{"id":1926,"date":"2017-01-06T16:16:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T21:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2017-01-23T22:44:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T03:44:33","slug":"prince-2-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/prince-2-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince #2: Come"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1926\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fprince-2-come%2F&amp;text=Prince%20%232%3A%20Come&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fprince-2-come%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><div id=\"fb_share_1\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" share_url=\"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/prince-2-come\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\">Share<\/a><\/div><div><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div><p>Let&#8217;s be clear: <em>Come<\/em> is pathologically, hilariously blunt in its sexual language. On the title track, we go from Prince telling a woman he&#8217;s going to ejaculate, variously, in her hair AND her eye (forewarned is forearmed, I guess) to saying &#8220;it&#8217;s no wonder there&#8217;s a puddle there&#8221; to what can be the only appearance ever of the\u00a0word &#8220;tallywhacker&#8221; in an R&amp;B song. &#8220;Come&#8221; (the song) is juvenile, ham-handed, often just plain gross, and I love it. It&#8217;s maybe one of the best-produced songs in Prince&#8217;s discography, and therefore a key to the rest of the album.<\/p>\n<p>Where <em>The Black Album<\/em> was a brittle-sounding, mostly electronic scrapbook, <em>Come<\/em> is gorgeously produced from end to end, full of warm bass and stunningly arranged horns. It&#8217;s also not entirely about fucking: there&#8217;s the thoughtful &#8220;Race,&#8221; the full-on rave track &#8220;Loose!&#8221;, and &#8220;Solo,&#8221; a lyrical collaboration with <em>M. Butterfly<\/em> librettist David Henry Hwang. Prince put it out as a contract-fulfiller with Warner Bros., did no publicity for it, and almost immediately disowned it. Yet when you listen to <em>Come<\/em>, you can hear the work and care that went into it. It&#8217;s an album equally at home with being filthy and quiet, puerile \u00a0and thoughtful. Two years earlier, on &#8220;My Name Is Prince,&#8221; Prince shout-rapped, &#8220;I got two sides\/And they&#8217;re both friends!&#8221; This, more than anything, is the sharpest self-assessment in the man&#8217;s entire catalog. <em>Come<\/em> is the embodiment of that. Despite his public attitude toward the album, I suspect Prince took a rightful pride in the album: he&#8217;d later include more than half the tracks in a TV special that was supposed to be promoting 1995&#8217;s <em>The Gold Experience<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>One note: if you do listen to<em> Come<\/em>, maybe don&#8217;t do it at work, or around someone you don&#8217;t know intimately. And if you <em>do<\/em> listen with an intimate friend, a\u00a0fun game is to see how long you can maintain eye contact through the final track, &#8220;Orgasm,&#8221; which is a minute and thirty-nine seconds of Vanity either having an orgasm or faking one really loudly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stray Observations:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I would argue that <em>Come<\/em>, along with maybe <em>The Truth<\/em>, is the most consistent-<em>sounding<\/em> album of Prince&#8217;s post-<em>1999<\/em> career. The production, now 23 years later, sounds absolutely warm and vital, with deep grooves on every song, and probably the best-sounding computer drum tracks of the man&#8217;s career. (New Power Generation drummer Michael B does add real drums to a few tracks, though he&#8217;s also the most machine-like musician of any of Prince&#8217;s players.) Check out, in particular, &#8220;Space,&#8221; which has a mid-tempo drum track (Caissie thinks it sounds like something off a Beck song) but a bouncy, peak-era Motown bass line played by Prince himself.<\/li>\n<li>I cannot believe I just typed the words &#8220;deep grooves,&#8221; but there you have it.<\/li>\n<li>I do think it&#8217;s telling that <em>Come<\/em> and <em>The Black Album<\/em> &#8212; the two albums Prince disowned most vocally (we&#8217;ll get to <em>Old Friends 4 Sale<\/em> soon enough) &#8212; are also his most revealing. With <em>The Black Album<\/em>, he was clearly freaked out at the thought of admitting drug use after being such a public teetotaler. With <em>Come<\/em>, I think it&#8217;s less the idea of talking about sex (I mean, it&#8217;s Prince) than the incredible specificity of some of it. Then there&#8217;s the &#8220;Papa,&#8221; a detailed lyric about child abuse wrapped uncomfortably in a blues shuffle. Prince was a performer who had no problem singing about oral sex or wearing assless pants; <em>vulnerability<\/em> was less comfortable for him.<\/li>\n<li>Sample lyric from &#8220;Come&#8221;: <em>Lickin&#8217; you inside\/Outside\/All sides\/With my tongue in the crease\/Baby, I go &#8217;round\/When I go down.<\/em>\u00a0Who was singing about ass-eating in 1994? Prince, once again ahead of the curve!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1926\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fprince-2-come%2F&amp;text=Prince%20%232%3A%20Come&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fprince-2-come%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><p>TweetShareLet&#8217;s be clear: Come is pathologically, hilariously blunt in its sexual language. On the title track, we go from Prince telling a woman he&#8217;s going to ejaculate, variously, in her hair AND her eye (forewarned is forearmed, I guess) to saying &#8220;it&#8217;s no wonder there&#8217;s a puddle there&#8221; to what can be the only appearance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prince"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1936,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}