This Is Joy: A Conversation with Gabrielle Civil
Gabrielle Civil discusses EXPERIMENTS IN JOY.
...more
Posts Tagged: prince
We’re All Fighting: A Conversation with Saeed Jones
Saeed Jones discusses his new memoir, HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES.
...more
An East African Girl and Her White Troubadours
I was a lonely, dreamy, occasionally silly girl.
...more
Spotlight: “I Met Prince Once”
While struggling with a severe bout of depression I found myself inexplicably drawn to Prince’s music.
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #92: Perfection
You will now find some version of the list below. It is imperfect.
...more
Rumpus Original Fiction: My Name Is Jean-Pierre and I Am Still an End Table
I am glad to be free of that tyrant, even if it means I am an end table waddling inch-by-inch down this path on a foolish mission that might prove impossible. I may be an end table, but at least I am free.
...more
The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Butch and the Bathroom
Then there is the bathroom issue. My beloved is like me, like you, like anyone. Sometimes a person has to go.
...moreAlways a Good Day to Celebrate Prince
Because it’s always a good idea to read about Prince, and to mark the six-month anniversary of the icon’s passing, okayplayer. published a master list of memories both intimate and hilarious. They’ve even found the recipe for Prince’s favorite cookies.
...more
The Ever-Present Now
Music contextualizes our feelings, clarifies them, gives them new meaning.
...moreChaka Khan Seeks Treatment
Now that Prince’s death has officially been linked to opiate use—an accidental overdose of Fentanyl, the be specific—some artists are heeding the icon’s death as a warning to get their own opiate use in check. Chaka Khan, who counted Prince as a friend, has checked herself into rehab to treat her own Fentanyl use. Taka Boom, her sister, […]
...more
Swinging Modern Sounds #73: Prince Rogers Nelson, Guitar Player: A Symposium
I started thinking about additional, more slantwise ways we might talk about his legacy. What if I organized a bunch of guitar players?
...more
You’re Just a Sinner I Am Told: Prince & the Sexual Revolution
It was all about desire, including women’s desire, Prince’s music. Women were not degraded. They were exalted, body and mind both.
...more
Five Stages of Prince Fandom
You don’t need to know him personally, you say. You get the best of Prince through his music. Maybe that’s the truth, and maybe it isn’t.
...more
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Something’s Happening Out There
The big crowd stretched form the gold-domed State House to Park Street. I had the urgent feeling that we were part of something. That we counted.
...morePrince, We Miss You
This has been a difficult year for our musical heroes. The loss of Prince has the world mourning, once again, an artist whose work gave listeners the strength and permission to be as different, exceptional, and free as they wished. It’s a lot to handle, especially following so soon after Bowie’s passing. But as with Bowie, celebration […]
...more
Sound Takes: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
That historical context takes center stage right from the outset
...moreWatch Prince Cover Bowie’s “Heroes”
Prince played two shows in Toronto on the Piano & A Microphone tour, and his sets featured a series of covers: the artist performed his take on David Bowie’s “Heroes,” along with Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus & Lucy,” and Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain.” Watch recordings of the covers at Pitchfork.
...moreSong of the Day: “Creep”
An important part of Prince’s artistic image has relied upon mystery—the mystery of his genius is comprised of equal parts sexuality and technical prowess. But there is another component to it, and that is Prince’s ironclad policy against the free distribution of his music. For years, online searches for his music yielded nothing. So you […]
...more?uestlove’s Rivalry with Finding Nemo
With Finding Dory, the sequel to the Pixar hit, coming to theaters soon, ?uestlove has been inspired to recount a Nemo-related anecdote: apparently, one time Prince fired the artist from a DJ gig, and replaced him by just screening Finding Nemo at top volume. Read more via Pitchfork and the artist’s Twitter.
...moreSong of the Day: “Purple Rain”
Our history of rock-stars-turned-movie-actors goes back a long time, but one highlight has to be Prince’s performance in his bizarre 1984 drama, Purple Rain. Though chock full of laughably weird moments—critics dismissed the movie as “overlong,” “facile,” and a “letdown”—the film’s soundtrack went on to become a huge international success. Prince’s power ballad of the same name, […]
...morePrince Returns to the Internet
Since recording “Baltimore,” written in response to the deaths of Mike Brown and Freddie Gray, Prince has returned to the Internet. We at The Rumpus were captivated by Prince’s last Twitter experiment, only to be disappointed when he shut the account down within its first month. But it looks like the artist is coming back to […]
...moreSong of the Day: “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”
It’s a good day, isn’t it? The sort of day where we feel the need to rock out a little bit, and let’s be honest, we “wouldn’t be satisfied” unless we do. Prince’s thrilling top ten single from 1987, “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man,” will fit the bill. Listen to those complementary […]
...moreThis Prince Interview Is Everything You Hoped For
In honor of Prince joining Twitter—you can follow him at @3RDEYEGIRL, where he tweets things like “PRINCE’S 3RD TWEET: DID EYE ADD 2 MUCH PEPPER? pic.twitter.com/3jfe3rb41g“—take a look at Vanessa Grigoriadis’s recent interview with His Purpleness for V Magazine. They discuss his backing band (“Donna can whup every man on guitar, bar none”), what music […]
...more