The first time I heard 'Do me, Baby' I was too young to
truly understand what it meant but I knew it was everything I wanted one
day. Sitting in the back of my mom's car
listening to the local Dallas, TX R&B station I heard Prince for the first
time and started to try and understand the concept of doing someone. Because according to him it could be the most
amazing thing anyone would ever do. So
of course I wanted to figure it out. I never asked my mother cause I didn't
think she knew anything about it or else she would be on the radio singing
about it. So I wanted and need more of this Prince fella.
This started a love affair with what he considered music
which calls to my soul in ways most people can't understand and a few know all
too well. Love is sometimes a taboo subject for young poor dark kids. Mostly because all the love we see in media
is usually not dark. Prince taught me what love could and should be. I became
fascinated by his vision. It wasn't till
I was older that I truly understand what was the most engrossing thing about
this artist. Prince taught me to accept me. No matter who I find that person to
be.
When you grow up and you have a very keen understanding from
the first time you become truly consciously aware of yourself that you are
different life gets harder. We have a
culture obsessed to a painful degree with fitting in and staying in your lane whatever
in the hell that means. And when people step outside of the bounds of where
everyone thinks they belong they get shunned. It’s the functioning act of
society. Provide the human interactions
that we need to feel whole or deprive them from those who buck the system.
When I first saw Prince I found him to be beautiful in a way
that I had never seen a man achieve beauty. He was glorious, fashionable, wore
heels and just glowed. He showed
attitude and sass he was everything any young girl would want to be. But he was intensely male no matter what else
he had going on. So he then became who any girl would want to be with. It was a
perfect moment of the yin and yang energies of masculine and feminine existing
in the same being. It was the first tangible understanding that the concepts of
male and female are a myth. A structure
we put into place to maintain the status quo.
When you realize that is a lie you begin to question everything and then
you begin to rebel.
Freedom looks beautiful and Prince embodied that in every
way. But it was beyond freedom. His freedom was unique because its core was
identity. It’s not till you get much older do you recognize what that beauty
is. Prince was a man that didn’t'
challenge identity and gender roles to be controversial or as a gimmick. He
challenged them because he refused to let them define who he was and how he
expressed his art or lived his life. He lived as he needed to in order to bring
clarity to his art to his life to his unique vision. He was an alchemist who
took the elements around him, reshaped them and reformed them to become
something we had never seen and realized in that instance we should have never
lived without.
What he became for me was a catalyst to a crucial
understanding for every human walking this earth. Of all the things that can be bottled,
copyrighted, co-opted, stolen, renamed, identity will always be yours. The
unique aspects of your life and being that make you who you are is the only
marketable skill any of us will ever really need. The art is driven by the artist, not the
other way around. Your art is not your vehicle to success, you are. And how well you reveal yourself defines the
success of your art.
I consider his death a wakeup call to the conformers and those on the fence. The ones trying to fit in and emulate others
to achieve fame and fortune. Greatness is only gained from great risk and there
is no greater risk than true unfiltered exposure. The reason he was able to be
prolific after decades of work is that he never had to figure out where to
go. The art was never in control, he
was. The art didn't live in its own space to be pulled from and used. He was
the art. People can remake his music, they can offer tribute they can mimic his
style even take his name. But they will never capture the essence of what made
him great. That is a journey that each
artist has to make for themselves.
If you take nothing else away from the death of an icon
understand his beginnings. He was ridiculed criticized and maligned. But he
never stopped his journey because it didn’t matter what you or anyone else
thought. His work was never about impressing you. His work was about expressing him. His story
is a living breathing testament to faith beyond all else. To trusting the
higher forces because they have entrusted you with this life and this
time. This place. Stop counting. He
never counted. It doesn't matter when just do it. Like the man said, Do me,
baby. Like you never have before. Which really means do you. Make the
journey. Find it, embrace it, put your
foot in it. Pick it up. Pick up that pen, that paintbrush, that script, that
microphone. Pick up that axe.
And now my favorite Prince moment of doing him:
