Purple Rain was a commercial and cultural breakthrough. Purple Rain doesn’t avoid the White world; it is included without self-impeding awareness and recalls Lorraine Hansberry’s “I don’t go around thinking about being Black twenty-four hours a day” as much as it fulfills Prince’s utopian manifesto. – Armond White On July 26, 1984, Prince’s first motion picture, Purple … [Read more...]
Prince and the B-Sides: a love story
Thirty-five years ago this month, Warner Bros. Records released the soundtrack to Prince’s debut motion picture Purple Rain. The first record to officially be credited to Prince and The Revolution, Purple Rain yielded five hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart including two number-ones (“When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy”) and the title track which peaked … [Read more...]
Dance on: How Prince’s legacy of giving continues to thrive
“We're at a place now in this country where we're going to have to work together and stop looking at each other's affiliations and start taking care of one another. These are desperate times.” —Prince On April 21, 2016, it seemed as though the world just stopped. When the unimaginable reports of Prince’s passing were confirmed that Thursday morning, humanity was at once … [Read more...]
Prince in concert: an experience like no other
For me, September 18, 1988, was a night that was 10 years in the making and one that I will never forget. I discovered Prince in the summer of 1978 when on a whim, I traded my 45 of The Jackson 5’s “Dancing Machine” to a friend for his eight-track copy of Prince’s debut album For You. I knew absolutely nothing about Prince, whose album had only been out a few months. But I … [Read more...]
The interview that ‘blessed’ Robyne Robinson’s career
This two-part installment of Purple Music shares the story of how Robyne Robinson — Twin Cities broadcast legend, style guru, and cultural icon in her own right — came to be the first and only media professional to interview Prince Rogers Nelson on local television. Conclusion of a two-part story Prince’s request for an interview was still fresh on Robyne … [Read more...]