If you haven't read it, you got to read about how Prince ended up on an episode of New Girl (long story short, I think he was trying to smash Zooey D).
Anyway one of the things that came out the story is that Prince handpicked the playlist for the party scene. There is a playlist on spotify but here is the list:
Anyway I've always been interested in Prince's musical tastes and influence (remember the rolling stone interview where he said he doesn't listen to anyone else?) and I always like hearing the DJ stories about trying to play music for Prince (15 has one and another DJ here tells their story). So I was super eager to see what music Prince would choose for his own party playlist.
So looking at this New Girl Playlist the thing that immediately struck me was, well, how old all the songs were. I was like Damn Prince, you don't like anything past the 70s? And the other thing that struck me was how well known his choices were. I guess I was expecting that if Prince were going old school, he would be digging in the crate and pulling out Deep Cuts. I was hoping for some exotic tracks, not Fire by the Ohio Players.
I don't know. I may be reading too much into this list. He could have choosen these songs for all different sorts of reasons. However, the list just made me think about what would happen if I let my uncle take over the playlist at a 25-35 year old party and he started playing his favorite Spinners record.
Again, I might be overanalyzing, but I can't help but read into this that this shows how he became out of sync with Modern Black Music and kind of fell into a retro funk bubble because it was what he knew. It is hard to reconcile for me how the dude that was making the most cutting edge advance music of the late 80s just stopped innovating and couldn't appreciate hip-hop and the other artists who were innovating. Shucks my dad is 78 and he eventually got into Public Enemy, Tupac, Bigge.
I don't know, just musing.
********** "Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson