90s Prince (and the "guilt-free" pleasure)

Written by Imran Mirza

Episode #2 of CE4K saw Dan, Tee-J and I give examples of - in this case - movies that we loved but that weren't necessarily embraced by the masses as a whole.  In conversations before and after that recording, we came to refer to that episode as the "guilty pleasures" episode which, I have to confess, is a term that can rub me up the wrong way...

​It's actually a strange concept as you're usually admitting to liking something that's quite popular but still opting to remove yourself from it by adding the word "guilty" as if you're still trying to conform to some mass perception of what's acceptable to be deemed good or not. 

​This is getting a bit heavy (and confusing), but you get the idea.  In a conversation I once had with someone about music, they summed up their stance perfectly with the phrase "There's no such thing as good music and bad music... there is only music you like and music you don't".  And as my brother would say: "that hit the nail on the jackpot!".

But sticking with the show's original theme, a further example, within the realms of music, of something I openly love that doesn't get as much love from everyone else would be the music of Prince in the 1990s.  Probably not a strong opinion held by middle-of-the-road Prince fans but a large contingent of Prince fans  relegate The Purple Majesty's best years to within the 80s which spawned the hits 'Purple Rain', '1999' and 'Raspberry Beret', and regard his 90s years as the decade that saw him adopt a symbol as his name, start a public feud with Warner brothers, incorporate hip-hop as part of his sound and release the album generally regarded as the worst of his career with New Power Generation's 'New Power Soul'.

And on the topic of 'New Power Soul'...  I used to drive a red 1992 Nissan Micra called Jemima.  I’ve had three cars since then but this one was by far the most reliable car I’ve ever owned.  So imagine how I felt coming home one day to see that someone had bent the top of the passenger door open with a crowbar just enough for them to slip their hand in and simply unlock it.  I wasn’t overly worried about it in as much as there was nothing in the car for anyone to take.  It literally consisted of an AtoZ (remember those, pre-SatNav?) and three cassette tapes for the car stereo.  There was a Sade album (the name of the album escapes me, but I think it was ‘Love Deluxe’), there was a modern jazz compilation tape, and Prince’s (although, officially, New Power Generation’s) ‘New Power Soul’ album.  Thankfully, none of the tapes were taken in this instance.  However, when I walked past Jemima around three weeks later, and saw the door bent in exactly the same way… I feared the worst.

That’s right.  The swine came back.

And took the tapes.

There’s something about being a Prince fan that can drive you to the point of obsession.  I like to think that that young hoodlum, who broke into Jemima, soon afterwards met a young female hoodlum who he found was a huge Prince fan.  In a bid to impress her, he did the only thing he could, and that was to go back and take my Prince tape.  In a strange way, I like to think ‘New Power Soul’ brought those two lovebirds together and I’m glad to have had a hand in that. 

This is by no means a post for me to profess my love for 'New Power Soul' by the way but this is the album that gave use 'Come On', 'The One' and 'Wasted Kisses' which are gems so I'd find it difficult to place it at the bottom of the pile as a result.