “normal” or “just the way things go,” or “that’s the way it is.” Patriarchal influences see these things as status quo; therefore, we do not disrupt that status quo. No one wants to be a troublemaker. People grow up, get married, have children, and live otherwise routine and boring lives because it’s what they’re taught they should do. “This is just the way of the world.” Most of us are taught to mind our own business, and not to rock the boat because the minute we choose to do so is the minute we will be perceived as a troublemaker, a rebel, and eventually an outcast. We upset conformity that people depend on for their perception of safety. We project that inane ordinariness onto the next generation, and so on, perpetuating the ideology of sameness, normality, and staying on an even keel.
That ideology becomes the pervasive, yet subtle, dictatorship Prince speaks about in the monologue. Work yourself to death and pretend to have fun in the process because you don’t want to seem vulnerable or ungrateful. Perpetuating conformity under the illusion of success leaves every generation learning less and less, eventually becoming a clone of the previous generation’s ills. History repeats itself. Art reflects life. It’s why Prince saw the world become worse with each new generation growing up. A copy of a copy loses its integrity and purity. And every copy from the previous copy degrades even more until finally, it’s a guessing game as to what the original looked like in the first place. A copy is man-made. The original concept was God’s. Prince’s status as a baby boomer yet growing up with Generation X gave him a unique foot in both generations, comparing the two and offering his view of the differences through strengths and weaknesses.
There is a relief to all that self-imposed illusion. You recognize truth when you hear it. If God is the truth, and we are born with the knowledge of God, then we should know the truth when we hear it. The more we know God, the more we’ll recognize the truth. The more we will be able to discern truth from lies, reality from illusion. “When u hear the truth, like a memory — u recognize it and this recognition releases u from ALL illusion.” Some call it a gut feeling, a mother’s instinct, or a sixth sense. But it’s just truth finding its way to become our light. However, the enemy slithered into the Garden of Eden and tempted Eve into eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, thereby exposing her and ultimately killing her spiritually. A liar can be just as influential to their endgame as the truth can be to its reward. Prince surely had his share of liars around him over the years. It’s safe to say he got burned a few times and learned hard lessons from it. But with experience comes knowledge. The truth reveals itself each time, thereby becoming clearer and clearer. It seems Prince had the most clarity at the start of the aughts.
This creates a pyramid-like structure with the dictator on top, and each level under it knowing less and less. Upon reaching the bottom level — which is where the majority is, u will find chaos, disorder, and illusion. With ILL as its prefix, ILLusion is a state of insanity. In the name of democracy, supreme power is vested un2 the people in this insane state instead of God. A future re-created, 2 b ruled by man, is one of isolation and despair.
As Prince talks about the pyramid effect, and how future generations know less and less, the opposite is also true. The more we find out about the government, the state, and its antics, the more we realize just how much we’re kept in the dark about those actions under the pretense of being “classified” or “for our good.” Learning government’s manipulation tactics becomes the antithesis of being dumbed down. But they fight hard to avoid that. They send out lies to distract people from the truth.
Once all those in power have left or moved on to other positions (i.e., after another has succeeded one administration), and after the sins of the former administration are forgotten, then the sins of the former are revealed, by “declassifying” documents, leaking tapes, releasing video, and transcripts, all under the false flag of transparency (as set by the one releasing it). The state counts on the public’s mental laziness and lack of motivation to question anything as its foothold of control. It depends on there being little uproar years later over a glaring atrocity committed. “Oh, it’s so far in the past, we can’t change it now. Move on.” That statement ends up being dangerous because more atrocities are being committed at this very minute, and we won’t learn about them for another generation or two, if at all. The more the state hides and lies to us about its dealings with foreign entities or even its citizens, the more we live under the illusion that things are just fine, and the state is here to help and be an assistance to us, rather than be a hindrance. The illusion is that we are in control of ourselves by way of democrazy and putting our trust in the government. The fallacy of a gilded cage is something Prince saw early.
When papers from the Nixon administration were released in June 2011, the public learned how it tried to subversively infiltrate homosexual communities, black neighborhoods, and hippy culture to create infighting. Nixon knew, like the government has always known, that if it could create an atmosphere of distrust and fighting among the people, then the people could never unite and fight against the state itself. It’s purposely meant to keep people broken up, mad at each other, and distrusting, thereby rendering them with less power and no voice.
“In the name of democracy, supreme power is vested un2 the people in this insane state instead of God. A future re-created, 2 b ruled by man, is one of isolation and despair.” Prince sees democracy as an illusion of choice and voice. We’ve all seen people who would rather vote and stump for a politician they’ll never meet, nor who cares about them, than turn toward the people who they do know — friends, relatives, lovers — and bond with them. A person can vehemently defend a politician but lose friends in the process, and that seems perfectly fine. It is reasonable and patriotic to cut out a family member who differs in their beliefs. How fragile we’ve become. It’s what the Nixon administration (and those before and after him) wanted. Everyone goes home alone, disconnected, and angry in isolation and despair. Prince believed we isolate ourselves because we’re investing in the wrong people and the manmade things (like government) around us; that we were putting our energies into the wrong causes, ones that would never profit anything except those already in power. Those quasi-causes became a distraction from the illusion man chooses to believe. “I can’t watch the news. There’s just too much political talk.” It’s stacking one illusion on top of another, into a pyramid of lies. Prince virtually calls out media and talking heads as part of the problem, not a guide to a solution. Here, he sees that anything manmade, including a government, will ultimately fall. He considers it a state of insanity to continue doing the same thing and expect different results. He sees the only hope as turning Earth back over to God, albeit through the New World Translation.
God gave man dominion over the earth, while God retained control over heaven. Humankind has free-will to inhabit, populate, and conduct itself while on earth as it sees fit. Yet because Adam and Eve populated the earth while in sin, rather than perfect alignment with God, then everything created in the world is subsequently based in sin and will die. Everything becomes inherently imperfect. Therefore, all manmade creations ultimately destroy people, and only God’s creations bring life. The reward for vesting oneself to God instead of manmade creations, Prince believes, is that we are supposed to let God work through us. God doesn’t go back on his word nor violates our free-will, so he leaves earth to us. He can’t just come here and overtake humankind. So what is left? God working through souls, apparently, those like Prince, willing to do the work of God on earth. Man becomes the vessel for God’s outpouring of grace and truth. As Christ was the conduit for man to appeal directly reach God, man cyclically becomes the conduit of God being adapted back to man. Man mirrors Christ’s actions and sacrifice. “Christian” means “to be Christ-like.” Prince lays out his intentions to be that living sacrifice and vessel, as he read in the Jehovah’s Witness bible.
Therefore, I appeal to you by the compassions of God, brothers, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, a sacred service with your power of reason. (Romans 12:1, New World Translation)
Prince says that this is the insanity of government in which we’ve chosen to invest. And when we’ve used our God-given free will of choice to choose the illusion, three things are evident to our ills. We have no room to complain since we 1) know the truth when we hear it, 2) see the state as always hiding the truth from us, and we were bamboozled, we are free, but who is to blame? Us for believing it, or the state for creating something meant to hurt us? Prince’s disconnection from God certainly left him feeling disenfranchised with humanity and a sour taste toward politics. His high of playing music only lasted so long, which is probably why he kept creating; to continue the bliss he felt from it. He was the vessel for the gift of music, but he possibly felt the enemy had influenced his gift with negative things rather than it being that every good gift and every perfect gift from God. It’s much like the perfection of the Garden of Eden being invaded by the devil. I would not be surprised if Prince rededicated his life and his music to God, turning his focus back to God through his faith. From The Rainbow Children onward, it would seem he possibly had that moment, likely with Tina and Larry Graham present.
Returning the leadership back in2 God will allow mankind 2 achieve its original collective goal which is union with God. Ideas contrary 2 this goal should not b blamed or persecuted — just simply ignored. They originated when man first chose 2 ignore God’s rule. Simply put — in the beginning, the Human was made perfect in God’s image. They had no need 4 knowledge. They were also given freedom of choice. The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life r reflections of this freedom. The human is now a reflection of their choice. They could have simply chose not 2 choose. God being centrifugal in nature, freedom was the CAUSE and choice was the EFFECT. In knowing their perfection made in God’s image, there was no need 2 choose. In fact, their were NO NEEDS. There was only love in an all-knowing state b4 the fall.
Prince again cites that because we are born with the truth of God, and that God is the truth, if we turn away from God, we turn away from the truth. We embrace lies. But he also offers his solution, in that turning to God as the one Truth, we will soon find the community and the peace we all so desperately search for daily. We can return to the Garden. We can be reunited as people with God.
In the sci-fi hit film The Matrix, the matrix was a computer program created to keep people enslaved. It’s seen as evil, and a small team of people seeks to help the world unplug from the illusion they were born into and will die in; a concept Prince addresses. From “The Work Pt. 1” on The Rainbow Children, Prince continues to perpetuate the idea that the government is a virtual (or literal) Matrix, in which we are living the illusion, ignoring the truth we should already know.
See, we’re living in a system that the devil designed (Think we ain’t?)
And suffering from this devil’s most heinous crime
He’s tried 2 keep us from, listen, (go tell it) the reason that we were born
That is 2 be the living truth in human form
The devil’s most heinous crime was elevating himself above God. Lucifer thought he could be as perfect and big as God and was stricken from heaven for it. He rejected God’s omnipotence through his ego and pride. The Rainbow Children was released almost two years after “One Song,” but the ideology of God working through man, so man becomes the beacon of God’s truth remains in Prince’s environment. He sees the eventual unification of man back to God as inevitable. There will be no more “us” and “them,” no borders in the sand, no need for questions of gender or race. Everyone becomes one under God’s grace. We are to become the light of God in the world, “living truth in human form.”
The worst thing u can do is give up ur God-given right 2 choose. 4 in it — u can choose not 2 choose. Therein is the final judgement. The illusion ceases and u awaken from ur dream. Now the healing begins…
With an all-knowing mind, made in God’s image u can create as ur Creator — God intended. With love, honor and respect 4 every living thing in the universe. Separation ceases, and we all become One Being singing the One song.
It is important to note that Prince takes a pacifist’s view of non-resistance to evil by force by merely ignoring the illusions. Prince saw conflicts as an illusion because the truth already resides in us. So to ignore the truth was to ignore God and ourselves as God’s creations. It misaligns us from God’s keel. Conflicts were made to detract from the truth and create a battle where there was none (as we saw in the Nixon papers). It’s quite possibly why he wanted out of his contract with Warner Bros. He saw his relationship with them as a conflict, and it distracted him from the truth of his gift in music. The manmade concept of capitalism and corporations stifled his truth and creativity. On the Rave Un2 The Year 2000 DVD, Prince states (in the bonus features) that “money and art don’t mix.” It explains the name change for seven years. He wanted out so badly that not even his name — a name everyone knew by one word and likely knew him through one song — was not important enough to keep in lieu of his freedom as a human being. He was willing to sacrifice everything. And in many ways, he did.
In 1997, he told Entertainment Tonight, “Whenever we get too tied down to anything on earth, be it a name, a body, a lifestyle, that’s the road to ruin. When you get too worried about the human body and this lifetime, and you put too much effort in [sic] it in a negative sense, like fighting someone, it just keeps you from your goal. So, I don’t bother.” If we already know the truth, then it would be easier, theoretically, to ignore any illusion — meant to be a distraction — put in front of us. That would be harder in The Matrix, but the overall theme of being plugged into something impure and illegitimate — whether addiction, a contract, or a name — resonated with Prince in his real life as much as it did Morpheus and his crew in the film. On The Rainbow Children, Prince again continues the idea in “Everywhere.”
We were always meant 2 be
In paradise eternally
Before the truth, I did not, I did not care
Now I feel it everywhere
When Prince uses God as a focusing lens, he has no desire to use anything else. The truth always satisfies the craving for harmony and peace. The way we hear the truth may vary, and we may not even like it, but the truth is the truth. It’s to be taken in, rather than blaming the source. When more and more people chose not to endorse illusions with a vote, the less powerful the government becomes, thereby naturally instilling power back to the people. No need for legislation or new laws or rules — nature and nurture take over. The revolution Prince spoke of in “Sexuality” is surely the return of God’s truth. The bible says, “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Prince echoed that in “Sexuality.”
Stand up, everybody, this is your life
Let me take U 2 another world, let me take U 2night
U don’t need no money, U don’t need no clothes
The second coming, anything goes
Prince seeks to defeat man’s evil by simply becoming a different man — to return to that which was pure and right at the beginning of humankind, not a copy of a copy of a copy of the truth. The example is given of Adam and Eve — free-willed, and freely communing with God, thereby choosing to live in truth, not an illusion. Prince again references pacifism by stating “they could have simply chosen not 2 choose”. Adam and Eve could have chosen a better and longer life by simply not choosing the wrong tree’s fruit, ignoring the conflict. Their choice led them down a much different path; that path being separation from God, and truth, and adapting illusion as truth. Their original and natural state was perfect. Their choice led them to imperfection. They chose to sin. They became their choice because they became sin and brought it into the world.
In the principles of anarchism, which I believe Prince embraced despite what he may have named it, the argument of “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain” is entirely abolished. When a person votes, they underscore and co-sign on everything that candidate will do, if elected. Not what they said they would do, but what they will do while in office. The voter has made their decision, they’ve endorsed — with pen, words, and in a voting booth — their candidate 100%. So they, in turn, cannot complain. They picked the candidate and supported them. The voter gave the politician the go-ahead to rule over them. One cannot be in bondage to something they didn’t submit to in the first place. This is Prince’s argument in choosing not to choose. To have no skin in the game sets one apart as unbiased. When asked about Barack Obama, Prince politely told talk show host Tavis Smiley, “Well, I don’t vote, I don’t have nothing to do with it. I got no dog in that race.” He cites being a Jehovah’s Witness and that “we’ve never voted,” suggesting that Prince had (finally?) found a brotherhood of man in the Witnesses, using terms like “we” instead of “they.” But the Witness’s beliefs are mirrored in the Anarchist movement; a movement which has been around centuries longer than Jehovah’s Witness. The Witnesses were founded in the late 19th century. Anarchism has existed since government existed.
Prince would then note that people should depend on prophecy to guide their life. Yet the Jehovah’s Witness group has an extensive list of misguided prophecies and predictions through their Watch Tower Society publications. They would blame crooked members in their ranks for misreading or misinterpretation as the cause of the failed prophecies. The most notable example was the infamous 1975 Jubilee prediction that had been heralded since 1968 (that Christ’s 1000 year reign would begin around then). It would stand to reason that in the seven years leading up to it, they could have weeded out any rogue elements and had a stronger case for Christ’s return if they knew what they were talking about in the first place. Yet even with the church’s history of mistakes — errors Prince probably did not know of since he took Larry Graham and the church at its word, and that the church purged and denied any wrongful statements every time they failed — Prince latched onto their teachings with both hands. If anything, churches are good at manipulating their history to keep face to the public. Not only do Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormon’s do this, but pseudo-religions like Scientology devote whole departments to historical revisionism.
In anarchism, an anarchist hasn’t endorsed anyone. Staying in a state of political neutrality and opposing the state by remaining autonomous and not participating in government keeps the non-voter, aka the anarchist, out of the illusion of control by way of a vote. The anarchist (or Jehovah’s Witness in Prince’s case) keeps possession of their control. They kept their choice to themselves, giving none of their soul over to a stranger, relinquishing no power to any entity other than God or themselves. It’s when a person votes that they can’t complain because their choice is made. Prince believed that staying out of the political system kept him out of the illusion of choice and thereby gave credibility to any commentary on politics. One doesn’t have to sit on a horse to converse about the Kentucky Derby, no more than a movie critic needs a director’s credit on IMDB. Prince’s mind remained unbiased because no investment has been made on either side of the aisle. He saw the naturally opposing forces of God’s grace versus the state’s dictatorial maneuvering. God gives an alternative. Anarchists and folks like them (like Prince) chose not to choose. The government still wins no matter your vote since someone is still in power. Prince recognized the illusion of unity through voting and choice and likely noted the insanity of thinking this side of the aisle was any different than that side. They are both in the same building, part of the same problem and part of the same illusion. It’s comparable to having one fruit sliced in two pieces, putting each piece on a different plate, then asking someone to choose a fruit. It’s all part of the same fruit presented in different ways. Prince’s unintentional anarchist view was evident in his speech about using your God-given right to choose, by not choosing anything. Non-Choice is the choice to be made. It’s passive resistance.
The government seeks to muddy the facts into attractive lies. The truth keeps everyone on the same level, with no secrets or propaganda. Prince long craved the truth, and he saw government craving power. His views on stepping back from being part of an inherently evil system like voting or government’s very existence, by which men are slaves to politician’s whims, is something he easily equated with his virtual slavery while signed to a Warner Bros. Records contract. One can also find strong parallels in being a slave to sin rather than the freedom that comes with obeying God’s law. Prince saw the state as a vehicle for lying, and lies kill the human spirit. A lie spiritually killed Adam and Eve. Propaganda and state-run media seek to inhibit free speech and self-expression, killing individualism and autonomy. It’s a man-made creation bent on destroying free-will. It’s part of the illusion of unity (opposed to actual tangible unification) that leads to despair and disconnection. Prince also believed that God’s immaculate design would always ascend that disconnection if just embraced. To remove the distraction of political debates, policies, grandstanding, posturing, and carefully rehearsed speeches was to leave only God’s truth to come through. Prince saw the validity of separation of church and state, knowing if the state was not in the equation, it left a wide breadth for God’s grace to return to humankind for a new “new world order.”
Prince tried his best to maneuver in his truths throughout his life, as varied as they were, some brief, some longer-term. His consistency in the desire to believe in God and striving to find a knot at the end of his proverbial rope is littered throughout his music, albeit more in the last two decades of his career than anything in the first two decades. He was never going to rest and give up his fight for freedom. The seeds of his religious freneticism can be traced back to his early interactions with Larry Graham; its fruition can be heard on “One Song,” The Rainbow Children, “Silicon” (a possible pun on “silly con”), possibly “New World,” and more. Prince continued to talk about God’s law, rather than man’s, in the opening words on The Rainbow Children album.
With the accurate understanding of God and His law
they went about the work of building a new nation:
the Rainbow Children.
It would seem that “Sexuality”’s dream of “we need a new breed leader, stand up. Organize!” is fully realized in “The Rainbow Children,” as some born-again spirit guide:
Reproduction of the new breed leader — stand up, organize
In “One Song,” Prince speaks to the ultimate redemption and reconciliation of God to man, and man back to God. It’s with a clearer understanding of God and his laws that Prince can still see the conflicts in life, but he fiercely adheres to God, becoming one with God and the universe. He ignores the conflicts. The truth has set him free. The actual lyrics to “One Song” begin:
I am the universe
The sun, the moon and sea
I am the energy
4 that is what I believe
I can be contradiction
Cuz that is all I see
But I am the universe
And the universe is me
Prince considers himself fully engulfed in God’s love and therefore a worthy basin of the Truth. (It stands to note that Prince released an album called The Truth almost three years prior.) He removes himself from the disconnected state he endured as a lost soul, and long mourned and lamented in his music, now transcending to a higher state of being and of consciousness. Arguably, it’s the ultimate state of connection to the highest of consciousnesses for him. It’s not a subjective statement on his part, but one of resting in the grace of God’s everything. He has become that living sacrifice, and he finds new solace in it. Prince once considered good orgasms as close to God as a mere human could get, but it seems he traded orgasms for a restrictive and oppressive dogma doled out by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
He once told Spice Girl Mel B. in an interview that he would celebrate the day he died, implying his journey to a better place, to being one with God supersedes anything on earth. Prince seemed, even at a mere forty years old in 1998, to be looking forward more to his death than the next day of his own life. Yet one wonders just how deeply he was committed to praising that day. The bible talks about death being a beautiful occurrence.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15, King James Version)
His continued loneliness would find its salve. Prince adapts Gandhi’s idea of “be the change you wish to see in the world,” proposing that if he changes himself, then he changes the world around him. That is true for anyone in the world, not just a rock superstar with a larger audience. He certainly changed his environment and influenced those around him by attempting to convert his band to Jehovah’s Witnesses and making them sit down for bible studies (likely headed by Larry Graham). The opposite of that change becomes a reality when humankind falls to the ILLusion of choice and finds fake-comfort in manmade things rather than God’s love, whether it’s voting, cigarettes, or anything else. The irony of Prince living in a fortress of Paisley Park relatively separated from everyone around him, seemingly finding comfort in the quiet of his solitude, is unspoken, but noticeable.
After Prince’s passing, Larry Graham stated that Prince “found true happiness in being a Jehovah’s Witness.” It was a statement I refuse to swallow because even near the end of his life, Prince sang about disconnection and loneliness, and possibly giving up on life in general. He seemed removed from being the universe anymore, and being one song or wanting to be unified with anyone or anything. Fans have tried to dissect his lyrics on his last albums — Art Official Age, HITnRUN Phase One, and HITnRUN Phase Two — as being peppered with near-suicide notes. It’s another ILLusion’s spell that fans stand under; I refuse to plug into it. It would seem much more appropriate to say that Graham found great happiness in Prince being a Jehovah’s Witness and hearing him parrot the cultic dogma served to him. Graham was happy to see Prince promote his religion. It was a cup from which Graham had been drinking for decades before gracing the doorways of Paisley Park. It would seem he showed up at just the right time of vulnerability in Prince’s life and took great advantage of it. Graham and Prince’s relationship became strained later on, with reports saying Prince was dissatisfied with Graham’s lack of willingness to work, considering him lazy. Apparently, Graham wasn’t willing to do the work.
Prince’s greatest joy was, is, and would always be in his music. It’s where he exorcised his demons, laid on the couch for therapy, and dropped his emotional baggage. Yes, it was through music, not religion, that Prince found true happiness. It was a religion that provided Prince a real distraction from being so utterly disconnected. It was through the music that he operated in his gift from God. And that’s all he ever really needed.
It remains his ultimate truth.
This article was based on how I perceived Prince’s beliefs for, roughly, the last two decades of his life. I believe that “One Song” was a jumping point for him and an official call to arms. The change was gradual but steady and evident. The article incorporates some mutual beliefs I shared with him and challenged others. I purposely kept them ambiguous as to who believed what, and that it was just a general idea not held by anyone necessarily. Many times, I argue his side rather than a simple rebuttal of his ideologies. My goal was not to support or debunk his religious claims in his music. Rather, I attempted to argue his side more than my own or any other opposing point of view. I purposely used bible references since he stated he was reading the bible more, although it was the New World Translation, which is exclusively used by Jehovah’s Witnesses and is considered less than perfect by any other Christian group. All other biblical quotes were traditional protestant and evangelical translations. Ultimately, I believe the article falls somewhere in the middle, hopefully revealing some of Prince’s truths. I hope that you remain where you were at the beginning of the article — albeit with more information — left to make your own decisions on Prince’s religious stance and how it influenced his day to day life. And yours.
Ernest Sewell was born & raised in Oklahoma. After living across the U.S. in places like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, he’s settled in upstate New York for the past twenty years. He’s authored and published two books and is currently working on a new horror novel due in 2020. He shares his home with a friend, three cats, and his vinyl collection, all of whom have the same level of love from him. When he’s not causing an uproar on Prince forums or social media, he enjoys reads (a lot), trying new recipes, and prank calling people.
“Don’t take yourself too seriously. No one else does.”
