Trying to make sense of all this. Only about a year ago we were hearing about how Prince very quietly wanted to redefine “p2p” and sell records independently, the way they initially distributed Judith Hill’s album. Digitally direct from the artist, but if any physical copies were to be made they’d be all indie from the pressing/printing to the Subaru trunk the boxes rode to the store shelf in, and the storefront handing over merchandise for paper.
For those who’ve been down with midwest rap and hip-hop music since the 90s, it was like he woke up to how Doomtree have been doing everything, and Rhymesayers before them. Even down to Judith Hill’s album and the Hit’n’Run Phases being pressed by the same Minneapolis based Copycats Media that does in-house promotional materials for Doomtree. It looked like there could be a new trail being blazed by Prince, distribution-wise, is what I’m getting at.
Then this week like a bolt from the blue, an engineer announced and seemingly instantly released tracks Prince recorded about a decade ago already, a mini-suite they’re calling the Deliverance EP. It has cover art both distinct enough to mark a new project, yet similar enough in scope to his most recent indie online digital releases. On the website are the lyrics, laid out spatially so that they’re slowly meandering down the screen in a fashion not unlike the original lyric-video for One Song.
Equally surprising is that within two hours of having discovered the EP was available and having bought myself a copy, news comes crushing down from all sides that the litigious corporatists are suing to stop this music from being released by anybody but a corporate interest. While they may have a legitimate point, I still bristle with outrage at the same old WB-mindset taking the side of Tha Man rather than the individual artist who made the songs.
I couldn’t help but wonder as I clicked through paying for and getting the files...just who is getting this money and where is it going. I didn’t see any indication it’s being donated 100% to Yes We Code or any of the artist’s other favorite charities. So that’s still a mystery.
I just think it’s to Prince’s lasting credit as an icon and a visionary as well as an upsetter and a determined independent, that somehow even now he’s bringing music to his audience whether any of the powers-that-be want him to or not!
I haven’t even played the whole EP for myself yet. I’m taking a very slow approach to the new music, like a friend I made at college who listened to all his new albums for the very first time at the rate of one-and-only-one song per day. So I won’t finish it until this weekend. (I must express my dismay at being sold joint-stereo mp3s at premium prices and having the proper flac lossless files priced at nearly 3x the lossy version. $20 for flac? Even Tidal doesn’t charge that much! What purpose could this have other than short-term profit?!?!)
I am very pleased to hear new Prince music playing in my home again. I can hardly begin to form opinions about it. I’m reminded of several other songs with similar sounds and lyrical content. ‘I Am’ already has the feel of something I’ll remember for a long time. I’ve only heard it once, trying to savor it instead of play it 20x in a row the way my teenaged self would have surely done.
I’m certain there are dozens of these kind of new music experiences awaiting our thirsting ears, still cloaked in the veil of the legendary Vault. I hope that all of them are not in the tight clutches of the corporatists. I hope there are many scattered among the common people waiting to be discovered in their own proper time.
Honestly, knowing how Prince and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince disliked the corporate culture of America and the larger world, I find myself hoping he spent the majority of the time between 2005 and 2010 cutting one-off sessions like the Deliverance EP. I hope it rains down new music from all sides to bring chaos to the corporatists, the profit-minded, profit-motivated people attempting to reinvent Paisley Park as Graceland North.
I support a Paisley Park museum, yes, but not affiliated with Graceland, thank you. And they could have waited an entire year before opening it, wouldn’t have hurt anything but the zeroes. The critics of the suddenness of the tours starting last fall aren’t making arguments without merit. Money should not be the central guiding motive behind what remains at Paisley Park, is all I’m saying. It reflects poorly on the man who knew enough about inequality to write more than a few songs with the depth, tragedy, and common sense present in Money Don’t Matter 2night.
The tickets for the 2017 Celebration at Paisley Park are far more than they ever were during Celebrations Prince held there in the past. This time around they cost as much as a plane ticket costs if you’re 1000+ miles away. That isn’t what fans experienced while the man himself was here to keep the costs down. Furthermore, his own Celebrations took place nearest his June birthday, not April - the month when -if anything- death itself died defeated by music which lives forever.
So owing to my lifelong anti-capitalist streak, I sincerely hope Prince left tons of unreleased, uncatalogued music laying around all over the world to jump up and enrich the lives of his fanbase while they keep the legal department chasing their tails.
That is what I choose to make of the Deliverance EP before I’ve even heard more than 2 songs of it.
In closing and in brief, if the rumored tracklist for Purple Rain Deluxe is accurate, there’s plenty of wasted space on 7-inch edits where there could be more content that’s not already present. The edits are already represented in the proper full length versions. If you didn’t hear the outcry from the ‘we hate edits’ chorus when WB’s obligatory ‘The Hits/B-Sides’ came out loaded with them, get ready for a whole new recital from that perspective.
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