DRESSED TO FUNK

DRESSED TO FUNK

PRINCE

1999

(Warner Bros.)

by Richard Riegel Rick James, in CREEM last year, was quoted on the subject of his funkbunny rival, Prince: 'Long as he's in that pantyhose, he can forget it.' Yep, same Rick James who wears 'long-dreadlocked wigs all the time, but ain't no faggot nevertheless, why he's got women practically hanging onto his cock whenever he strides onstage... Same diff back home, black guy I know doesn't want his teen daughter bringing any Prince records into the house, any brother who'd wear all those bitch garments in public is a bit sus-pect, at least, and yet this same protective pop's a Shriner his own self, he'll jump into his silky-trousered zouave suit and parade down the street on a moment's notice—it seems there's dressing-up, and then there's dressing-up, and Prince has been caught in the latter, with his meat stuffed into the opposite sex's L'eggs.

All this controversy over Prince's genderbendered image, before he's even fully emerged from the charted confines of his soul background, sounds real sweet to this terminal white boy, 'cause it promises that when (not if) Prince makes his big racial-popularity crossover leap, he'% gonna shake up our moribund Caucasian pop scene real good. Chuck Berry must've seemed just as threatening to his own startled race back in '55, 'cause he sang so knowingly, so almost panderingly, about white teendreams like V-8 Fords, and yet he was such a subversive, insolent smartass all the same, Tomming was the furthest thing from Chuck's duckwalking mind.

Oh yeah, I'm as much of a honky-come-lately in the Prince camp as the next blanche. Nothing on Prince's first couple LPs seemed to justify the grandiose 18-yr.-oldboygeniushasitallfiguredout hype that accompanied them. Like most whiteys, I suddenly jumped aboard with his third album, Dirty Mind, in my case because that was the record where Prince finally admitted he was the eye of a cyclonic funkrock band, and that his proclaimed genius owed as much to Lisa Coleman's and Dr. Fink's squirrely, itchy keyboards, and Dez's coldstun guitars, as it did to his own leering soprano and smirky lyrics.

Okay, so Prince's Controversy marked time last year (some complained about Prince waving all those freak-flag protest slogans in their faces, they wanted more of his magic wand, 7' or more), that's all behind, let's get into the new 1999. Sounds to me like he's finally realized all the juju goodies he's always threatened to unleash on us, this time the curved-keyboard beat and the 'protest' jabs are so jammed-tight intertwined they're like some insoluble racial mixture you can neglect at your own risk.

'Course Prince had to spread his 11 1999 jams out over four sides to accomplish the feat, but both discs are crammed into one pocket, in recognition of our hard times, and none of the 11 jams is overlong or boring, even if it is this youngblood's fifth album (trappings of success beckon.) Weird thing is, 1 farted when I read the early Prince publicity that compared him to Jimi Hendrix, and yet the album that 1999 most suggests to me is Electric Ladyland, in the way the four sides don't obey any grand thematic design, as much as they just get it up in yer face with potent gem after hidden gem.

Title cut of 1999's about gettin' down one more time, before Thuh Bomb falls, pure existential party stuff, and yet Prince is pushing for nuke disarmament in his own subtle-squeak way, implication is that his orgasms are apocalyptic enough already, he don't need the Bomb threat spicing 'em up. Same mixed combo in 'Lady Cab Driver' (a sideways ref to Prince's JocfieFoster-let's-talk-to-Ronnie obsessions?), Prince gets down in the back seat with his driver, and his thrusts change from angry grunts ('This is for the women, so beautifully complected.') as his ardor peaks. You can ask him whether a rape occurred, as he nods off in his trademark postcoital voluptuousness.

Those are protest numbers (I think), but then there are more pleasant sensual encounters, like 'Little Red Corvette,' an organteaser where the 'Vette cockpit and its sun-warmed seats are a perfect metaphor for that part of the female anatomy Prince's always aimed his shaft toward (and U thought he just jacked off in his pantyhose). Similar turf in 'Let's Pretend We're Married,' Prince envisions the connubial bed as a chance to 'go all nite,' same endearingly naive concept the Beach Boys propagated in 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' so many years ago. Or 'D.M.S.R.,' = 'Dance Music Sex Romance,' the four basic elements, as any British synth funkers coulda told you, but Prince thought of it first. Funk, intelligence, more funk & more intelligence.

Special packaging note to printed-word consumers: 1999's lyric sheets don't necessarily publish every syllable Prince mouths, in fact they draw a complete blank on the verbal workout 'Allthe Critics Love U in New York,' so lissen close! Special packaging note to Rick J. and friend in the first paragraph: One 1999 liner photo shows Prince in bed, with the indigo sheets pulled back just far ehough over his cute ass to reveal...he forgot to stop by the No Nonsense rack at his supermart this week! So it's okay if you like him!