O(+> (1992)
Brief and intense like a rap tomatillo, Arrogance is the first half of a one two punch of hip hop in the midst of Prince’s unpronounceable rock opera concept album. A safe space for any kid weened on Public Enemy, struggling to process ballads and pop rock. At school, before the available musical landscape revealed itself as a hypercube of myriad dimensions, it was pretty binary. You were rock or you were hip hop. You listened to Guns N’ Roses or Salt N’ Pepa. Def Leppard or Def Jam. My flag was planted firmly in the hip hop camp. I didn’t get to hear this album until the latter end of the decade when such petty tribal affiliations had been lost along with my milk teeth but the conditioning was still there to make Arrogance and The Flow, along with the first two, more single-worthy, tracks all stand out. Whenever I hear shade thrown at any of these (and Arrogance gets more than its fair share) I instinctively take it as a poodle-haired broadside from the Guns N’ Roses trench. Old loyalties stir within. Feuds awaken. And the fact that I’m rating this below the theatrical rock silliness of 3 Chains o’ Gold pains me on some deep atavistic level, but is as much a sign of Arrogance‘s slightness than it is of maturing tastes. The beat has an Eric B & Rakim vibe to it and if you listen close you can even hear their Bobby Byrd “you got it” sample, from the classic I Know You Got Soul. The inclusion here is distorted almost beyond recognition though and sounds more like something from The Exorcist than a sampled affirmation. A banshee screech from beyond the veil. Arrogance, true to its name, manspreads over the end of previous track, Damn U, turning the ballad’s air salty with its “this one’s for all the whores” dedication. By which he means journalists, in particular Vanessa Bartholomew who bookends the Q&A lyrics where the title of the song is the brusk answer to queries about Prince’s motivation. It makes more sense within the context of the 3 Chains film, but who cares about narrative cohesion when you’re lost in foreign waters and suddenly hear a language you know and breathe. I would grow up to prefer the slow jams but, like love, the first cuts are the deepest.
Oh, those high school games of thrones were way more complex in my memory (then again, I kinda gathered that you were in high school in the 90s? For me, it was the 2000s).
Like, the “rock kids” had the folksy-hippie-songs-where-lyrics-matter crowd (in France, were I lived as a teen, it was the typical white guy with guitar songs, I guess those guys were the fascinating birth of the “hipsters” of later), the hair-metal kids (the only ones who dared listen to the Guns or Def Leppard), the straight heavy metal kids (and as in any group, civil wars were the deadliest, and they looked down on the cartoon-metal afficionados the most) and the punk kids (a group that often also included the reggae kids with baggy trousers and skater shoes and whatnot). The “hip hop crowd” definitely existed, of course including the kids who listened to hip hop with supposedly “deep” lyrics, and those who listened to the more “MTV” rap.
However, at least in the 2000s, a third group was just as large and probably larger than the other two : the electronica kids. Those included the more hipster-ish “deep house” and “super funky trance transistor xplosive stuff” (or whatever new hip name those things had every month), and the huge “clubber” crowd who listened to eurodance, dance pop and just regular r&b shit like Sean Paul.
The clubbers and the hiphopers were definitely the more mainstream groups, and the rock or metal kids were the nerdy outsiders in my school.
Anyway, I know Prince’s hip hop is much maligned, but I actually like a lot of it. Maybe because I got into hip hop later. (Yeah, I was in the rock crown.) Still, to me, in terms of image, attitude, style and brand of talent, the three artists I think of the most when I think of Prince would be Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard and James Brown. Psychedelic rock, rock’n’roll and funk/soul. I always feel that his biggest strenghts lied in those genres.
Late 80s. Early 90s. It was pretty binary before the tribes fragmented into a myriad of sub-cultures. Life was simpler then. But also less interesting.