From the Vault: Prince’s “Black Sweat”
Editor's Note: I have been writing about music off and on (mostly off) for almost ten years now. A lot of the stuff I've written has been lost because I...
Prince: “The Breakdown” and the Problem of Expectations
The problem with being an artist like Prince--an artist who built his career on a body of work that was epochal, genre-shattering, indeed genre-defining--is that it's impossible to simply grow...
4 His Royal Badness’s Consideration: 14 Rarities That Need to Be on the 30th Anniversary Purple Rain Reissue
Let me begin by doing away with any pretense of critical distance or objectivity. I am an unapologetic, frothing-at-the-mouth, dyed-in-the-pink-cashmere Prince fan. My little two-bedroom apartment has no fewer than...
Thoughts on Recent Mashups
I love mashups--really, any kind of aural collage or remix--more than a reasonable person probably should. During my preteen years, I wasted hours on my Pioneer double cassette deck, mixing...