It was a sunny April day—a Sunday. I was hungover. The trek to Buie’s food truck was pleasant enough. The air smelled of summer.
For my parents, it was Amy Winehouse. For my older cousins and friends, maybe Michael Jackson—I think I was too young. For me, though, it was Prince.
Standing there, waiting in line for my egg and cheese sandwich, my ungloved hands numbly scrolling through my news feed, I found out Prince was dead.
After April 21st, 2016, Prince’s thin frame, lustful hips and lanky limbs would never strut the stage again. And likewise, after a short flurry of heartfelt tributes and tragic elegies, Prince’s legacy— of blending pop, funk, R&B and soul as easily and effortlessly as he owned the stage, of a delicate mixture of flair and command, reminiscent of David Bowie’s flamboyance and Jimi Hendrix’s power; and of course of Purple Rain, an iconic song performed in even a more iconic purple suit—retreated into the ether. Unlike many other artists who died young, Prince did not become a legend or an icon after his death—instead, his legacy evaporated, and his image disappeared almost entirely. People stopped talking about him.
But it wasn’t just Prince’s image or spirit that was gone: it was his sound, too. Prince’s explosive voice was silenced from the public ear, and was largely unavailable electronically. Even the year before his death, Prince was famously protective of his music and actually pulled most of it in 2015 from online streaming platforms such as iTunes, Spotify, and SoundCloud. In an age where cassettes are ancient history and CD’s recently went extinct, pulling his music from the digital meant Prince only existed in dusty record shops, in garage sales of old CD’s or, perhaps as he most wanted to be seen, in person.
Though Prince himself may have seemed to vanish from the spotlight, the same cannot be said of the legal battle for his music. After pulling his music from streaming services in June of 2015, Prince got on board with Jay Z’s Tidal, an online subscription–based music streaming service similar to Spotify Premium. But a few months into the deal, Prince unexpectedly died, giving rise to a legal dispute between Tidal and the Prince estate, which Prince had left without any legal heir. The estate fell chiefly into the management of his family. In November, the Prince estate sued Tidal, arguing that since Prince had died mid-deal, Tidal was streaming his music without legal permission.
The lawsuits continued to play themselves out, moving at inchworm pace. Fast forward a few months, though, to the Grammys two weeks ago: in a spot–on, joint–cracking, knee–shaking tribute, Bruno Mars, backed by soul/funk group Morris Day and the Time viscerally brought Prince back to life. In Prince’s signature purple suit, a crisp white guitar and altogether absurd cheetah-print sash, Mars reincarnated Prince’s voracious stage presence to the T. Mars sways to the beat, swinging his hips to the relentless beat of the drums in the background, adding a handful of fast, screaming solo notes on his shrill white guitar to boot. Although he performed a number of Prince's hits, including "Jungle Love" and "The Bird," it was "Let's go Crazy," that was most timely. Nearly a year after Prince's passing, "Let's Go Crazy" asks us to consider the fine distinction between life and death, and has acquired a new meaning since Prince's passing. In a full, confident voice Mars sings, "Dearly beloved/ We are gathered here today/ To get through this thing called "life"/ Electric word, life/ It means forever and that's a mighty long time/But I'm here to tell you/There's something else/The afterworld/A world of never ending happiness/You can always see the sun, day or night." Through Mars, it's almost as if Prince is speaking to us from beyond the grave, here.
While Mars's performance of "Crazy in Love," perhaps made us look backwards and reflect on Prince's tragic passing, it also showed us that Prince is far from finished. In an almost prophetic way, Mars's performance signaled what was to come: Prince's music would once again be streamable. During the whole Tidal lawsuit, the estate negotiated another deal on the side, which, for the most part, was kept under wraps. Prince’s family signed with Universal Music, an international corporation that has acquired the rights to stream artists such as Sam Smith, Lana Del Rey and even Bob Marley. Prince's music would soon follow in a long line of successful streamed artists.
So although Prince was protective of his music, and its release is definitely bittersweet in that it might not have been what he wanted, it also means that his legacy will endure; that perhaps, from even under six feet of dirt, his swagger, his erotic sex appeal and of course his transgressive audacity will live on.
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