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Today is the 7th day of the #PrinceTwitterThread (organized by @deejayumb) for Prince’s 1994 album Come. And today I’m tweeting about the 6th song on the album: “Race”
FYI this is a somewhat long thread. I hope you enjoy it!
Today is the 7th day of the #PrinceTwitterThread (organized by @deejayumb) for Prince’s 1994 album Come. And today I’m tweeting about the 6th song on the album: “Race”
FYI this is a somewhat long thread. I hope you enjoy it!
Now, since “Race” is at the halfway point on the album, let’s take look back at the other threads that my fellow Prince scholars have tackled for the album...
To start things off, @deejayumb did a foreplay that gives great context to the album: https://twitter.com/deejayumb/status/1272574473905090560
Then @Miss_EThompson blew my mind as she dug deep into the first track “Come”: https://twitter.com/Miss_EThompson/status/1272869765632135168
Then @deejayumb brought the heat on the second song “Space”: https://twitter.com/deejayumb/status/1273024798881390592
And then @CaseyRain came through with a really marvelous thread on “Pheromone”: https://twitter.com/CaseyRain/status/1273741514481549322
Then @EdgarKruize gave us an incredible (and incredibly detailed) thread on “Loose!”: https://twitter.com/EdgarKruize/status/1274025599028396033
And then yesterday, @PrincesFriendYT powerfully and personally tackled “Papa”: https://twitter.com/PrincesFriendYT/status/1274332744957517824
Which brings us to “Race” which is as you can guess is about race. This wasn’t the first, and wouldn’t be the last, time Prince recorded a song about race. But on “Race” Prince tackles race in some interesting, complicated, and perhaps even contradictory ways
But I’m getting ahead of myself so let me back up a bit. Like most of the songs on Come, “Race” was featured in his 1993 dance production “Glam Slam Ulysses” (based on Homer’s Odyssey) as well as the 1994 tv-special The Beautiful Experience (more on that later)
But unlike most of the songs on Come, “Race” is the only song not recorded in 1993/4 (it was first recorded in ’91 & then reworked in ’93). And it’s the only song that qualifies as a rap song (Prince raps on other songs but “Race” is the only one where he’s rapping throughout)
So why does this difference matter? Well for one by the time Prince records “Race” in Nov of 1991, there were a series of events that year that centered race (esp Blackness and/or anti-Blackness and/or misogynoir) that garnered national media attention and scrutiny
Aside: if you're unfamiliar with Moya Bailey and Trudy's framework of misogynoir, you can read about it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395?journalCode=rfms20
Some '91 events:
The LAPD beating of Rodney King
Soon Ja Du’s murder of Latasha Harlins
The Crown Height’s Uprising
The Anita Hill's credible Senate testimony on Clarence Thomas sexually harassing her; and Thomas’ erroneous claims that the hearings were a “high-tech lynching”
The LAPD beating of Rodney King
Soon Ja Du’s murder of Latasha Harlins
The Crown Height’s Uprising
The Anita Hill's credible Senate testimony on Clarence Thomas sexually harassing her; and Thomas’ erroneous claims that the hearings were a “high-tech lynching”
Please google and read up on these events if you’re not familiar. Each one can be its own super thread and there just isn’t enough time or space for me to go into detail here
So while these events are happening, rap has become the premier music genre to talk about race and racism. Rap was, as Chuck D famously proclaimed, the “CNN” of Black America. If you wanted to listen to/hear about race (esp Blackness) incl its gender dynamics, you would go to rap
Like 2 mos. before P records "Race," Queen Latifah had released Nature of a Sista, 2Pac had released “Trapped,” Public Enemy had released Apocalypse 91, & Ice Cube had released Death Certificate--music that talks about the themes of these '91 events if not the events themselves
This is all to say, it makes perfect sense why “Race” is the only rap song on Come: rap had been proven by 1991 (and esp after) to be the most effective musical form of expression on the subject and structures of race, racism, and (anti)Blackness
Aside: This is why I sometimes push back on narratives that P was chasing trends in the ‘90s. It’s less about chasing trends and more about meeting folks where they are
As I talked about at last week’s #DM40GB30 symposium, Prince had dedicated his life to mentoring & mobilizing youth (esp Black youth). So being true to his commitment to the youth meant being true to being where those youth were (shout out New Power/Bold generation)
Aside over. So with all that said, what does Prince actually say on “Race?” Well, he criticizes the “separatist rookies” who “regurgitate the racist lines that keep us apart"...
He talks about a Black domestic worker who cares for a white child, and how he hopes that the kid doesn’t buy into white supremacist narratives that “one race rules over the other." And he decries “h-i-s-t-o-r-y and all this BS propaganda keepin' you from me and me from you"...
And in then there’s the chorus:
"Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Race
Face the music
We all bones when we dead
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Cut me, cut you
Both the blood is red”
"Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Race
Face the music
We all bones when we dead
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Cut me, cut you
Both the blood is red”
Now at first it appears that this is a song that’s offering a colorblind approach to addressing racism. That if we don’t see, if we close our eyes to, or if we transcend, race then racism will be no more. This, if you don't already know, is an ineffective strategy
Again, I don't have time/space to go into why but here are two (of of hundreds) of popular texts that explain why a
colorblind is bad:
https://scholars.duke.edu/display/pub1305356 https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1
colorblind is bad:
https://scholars.duke.edu/display/pub1305356 https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1
So “Race” can’t just be about colorblindness because Prince, as most of us know, wasn’t with ignoring his (or anyone's) Blackness or the fact that he was a Black man
This was especially true by 1991 when he recorded “Race” and had formed NPG. And it’s even more so true by 1993 when he reworked “Race” and was openly criticizing the racist and capitalist practices and enterprise of the music industry (hint hint: face the music)
Aside: while the “both the blood is red” line is a common trope, I actually associate its use in “Race” to the film Paris is Burning (released across the nation in August 1991), where a Black trans woman uses a similar narrative to talk to a group of homo/transphobic teens
Aside over. So if “Race” isn’t just about colorblindness then what’s it about? To answer this question, I actually think we need to go to back to The Beautiful Experience (TBE)
TBE was a 1994 Prince produced/directed tv-special where singer, actor, model, Prince collaborator/lover, and Marvin Gaye’s daughter Nona Gaye plays a character named Pam who is single, alone on a Saturday night, and doesn’t think she’s beautiful
So Pam calls 1-800-FUNK, buy a service in which her computer starts playing videos and performances of Prince, Mayte, NPG, and even oddly Pam herself that starts to lift her spirits (see @CaseyRain’s thread for more on this topic of meta-voyeurism)
Early in the video, Pam writes to the interactive service/software that “I’m sure I don’t fit your idea of beauty,” and demands that it responds to her reply. And after sending her email, a performance of “Race” begins to play on her computer
The fact that “Race” was played right after a Black woman expresses doubt in her beauty speaks volumes. It's an acknowledgment that confronts how such doubt is the result of the gendering of white supremacy that has long deemed Black women as unattractive and undesirable
This. Is. Not. Colorblindness. Instead, what this scene does is not only express, emphasize, and affirm that “Black is beautiful” (and thus situating it within Black Power politics), but, as TBE proves at the end, Black is/Black women are the most beautiful
So this is what “Race” is to me. Less about ignoring the history of racism and more about confronting the historical conditions that maintain racism’s grip. Less about wishing race away and more about imagining and creating a world without the violences that race enshrines
Importantly these are violences that are institutional and, going back to TBE, intimate. Or better put, the violences that intuitions make intimate. Intimacy is key here to understanding “Race,” and by intimacy I mean two things...
First I mean how we typically understand intimacy: as sensual/sexual/erotic/lust/love. And this is how it’s framed in TBE with Pam, as she deals with what Sharon P. Holland calls the “erotic life of racism” that structure Pam's feelings of undesirability
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-erotic-life-of-racism
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-erotic-life-of-racism
Aside: Let’s not forget that TBE is also called *A Night In Erotic City*. Aside over
Second, by intimacy I also mean the proximate/familial space of the home. This is the kind of intimacy that exists in the Black domestic worker caring for the white child that Prince talks about in “Race.” But also the intimacy that exists in the song preceding “Race:" “Papa”
So what Im trying to say is while “Papa” and “Race” appear as outliers on an album that’s seemingly all about sex (and it is def about sex), what “Papa” and “Race” also suggest is what binds the songs on Come is the concept of intimacy (in all its spiritual/sexual/familial forms)
Ok. I think I’m finally done. Thanks for reading! Thanks to @deejayumb for asking me to contribute to this #PrinceTwitterThread on Come. And tomorrow the incredible @arrthurr is going to blow our minds with an analysis of “Dark"
WAIT!! I just realized that I called Nona Gaye’s character Pam. The character’s name is JAN! I have no idea where Pam came from! I’m soooooo sorry 
Ok last tweet attached to this thread...
If you like this thread (minus the Pam mess up lol), please pre-order my book *Sounds from the Other Side*: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/sounds-from-the-other-side
Also, you check out my other writing on my faculty page: https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/ehpowell
If you like this thread (minus the Pam mess up lol), please pre-order my book *Sounds from the Other Side*: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/sounds-from-the-other-side
Also, you check out my other writing on my faculty page: https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/ehpowell
