I’ve never been a huge Prince fan, and I’ve never bought any of his albums. But the day of his death, a few hours before I found out about it, I hummed “Diamonds and Pearls” to myself as I did the laundry.
I hadn’t heard that song start-to-finish in probably twenty years. When I was a kid, though, one of the music video countdowns I used to watch religiously featured it every day for a couple months, drilling the song down into my subconscious somewhere and it just happened to bubble out that Thursday morning, leaving me muttering “D to the I to the A to the M…O to the N to the D to the PEARLS OF LOVE!” to myself while doing mundane tasks around the house.
It’s been amazing in the days since his death to consider the level of cultural ubiquity Prince attained, given just how fucking weird he was. As far as the playing went, no one could touch him, but as far as his popular presentation was concerned, it’s nuts to watch the old videos and realize how popular they actually were. I checked in multiple times on MTV Live’s non-stop retrospective weekend, and video after video was filled with what would be some of the lamest imagery you could imagine were he not the one in charge; however, because he was in charge, it totally works, regardless of how poorly the images themselves have aged. He sold it because he went for it.
Also, because he was Prince, one of the last great American cultural magicians.
His absolute apex came during the Reagan ‘80s, when any other American male doing what he was doing would’ve been laughed out of the country, or worse. Then Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol a few years later, and everyone kind of just shrugged and figured it’d make sense, eventually. His first big hit was the last great disco song, and at 48 he absolutely murdered everyone with his guitar playing during the Super Bowl halftime show.
There have been many figures in American popular culture who sold a lot of records and, in doing so, tried to show us that there’s a far more awesome, weird-as-shit way to do business than the status quo. But those other motherfuckers didn’t write “Let’s Go Crazy,” didn’t write “Seven,” didn’t write “Cream,” didn’t take the bass out of “When Doves Cry,” didn’t come up with “Raspberry Beret,” didn’t ease the transition to the symbol years with “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” and they sure as shit didn’t nail that “Purple Rain” guitar solo on the spot, in one take, as part of a live performance for a movie written almost solely to feature that song, allowing fans to watch him play the fucker as he’s coming up with it, and the band nail the cut in one take, in front of hundreds of people, with minimal overdubs needed before the thing was pressed and released as a single…
No one else performed new music in ass-less chaps for an audience of millions on MTV in 1991, and no one else rocked an afro and three-eyed sunglasses on Saturday Night Live in 2014. The hilarious stories of his singular interpersonal weirdness are said to be as endless as the vast troves of unreleased music housed in the vaults at Paisley Park. He was a pansexual icon the likes of which America never previously knew, he basically owned his own color, and he was from (and still lived in) Minnesota. But nothing about the man surprises me when I remember how I know almost every word to a sappy, not particularly beloved duet released when I was eight years old, not because I have much love for the song, but because it was everywhere at a time when I was glued to the cultural apparatuses he’d taken over by virtue of being such a badass, no one could fuck with him.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, contemporary artists laying claim to his mantel are substitute teachers. Prince was the fucking truth, to you and me and every other American who gives a shit about our culture. Even after his peak popularity faded, and the nineties became the aughts, and he accepted his role as the middle-aged crank railing against file-sharing and the Internet because he had the audacity to expect you to pay for the pleasure of consuming his art, he kept up the good work out there on his margins, in that space he’d carved out for himself: playing shows, making records, and ready for you whenever you were ready for him. He had a trove of hits you recognize, the ability to play quite literally anything else you’d want to hear, and an overwhelming talent you’d take a bath in even if you didn’t know the newer material, it felt so sweet, so righteous, so perfect.