do you remember that song on "rave un2 the joy fantastic?"
the name of it was "undisputed."

the tune starts off all disjointed (weird drum pattern, ugly chords, jarring vocal distortion)
then, out of nowhere, when he gets to the bridge of this disjointed song,
he adds a few layers of synthesizers to the existing track
and makes it sound like an exceptionally pop friendly song.

and while the song sounds pretty,
he says..."heavy rotation... never made my world go 'round.
commercialization of the music is what brought it down."

then he goes into this mozart influenced,
baroque interlude with a harpsichord just so he can show off.


then he intentionally goes back to making the song sound disjointed again.
again... it sounds like the most un-pop song you can imagine.




why would prince do this?
why did he intentionally spit in the face of convention?
why did he intentionally tease you with a radio friendly record?
why didn't build the entire song around that musical idea?

because he's prince. he's stubborn.
prince decided that the public will get a record they want to hear from prince
when he feels like releasing it, and not a minute before.

to quote the song again, "i don't follow trends. they just follow me."






so yeah. he released "the most beautiful girl in the world" to start off his new career
because he wanted to snub warner bros. it was a fuck you.



he did it again when he went on the PR campaign to do musicology.
he showed up to do "purple rain" with beyonce at the grammys b/c
he wanted to make nice and get back in the game.
he released an album that's not too weird,
and had something that could get radio play.


he followed that up with 3121, which contained "black sweat,"
a song that fit right in on 106 & park.


my point is, prince can release music that regular people want to hear
whenever he feels like shitting it out.



i'm not saying he can whip out an album like "purple rain" any time he wants.
he can't just get back to the place he was at in 1984. that was lightning in a bottle.
timing is everything.




but he can make palatable, radio friendly songs
whenever he gets the urge.




why doesn't he do this all the time?
idunno.


he's prince.