Prince Post (Part 3)

And the list of Prince albums containing references to specific individuals -- goes on:

13. Graffiti Bridge (1990): This album is a soundtrack for a not-so-great movie.  The soundtrack is filled with Prince plus his various guests and movie costars: The Time, Tevin Campbell, George Clinton, and Mavis Staples.  That last singer, Ms. Staples, sings a song called "Melody Cool". There's the reference to the specific person!

14. Diamonds & Pearls (1991): A very strong commercial showing, this one. In the song titles, "Daddy Pop" is the specific character reference. Not exactly sure who or what "Daddy Pop" actually is, though. Elsewhere, the song "Thunder" has the line, "Promise to see Jesus in the morning light," so there's that reference, and then in "Gett Off", there's the line, "I clocked the jizz from a friend of yours named Vanessa Bett." I get that "Vanessa Bett" is a person. I don't get what "clocked the jizz" means, but that's another topic for another time.

15. The Love Symbol Album (1992): This is a rock opera of sorts, with segues featuring Kirstie Ally as a pesky reporter named "Vanessa Bartholomew".  Bingo, there's a reference! Also, the opener "My Name is Prince" introduces our hero in fine form as he is trying to whoo the Princess of Cairo, who would be played by dancer-who-became-wife-then-divorced-and-became-actress Mayte Garcia. So "Prince" is a character in his own opera. Don't get mad and call it "egotistical". Write your own opera. If I wrote an opera I wouldn't be scared to cast myself as "me".  Another song is "Sweet Baby" but I don't know if we can consider that specific enough. On the other hand, I did go for "Baby" on the very first album, so *shrug* maybe.

16. Come (1994): The song "Papa" outlines domestic violence and abuse. I don't need to say more.

17. The Gold Experience (1995): Many a Prince fan will tell you that "Come" and "Gold" should have been combined into a single awesome album. Perhaps. In the meantime, the specific reference here is "Billy Jack Bitch", which may or may not be about a columnist who talked all kinds of ish about our boy. Who knows.

18. Chaos & Disorder (1996): "Dinner with Delores" reminds me of Prince's Around the World in a Day album. Just me? I think not! It's got some killer, funny lines in it too: "Damn, Delores, pick another subject, please / Introduce the carpet to something other than your knees". Bam. "Zannalee" is another namedropping track. Not really sure what the deal is with the character, though, but the guitar totally and completely rawks your face off!

19. Emancipation (1996): This is 3CDs of goodies. Prince pays homage to himself, or some permutation thereof, in "Mr. Happy". In "Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife", he pays homage to his woman, who at the time was Mayte. Out of 3 hours of music, Prince doesn't really do his "character reference" trick on this. My theory is that this album, which is his first fully realized taste of "freedom" from his Warner Brothers contract, was meant to be personal and motivated by his life at the time. So it's really about him and where he was back then, not about creating narrators or speculating about the lives of others.

Peace, for now, and Prince-ly-ness!