Publication: Newsday [US]
Date: October 11, 1992
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Title: "Prince:Royal, Flush"
Reviewed By: Frank Owen

IN 1989, news leaked out that the rock-funk superstarPrincewas close to bankruptcy.The fortune that he'd earned from 1984's "Purple Rain" - the album sold 15 million copies worldwide while the movie of the same name grossed more than $ 70 million - had been squandered on lavish stage shows like the "Sign o' the Times" tour and his patronage of a seemingly endless string of pet proteges whose careers, more often than not, were stillborn.

Three years later,Prince is back at the top of his game both artistically and commercially. His new album, O{+> (Paisley Park / Warner Bros.), is his best since 1987's "Sign o' the Times" and his funkiest since the following year's bootleg-only release "The Black Album." And in the wake of last year's " Diamonds & Pearls, " his most commercially successful album since "Purple Rain,"Princerecently signed a deal with Warner Bros. said to be worth a potential $ 100 million, which is more than such mega-deals as the $ 60 million Madonna got from the same company and Michael Jackson's $ 60 million agreement with Sony.

ButPrince'sdeal isn't quite as generous as it sounds. He gets a record $ 10 million advance per album but only if each previous album sells over 5 million copies. Since only "1999," " Purple Rain, " and "Diaminds &Pearls" have sold more than 5 million in a career that spans 14 years and 14 albums, this is by no means a given. Nevertheless, the deal represents a remarkable turnaround inPrince'sfortunes. As does the new album.

Though he would deny it, part of the reason forPrince'sresurgence is his rediscovery - spurred by rap - of his own blackness. The early part of his career was marred by a disturbing undercurrent of racial self-hatred. Think of the ugly black mama in the film "Under the Cherry Moon" who hauntsPrince's nightmares. Or the invention of racially mixed parents when both his mother and father are African-Americans. When rap started to make inroads into the pop consciousness in the '80s,Prince'sattitude was typical of this syndrome: He held an aristocratic disdain for a music so rough and unschooled.

Multi-instrumental virtuoso that he is,Princehad a right to insist on not being constrained by narrow definitions of what constitutes "black" and "white" music. Even today,Prince'speople bristle at the suggestion that his two most recent singles, "Sexy M.F." and "My Name isPrince"- filled as they are with funky beats, street imagery, and extended rap passages - are "blacker" records than previous efforts.

"It's not about black, it's not about white," says Tony M., the rapper in the New Power Generation,Prince'sbacking band for the last two albums. "What Princeand the New Power Generation are about is getting rid of that racial bull."

That may be so. But why then hasPrinceembraced a music that celebrates "that racial bull" as a source of pride? The simple answer is that he had to. Like the progressive rock dinosaurs that punk made irrelevant,Princewas for a time in danger of being marginalized by the rap revolution. It must have irked Prince- a musician, who has always delighted in showing off his chops - that a new generation of non-musicians was making compelling and provocative music with rudimentary skills. ButPrincewasn't so arrogant that he couldn't make fun of his own reluctance to get with the flow of history: In the film "Graffiti Bridge," following the defeat ofPrince'sband in a talent contest, Tony M. chatises his boss, "I told you that you should have let me rap."

" Princeunderstands that rap is the voice of the present," Tony M. says today. "But he grew up in an era when you had to play an instrument. I'm twenty-nine years old so I ride the cusp of both eras. I'm old enough to appreciate what a musician can do, but I'm young enough to know what's happening in the clubs and on the street. One of the reasons that the New Power Generation is around is to keepPrincein touch."Princeis 34.

Rap's influence is writ large on a half-dozen of the tracks on the new album. The rest of the album includesPrince'sfirst reggae tune ("Blue Light"), a country song ("Sweet Baby"), an area-rock power ballad ("Morning Papers"), a string-laden, middle-of-the-road weepie ("Damn U") that would make Burt Bacharach jealous, as well as an extraordinary progressive rock extravaganza called "3 Chains of Gold," reportedly a deliberate pastiche of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Described as a "rock soap opera," M features a narrative about the romance of a pop star and a Mideastern princess, inspired by an 18-year-old Egyptian ballerina and bellydancer called Mayte, the latest member of the New Power Generation. "Cheers" star Kirstie Alley makes several appearances in spoken segues between tracks, playing Vanessa Bartholomew, a TV who is in hot pursuit of aninterviewwith the reclusive star. The Alley character allowsPrince to have some fun at the media's expense: At one point, he phones up Bartholomew and disguises his voice with a voice box.

The album opens with "My Name isPrince, " a blistering funk workout over whichPrinceengages in some rap-style braggadocio. "In the beginning God made the sea," he proclaims. "But on the seventh day he made me." Some of the lyrics on the track have been interpreted as a veiled attack on the self-styled "king of pop," Michael Jackson, in particular, the lines: "My name isPrince/ Don't wanna be king / 'Cos I've seen the top / And it's just a dream."

"That's nonsense," says Tony M. "It's an attack on anybody who sets themselves up as the king of anything."

Mild controversy also accompanies "Sexy M.F." over its explicit language. The chanted refrain became a summer catch-phrase to rival Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back," but it nearly didn't make it onto the track.

" Princedidn't like that line," explains Tony M. "I think it kind of irritated him. But he allowed it to stay. People sayPrinceis manipulative; but he can be manipulated, too." (Because of the profane lyrics of "Sexy M.F." the album is available in "clean" and "dirty" versions.)

Like the latest efforts by two other black music superstars, Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown,Prince'snew album acknowledges the profound changes that rap has wrought on the pop cultural landscape in recent years. But unlike the rap elements on his last album, "Diamonds & Peals," it doesn't come off as an attempt to hitch a ride on a fashionable bandwagon. This, combined with some of Prince'sbest songwriting in years, as well as a notable absence of those lapses in taste that have spoiled previous albums, make M a striking return to form for this wayward and willful genius. Flitting effortlessly from the soft and romantic to the hard-core and funky, M joins "Dirty Mind," "1999" and "Sign o' the Times" as aPrinceclassic. As Tony M. put it: "This is not a fast-food album. It's the type of album people will listen to in ten years time."

A New Sign For New Times

Princeis a pop artist who likes to create mystery around himself and the meaning of his work. The latest example of this is the title of his latest album M - a heavily embellished combination of the male and female biological signs. Already,Princedevotees have come up with alternative names for the LP, such as "The Love Album" and "Androgyny."

The true meaning of the symbol is supposed to be revealed in a yet-to-be-made video for the last single from the album, "Sacrifice of Victor," an autobiographical number aboutPrince'searly years that touches on drugs and racial discrimination. To help magazines and newspapers reproduce the symbol accurately, Warner Bros. supplied a computer file containing the graphic.