Purple Rain

Prince and the Revolution

album cover

The Commercial Apex in the Reign of Prince

Compared with the horny escapades of Prince's white-hot early works For You and Controversy, the line from Purple Rain that provoked outrage from politicians and religious leaders—about a girl named Nikki caught "in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine"—seems downright tame. Its crime was really about market penetration: The scandalously funky early Prince works circulated among a marginalized freak element in clubland. Purple Rain, a triumph-over-family-troubles Hollywood film, hit everybody.

As a movie, Purple Rain is campy and cliched and somehow, unlike subsequent Prince movies, roguishly charming. The accompanying music is something else again. It comes hot on the heels of the Minneapolis multi-instrumentalist's two biggest singles, "Little Red Corvette" and the visionary blast of premillennium tension entitled "1999," and like both of those, it is funk and rock in the same instant. It's last-set-in-the-club party music and baby-making music, brash guitar power chords bumping sweet soul refrains, post-disco shoop-shoop twirling into up-tempo gospel jubilee. Among its pleasures are a single built around nothing but guitar and drums ("When Doves Cry") and a beatific '60s anthem ("Take Me with U") that depends on passionately strident, practically microtonal vocal harmonies. That's not to overlook the title track, a majestic rock anthem that inspires some of the most glorious power-ballad guitar soloing of all time.

Genre: R&B, Rock
Released: 1984, Warner Bros.
Key Tracks: "When Doves Cry," "Baby I'm a Star," "Take Me with U"
Catalog Choice: Parade
Next Stop: D'Angelo: Brown Sugar
After That: Terence Trent D'Arby: Symphony or Damn
Book Page: 613