Prince - Let's Go Crazy

Dearly Beloved...

1. Prince wrote his first song, a piano piece called "Funk Machine," when he was 7 years old.

   Of course he fucking did.

   Prince had no reverence for the status quo. If I knew nothing else about the man, that would be enough. He never caved. He never bent. Prince was omnipresent, and to say he was a musician is to say Mt. Everest is tall. He was Picasso with an electric guitar, painting soundscapes you could make babies to. If Tom Petty’s guitar is gently weeping… well, I’ll let Prince explain…

   Guitar World Magazine: What is your idea of the ultimate guitar tone?

   Prince: A woman in climax.

   Like St. Theresa in ecstasy, Prince’s wailing guitar could be a religious experience for the especially devout. Prince designed it that way. “‘Let’s Go Crazy’ was about God and Satan. I had to change those words up—the de-elevator was Satan in that song.… And ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ was God to me…stay happy, stay focused, and you can beat the de-elevator,” Prince said in 1997. That explains the Prince-as-Preacher intro. It sets the tone from the first second of one of the greatest soundtracks ever uncorked and projected onto human history.

2. This project is decidedly not about the ‘best’ song of whichever artist or group I’ve chosen to write about. That’s a silly discussion anyway. It’s about what these songs do to me. To that end, Let’s Go Crazy is both deliverance and folly. It’s the joyous, raucous call to enjoy this existence at all costs. Prince uses all his otherworldly powers to consolidate his funk roots and Rolling Stones riffs and all the pop and rock bouillabaisse of deliciousness he can conjure with his considerable power to get us to completely lose our shit. If, when I die all the secrets of the universe are revealed to me, it will not shock me in the slightest to learn Prince, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Andre 3000, and Jimi Hendrix were/are actual aliens from the planet Lovetron in the Triangulum Galaxy which is about 60,000 light years from our tiny little world. Whenever I hear this, I’m immediately happier. I’m immediately funkier. My Jew-fro grows two inches. Whenever I deliberately drop this onto my turntable it’s because I need to let go of some dead weight. I did the same thing as a teenager. I turned to the Stones when I wanted to let loose - doing my best Mick Jagger in my bedroom mirror. Prince was confounding to me as a teenage boy fumbling with my own burgeoning sexuality. “What the fuck IS this?” But that question took a backseat to just how impossibly kinetic it is. Let’s Go Crazy is essentially an ode to sex. It starts off with some delicious foreplay, the central act itself is liberating, ecstatic, and rhythmic, filled with Ohhhs! and Ahhhs! Then…

   He's comin'
   He's comin'
   Comin'

   Then it culminates exactly the way Prince wants it to - with an inimitable guitar solo that sounds like a woman in climax. “Take me away,” he exclaims.

3. I’m not suggesting that everything has gone to hell since Prince died in August of 2016, but *gestures to everything.* He stood like the ancient wonder the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling a music harbor containing Funk (no shit), Pop (clearly), Rock (oh yes), Metal (perhaps strangely, but not surprisingly), R&B, Soul, Jazz… and yeah, you get it. His influences included all things Africa and his subsequent influence connected Africa with every generation of popular recording artists since. So much soul, so much African influence was just plainly missing from popular music since the end of Disco, and in a fabulous masterstroke, Prince reminded us all that Africa matters in every way imaginable. It comes as no surprise to me that Hip-Hop’s inevitable rise coincided with Purple Rain, the album Let’s Go Crazy opens. Yes, Hip-Hop existed before Purple Rain (the genre is famously celebrating its 50th anniversary this year). Run-DMC, Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow, LL Cool J, and Too Short all released albums the following year and Prince’s influence was clear. What’s more, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Freaky Styley too, and if you can’t tell Prince influenced those boys then you’re just not paying attention. So, as I consider all this, and I consider all the world and national events I’m witnessing in real-time, I feel morally obligated to take a hard listen to Prince and when I do I realize he was right. It’s time to go crazy, nuts, and it’s definitely time to make women climax more.