<p> Years after Prince suppressed it, his fabled Black Album appears
</p>
<p>By David E. Thigpen
</p>
<p> In the 1980s Prince--yes, he now goes by an incomprehensible
glyph, but we're old-fashioned--became a huge star by ingeniously
weaving together two powerful strands of pop music: the guitar-based
rock of Jimi Hendrix and the rhythm-heavy funk of George Clinton.
With a great gift for melody and a protean instrumental talent,
Prince released such commercial and artistic triumphs as Purple
Rain and Sign o' the Times. In his persona, meanwhile, he presented
himself as a sort of pansexual sprite. Tiny, mascara wearing,
lubricious, he gave erotically charged performances and bestowed
on his records titles like Lovesexy.
</p>
<p> It comes as a great surprise, then, to finally hear the mysterious
Black Album. In 1987 Prince ordered all the copies of the record
destroyed just before they were to be shipped. It has now been
released, and listening to it one learns that it was Prince--of all people--who anticipated the decidedly unlovesexy
anger and violence in the gangster rap of the 1990s.
</p>
<p> Extremely prolific, Prince would like to make three or four
records each year, but his label, Warner Records, wants only
one a year from him. Out of pique, he has decided to fulfill
his contract by dipping into his backlog of 500 songs. Black
Album is the first of these releases, and it covers the same
ground that multiplatinum rappers like Snoop Doggy Dog and Dr.
Dre explored years after it was recorded. Densely rhythmic and
riddled with violent imagery, obscenities and the sound of gunshots,
the Black Album is a bleak tour through an American ghetto of
fractured homes and misogynistic, rootless young men--a Clockwork
Orange-style landscape ruled by drug dealers and petty hoods.
Two of its songs, Le Grind and Dead on It, are explicit, sometimes
monotonous odes not to sexual pleasure but to sexual conquest.
On Bob George, a well-armed drug dealer kills his girlfriend
after learning she's cheating on him ("I'm the one who pays
the bills," he says), then holes up in his apartment and shoots
it out with the police. The album is not relentlessly dark,
however. When 2 Are In Love ranks among the most gorgeous love
songs Prince has ever written.
</p>
<p> Rumors spread in 1987 that the Black Album was kept from release
because it was too raunchy and violent for radio (true) and
the distributor was squeamish about its content (probably also
true). But the real reason for holding the record back, Prince
later told some of his friends, was that after finishing it
he had a dream in which he experienced a religious vision. "It
was like a born-again thing," recalls a close associate. "He
felt this music was way too dark and said if he died, he didn't
want this being the last thing representing him." So instead,
Prince released Lovesexy, a sin-and-redemption song cycle in
which he placed God and sex on equal footing.
</p>
<p> Since then Prince's career has faltered, and the '90s have been
unkind to him. His risque sexuality no longer shocks pop sensibilities.
His last album was a flop, and his decision to change his name
has been greeted with snickers. The Black Album is far too stark
and angry to restore him to his previous place on the charts--no one buys a Prince record for scenes of social decay--and it is not of the same quality as his best work. Nevertheless,
it is a rich and complex record by one of pop's most talented,
multifarious performers. And the CD may sell better now than
it would have in 1987. In those days listeners probably wouldn't
have known what to make of its bitter outlook; today it is almost
conventional. Seven years is a couple of generations in pop
music, and at his best, Prince has always been that far ahead
