Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999)
There is a lot of conjecture about the lyrical meaning in this biblically themed ballad. My humble guess is it’s a wry, honest reference to his relationship with Mayte being mythologised and mined in an attempt to make a hit single. The line “2gether we make the remix a big seller” on the b-side echoes this aim for commercial success. But the message is cryptic enough to choose your own interpretation. The original version’s lyrics are not as overtly cynical as the title suggests and if it had the expected “told” in the title instead of the ambiguous “sold” (and didn’t feature a pile of money on the single artwork) I imagine it would be viewed in a more sincere, albeit less intriguing, light. I know I would have simply accepted the line “so this is where U end, and U and I begin” as a beautiful evocation of the “one flesh” in Genesis, instead of wondering if it’s Prince’s parallax between his relationship’s actuality and mythology. And is the “real reason that Adam never left Eve” because he was committed to the myth? Leaving aside the deep waters of the lyrics, the music seduces and beguiles, smooth as warm milk, with Arabic scales and turntable punctuation floating alongside the swelling vocals. Subtle, alluring and darkly mysterious – it’s no wonder that it didn’t fare well in the amplified stock-market floor of the charts. Question marks lose out to exclamation points.