RIP Prince Rogers Nelson
 

2016 has been a brutal year for music.

I feel like I have so much to say about Prince. And yet I'm still at a loss for words right now.

Can now truly be known as the artist formerly known as Prince. Rep to the usual channels. Ta.

Elton John called him the Purple Warrior..

Lauren Laverne tweeted sometimes it snows in april

Prince was one of a kind. He never watered it down for the suckas. He never veered from his own internal beliefs and ideals for his music.

The REAL rock stars are all dying. That era is indeed over.

Yeah, this is a big one. Very sad.

I posted last night but it didn't seem to have stuck.

Dirty Mind was one of the first albums I ever bought. I bought it on cassette so I could play it on this new device called a walkman, I was the first in my class to get one. I played it it until it was stretched and unlistenable.

I can't find my copy of The Black Album. I had a cassette from the original withdrawn version. I bought it from Belvy, the drummer for 7 Seconds, when he worked at a record store in the West Village.

As I recall, he was booed when he opened for the Rolling Stones on the Dirty Mind tour.

Even when I was listening to the harshest industrial and hardcore music, I always respected Prince. It was hard not to respect anyone who could hook up with the Vanity 6 and Sheila E.

the first album I ever bought on CD was Batman by Prince. I was in 6th grade.

1999 on cassette was one of the first albums I owned. Not the first, but among the first.

:(

ha ha. me too. i was in 5th.

my older brother turned me on to prince when i was young. always liked lovesexy. i remember how prince made the cd as just one track so you had to listen to the whole thing

I remember hearing "Trust" and the other songs in Batman when I first saw the film in '89 and thinking, "I should think it's corny that there are pop songs -- by Prince no less -- in this epic adaptation of my favorite comic book hero, but damned if it doesn't just work."

And it did work. It kicked fucking ass.

Little Red Corvette was one of my favorite videos when I first had MTV in early 80's.

I should have known by the way that you parked your car sideways that it wouldn't last.....

His lyrics are stories like Chuck Berry used to tell.....

As a kid i LOVED prince. He was just so much fucking fun and having so much fun with his music and the culture he created. What is good coming out of his passing is all the support and memories people are sharing about their experiences of Prince's art. We all get to remind ourselves about what he was and what he brought to the table that made our lives so much fun.

No he wasn't quite Michael Jackson but he is indisputably in second place in that regard and that is impressive on its own.

Prince is what made that movie work if you ask me. That movie would have taken itself far too seriously if Prince wasn't involved

I don't think he was a "sell out" but i disagree with you here. I think that what made Prince so brilliant was that like MJ he had his finger constantly on the pulse of what was popular and what people liked. However unlike MJ, Prince was perhaps one of the most talented and crafter musicians ever and so could create the actual instrumentation that would have his art reflect popular tastes.

The pure genius of Prince's art was his ability to merge his own sense of artistic vision with pop music and popular tastes. He never compromised BUT he was definitely flexible to creating music that people would want to hear. Some artists are brilliant because their original art creates something new that people have never ever heard and they likeit. But that is hit or miss. Other artist's genius is being able to merge their own original art with the sounds people already like. Ithink Prince mastered that more than anyone ever could

Prince created his own little side-genre of Funk. I think he did give fans what they wanted but there is a big difference between that and pandering to fans.

I agree. I wouldn't call it pandering but as a musician i understand what he was doing. I have some art i create that is so unique and niche is really for me and limited audience. Other times i consciously create my art in a way that i know is more accessible. Sometimes i play my no wave stuff, sometimes i play the more accessible jazz or reggae i created.i think the genius of Prince was how his art always bridged the gap between his own original sound and sense of vision and yet making it widely accessible to the general audience. You can hear it in the evolution of his music. It always sounded like some of the other musics on the radio or TV BUT was also always distinctively Prince

Yeah, Little Red Corvette! I've had that stuck in my head all goddamn day.

I just love the intro to that song, that first verse. He tapped into something primal there. It's a beautiful song about mundane and profane things, but it's just so sweeping and elegant, and succeeds so much in capturing and elevating a feeling, that it's almost rapturous. One of the best moments of '80s pop kicks off with that verse.

And let's not forget Nothing Compares 2 U. That song (the song itself, not whoever sang it which time) is just some kind of force of nature. And Prince summoned it. Where the fuck is Sinead now? I don't know. Who cares? Doesn't matter. That song is still an essential listen, and continues to pull emotions out of people to this day.

One of the best, most well crafted pop songs in history, and it's not even Prince's best song.

Man was a god.

R.I.P.

Yeah, I kinda like the title of his thread though.

You know what? We didn't even cover Prince's death in the paper. I mean, we included literally nothing about his passing. Granted, the news didn't break until right around the time that Thursday's edition was going to print. But we didn't put anything in the next day's edition, nothing I saw anyway. I don't work on the entertainment section, but I Proof most pages, and I didn't see a word all week.

We have David Bowie a full page spread and two AP stories (it's a small town paper, so nobody has the time to write about national news), and even Lemmy got a ½ page below, under the fold.

:(

shake your body like a horn pony would

you were the one who went postal on me in that thread, for making some fairly well-articulated points about religion and identity.

What the fuck was that about anyway greezy? I wasn't even arguing with you.

I already miss Prince so much. :'(

Me too. I think this may be hitting me harder than Bowie.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...addiction.html

If this story is true it totally blows the myth that people on opiates can't do anything and seems to indicate it was the tylenol the pharmas mix in with the meds, like they force you to die slowly in order to escape pain.

I'm kind of not believing this.

"Doctor D's" knowledge of opiate pharmacology is shaky at best.

He speaks with the authority of a grandstanding know it all with only experiential knowledge and dimmed down second/third/fourth hand explanations how how these chemicals interact.

For instance. This quote is particularly irritating:

This is not actually true. "Save shots" are Narcan (noloxone), which is used to pull people out of an overdose before their lungs shut down so they can be properly intubated.

Narcan absolutely DOES NOT "remove all traces" of opiate from your system. It TEMPORARILY blocks the opiate's effect on the body by binding to opioid neurotransmitters to block the synapses and "pull" someone out of their OD. It does NOT get rid of the opiates in a person's system. In fact, all it really does is mask their effect for a very temporary period of time.

Honestly, what this guy's saying is complete horseshit. Indeed it sends an overdose victim into a temporary state of withdrawal, but the drugs stay in your system and the effects of opiates (all opiates) last MUCH longer than the brief interruption Narcan produces.

In fact, people die of overdoses after receiving Narcan injections because when the drug wears off, in fifteen or twenty minutes, the person goes right back to being high as fuck. If it removed all traces of the drug from your system it would be a goddamn miracle drug and essentially do all the work of a 1-3 week detox in one simple shot.

This is from some fucking drug website:

Every two to three minutes! That's because the shit is a last ditch emergency effort, and only works for a very short time. Ideally, buying you enough time for the EMT's to arrive.

I fucking hate drug people. They talk with this streetwise authority but they have no fucking clue what they're actually talking about. It's all myth making and hyperbole to them because they're all goddamn self-absorbed pricks who are stuck with an 18 year old mentality.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if this asshole just wanted to hear himself Fucking talk. "Doctor D" ... my ass. And look, his moronic "expert opinion" is now national news.

He's acting like the Narcan removed Prince's tolerance, making him extra vulnerable to overdose when he took his next dose. That's not how it works. Fucker would still be high as a kite after the Narcan ran its course, would still have a tolerance, and if anything his next dose would actually take MORE opiates to get him high because with any remnant of Narcan in your system, you have to take extra in order to compensate for the residual blocking effect of the opiate.

What a goddamn idiot.

I don't find it hard to believe that Prince had a habit. Most human beings do, whether it's to alcohol (2 drinks a day? Addict. Drink alone? Addict) or prescription pills, or whatever. Many people aren't even aware of the fact that their ambien or klonipin is habit forming. Just as many people don't think of their 3-5 beers after work at Friday's "count" as problem drinking. But the body doesn't care whether you're living responsibly or not. If you're putting addictive chemicals into your body, you eventually develop a dependency or an addiction. That's just how it is.

So I don't find it hard to believe that Prince had painkiller problem. Have you guys ever taken dilauded or fentanyl? I mean, shit... Opiates are objectively awesome, and they feel amazing. I can totally understand how and why someone would get hooked if they had the money to keep it going nonstop.

I'm even willing to buy that an overdose did him in. Why not? Why is it hard to believe this about Prince, but easy to accept with Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, Jeff Tweedy, everyone in Aerosmith, Guns n Roses and the Rolling Stones, Sid and Nancy and Davis and Coltrane and Any Winehouse, and on and on and on.. They're people! Prince was a person! He lied and fucked up just like everyone else.

What does it matter, is my question. Drugs or no drugs, the man is dead. Does this somehow make it less heartbreaking? Fuck you if you say yes. If Prince was a narcotics addict, then he was suffering in ways most people won't ever be able to imagine for a quarter century. Even if he did it silently. It's sad as hell, no matter what happened. Prince is dead, and that fucking sucks.

I don't believe Prince was a conventional addict IF these rumors turn out to be true. He was so notoriously straight edge just doesn't feel right. If he was indeed using prescription opiates I'm willing to wager he used them more carefully than typical addicts. He strikes me aa one who was using them legitimately for pain management. Hestrikes me as the kind of disciplined person who would avoid addiction as a matter of his personality. HOWEVER that doesn't mean even taking opiates in a purely medicinal way didn't take his life.

This narrative that he was abusing pills i find in poor taste. That just isn't Prince even if it 99% of other people. I find it sad that TMZ will try and destroy yet another legacy. TMZ is pathetic. They have no shame. They are absolutely slime. Worthless. Trash.

Prince legacy will survive this interlude of nonsense. Even if toxicology comes back opiates it DOESN'T mean he was an addict. MJ admitted to being an addict. His crooked "doctors" admitted such. I just don't buy it for Prince. If opiates contributed to his death i say it wasn't addiction, it was classic side effects or accident. NOT a recreational OD.

Well, I'm not sure why you're so skeptical, and it seems as though you might be kind of idealizing and individual you didn't know just because you like his music... BUT I kind of agree. People who are out of control opiate addicts don't live productive and fruitful lives without ever letting anyone catch on, or slipping up in a way that reveals their secret.

That said, Prince was notoriously private and if we're talking about him as a human being, which he was, then there's no real reason to give him any extra benefit of the doubt simply because it "doesn't feel right." But again, it doesn't really feel right to me either.

The way that Doctor D talks about dilaudid too... Like it's somehow not a narcotic? That it "gives you an energy burst?" All opiates tend to give a "burst" to people who suffer from pain, because they help the pain, and cause euphoria. All of them. And seasoned users/addicts get a boost from it because it makes their violent withdrawal stop.

But dilaudid is just a souped up version of morphine. It's not some magical drug that hits you like meth and heroin at the same time. If Prince was doing large doses of it (or Fentanyl, which is strong as hell and knocks even the toughest users on their asses) he would have been showing clear signs of opiate abuse. He would have been nodding, would have had pinpoint pupils, would have acted drunk... That's not how he acted. Kurt Cobain acted like a drug addict. Prince was a technical wizard and a razor sharp artistic machine until the very end.

Again I'm totally willing to buy that he used drugs. I'm even willing to buy that he was an addict. But I'm not buying what this Doctor D is selling, so to speak. He's a goddamn moron and should not be considered a credible source.

Also that article was written by an amateur punk bitch.
And TMZ is the AIDS of media journalism.

But no matter what happened, it's not going to change my opinion of Prince. Whether it was drugs or illness or whatever. Who cares? The point is that a legend has died. The details and circumstances surrounding his death are irrelevant to the man's legacy, and have no bearing on the incredible music he made over the past 35+ years.

that is the thing i actually don't really listen to any of Prince's music even though i probably should. Its Prince the PERSON i am a fan of and so i know mpre about him personally than i do his immense catalogue of music.
And what i know is Prince was notorious for throwing the wildest parties and yet never being even remotely out of control. Those who knew him in private always noted how disciplined and serious he was. And he was notoriously straight edge. That is why being even a pill addict just doesn't feel right to me. It doesn't mean its impossible i in particular wouldn't be one to judge or misunderstand an addiction. However for Prince it fits more into his known character and personality that if he did die from opiates that it was a genuine accident or complication from otherwise legit pain management therapy which is known to happen. Opiates are dangerous in general even for nonaddicts

That they are. And I hope you're right, but for me, it wouldn't tarnish his reputation or his legacy, even if it came out that he was a straight up junkie. But I don't think that's the case.

Anyway. Long story short, RIP Prince.

I simply always thought he was into women and sex and lots of sex and never bothered with drugs due to his religion and the fact he was too busy having lots of sex with Vanity and Sheila E and Sheena Easton and so on and also 100% concerned with writing and playing music.

From fellow Mpls comrades-in-arms:


—Bob Mould

Bob Mould with the Suicide Commandos - "When U Were Mine" (First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN, April 22, 2016)


—Paul Westerberg

The Replacements - "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" (St. Andrew's Hall, Detroit, MI, November 12, 1987)

Paul Westerberg talks about the passing of Prince (audio)

From Wikipedia:


Bruce Springsteen opens Brooklyn show with "Purple Rain" (April 23, 2016)