“Funknroll” is an unusual inclusion on Art Official Age because a different, more rock-oriented version of the same song was included on the album Plectrumelectrum released the same year as Art Official Age. This in itself could provide thematic insight into the inclusion of “Funknroll” on both albums.
With Plectrumelectrum being a more straightforward hard rock album and Art Official Age being a mix of R&B and electronic dance music, the two different mixes of “Funknroll” end up reflecting the two polarities of Prince’s career. “Funknroll” as it exists on Plectrumelectrum references the imperial phase of Prince at his commercial peak in the mid-1980s, especially the Purple Rain period in Prince’s career when he was performing rockers like “Let’s Go Crazy.” “Funknroll” as it exists on Art Official Age is an indication of his stage at this period of his career, which, by this point, had spanned five decades (1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s).
Appearing on both albums, “Funknroll” highlights two distinct aspects of Prince’s career; the commercial peak of his 1980s phase (and the dynamics involved with mainstream success) and the R&B/dance/electronica focus of his later career. In doing so Prince is drawing parallels between how the music industry operates and how it divides people into arbitrary demographics based on a specific genre and its associated audience. “Funknroll” is Prince fusing these two elements together, of rock and dance, and functions in the same way as his previous dalliances with duality (good and evil, black and white, male and female). With “Funknroll” it is two separate aspects of Prince’s career at two different ends of the spectrum that connect together into one harmonious whole.
“Funknroll,” then, can be read as another example of Prince playing with duality, a concept he returns to often. Prince has always played around with symbolic binaries; whether it is the male and female aspects of his early career androgyny, the male and female symbols of his Love Symbol glyph (for which he adopted as a stage name for a seven year period from 1993-2000); the binary of good versus evil with the The Black Album (1987/1994), which Prince called “evil,” and the spiritually-focused album Lovesexy (1988), which was even color-coded in a white and purple aesthetic; the duality of the Gemini persona on The Batman (1989) soundtrack, which is a further articulation of the good and evil.
By releasing these two versions of the same song next to each other, Prince is bookending the two polarities of his career while also commenting on his status as a ‘crossover’ artist and the implied racial segregation. When Prince first entered the scene, rock music (marketed almost exclusively to a white audience) was segregated from urban music (marketed to an African American audience). Worse yet, rock music was allocated far more resources than Soul, R&B, Disco (at least in Disco’s early stages when it was primarily a gay and black underground dance scene). Music executives stereotyped black artists into the urban music category, giving them less radio play than rock or pop acts, and even limited their ability to write and produce rock music. It was not until the success of artists like Michael Jackson and Prince that MTV, a popular and even necessary venue for music promotion in the 1980s, would relent on their policy against playing music acts by artists of color.
Prince would disrupt the racist social order that divided genres and work to fuse the different sounds into “Funknroll.” Prince’s subversion of racial and gender norms, his androgynous appearance, and his expert use of both image and sound in the MTV era, all worked to disassociate African American dance music as being inauthentic and also belonging to the concept of the Other. Prince said in an interview (Keller, 154):
You can say all you want about me and me bands over the years, but you have to admit, we attracted the most diverse crowds to our concerts—blacks, whites, and people of all ages. We broke down a lot of barriers.
— Prince
Prince wanted the freedom to be able to rock out hard with songs such as “Let’s Go Crazy,” or to switch easily between rock and funk or R&B, thereby attracting a wide array of listeners across the racial, gender, and political spectrum.
As an artist Prince broke racial and gender lines that were firmly entrenched when he began his career, most notably with institutions like MTV, who had a policy against playing African American artists until the undeniable success of Prince and Michael Jackson put them on the pop culture map. Zahra Caldwell in the essay “Fire It Up! Prince, Rick James, Rivalry, Race, Punk Funk, and the Minneapolis Sound” assesses MTV’s refusal to play African American artists as being deliberate: “MTV executives insisted that video choice was based solely on it fits within their rock format, although they played artists such as Hall & Oates, ABC, and Culture Club, each playing R&B and soul-based music. Another glaring issue was the implication that rock belonged to and was spawned from white America.” Prince, then, had to fight against extra barriers to becoming successful in an industry where exclusion was standard practice.
With “Funknroll” Prince closes the gap between the two musical genres and his history with both rock music and R&B/dance music. The synthesis of funk[androckand]roll is a unifying thread that connects Prince’s past with his present (or, rather, in the case of Art Official Age, the future). When Prince sings, “Never mind the past / Only way to get where you been / Is party like you ain’t gonna party again,” he is singing about moving forward with music and incorporating a diverse range of styles and genres. Only by doing so can rock music end its racial division. Prince invokes this new direction in music by demanding everyone:
Let's funk, let's roll
Get it turned up, get it out of control
Getting to the rhythm is good for the soul
Let's funk, let's roll
Get it turned up, get it out of control
Come on everybody, let's funknroll
— Lyrics "Funknroll"
The inclusion of “Funknroll” at this stage of the album indicates that Prince does not see that progress can occur, whether socially, racially or politically, unless we can all get together and dance together. Music, in all its myriad forms, is the social adhesive that binds our minds together and connects everyone to an overarching idea. Rhythm, as Prince sings, “is good for the soul.” An idea that echoes the album’s liner notes which say, “There used 2 be a time when music was a spiritual healing 4 the body, soul, & mind…”
To this end, Prince invites everybody (or at least everybody willing to buy this album, and likely Plectrumelectrum as well, to better understand the importance of fusing multiple musical genres). Prince even levels the playing field in terms of class by singing, “Whether you’re coming by bus or by train,” meaning that this is not a social media opportunity for the in-crowd to flex. This is a genuine party that will benefit everyone who participates, and everyone can enjoy the experience. For those still unwilling to participate, those individuals who, like at The Rolling Stones concert, threw garbage simply because of the sight of a black artist, Prince only has disdain: “Shade throwers hating like they’re insane.” For Prince, those who would limit themselves by denigrating a particular genre of music are indicative of a biased mentality, a mentality not entirely disparate from a prejudiced mind.
“Funknroll” is reminiscent of the utopian idealism of the song “Uptown” when Prince sang, ‘Black, white, Puerto Rican / Everybody just a freakin’ / Good times are rolling.” So Prince is calling attention to his past by having a rock version and a funkier dance version of the same song on two simultaneous releases but also is calling attention to his past by drawing on his previous philosophical principles of music as a unifying force for good. Crystal N. Wise in her essay “It’s All About What’s In Your Mind: The Origins of Prince’s Political Consciousness” extrapolates on the ideas of “Uptown” and “Partyup”: “Though ‘Uptown’ is based on Prince’s experiences in the Uptown neighbourhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Prince reiterates on both songs that ‘Uptown’ is about freeing your mind.” Prince continues this idea in Art Official Age, where dancing and enjoying music becomes the unifying force that heals people, as long as you abandon any perceptions or biases regarding race, class, gender, and musical genre.
The synthesis of funk and [rock] roll in this song is Prince revisiting the utopian message of “Uptown” decades later and with a different perspective. For one thing, the message this time has a decidedly less orgy-like atmosphere than “Uptown.” Zada Johnson in her essay “‘Dear Mr. Man’: The Socially Conscious Music of Prince as Black Prophetic Fire” connects young Prince’s explorations of sexuality with his philosophy “Prince’s use of sexual expression is also linked to broader themes of freedom and democracy. Once his female counterpart experiences the accepting environment of Uptown, she manages in her own free expression (22).” In both “Uptown” and “Funknroll” music is the force that breaks down barriers, but in the case of the latter, it is just about grooving to the music.
For a then-young Prince, struggling against the odds, his outlook was bound to be angrier and more overtly rebellious, as he was focused on creating a scene. By Art Official Age Prince had already created the scene so there is less need for outrageousness and sexually explicit rebelliousness. This is an older Prince who has grown wiser, more calm, but still the same need to unify people of all types. This is also a Prince who sings, “Another mother further and you’re committing a crime,” indicating that Prince at age fifty-six is not going to use profane language like the Prince of Dirty Mind did. In fact, Prince cleaned up his act when he became a Jehovah’s Witness in 2000:
There’s certain songs I don’t play anymore, just like there are certain words I don’t say anymore. It’s not me anymore. Don’t follow me back there. There’s no more envelope to push. I punished it off the table. It’s on the floor. Let’s move forward now.
— Prince
This was in the era when Prince advocated against foul language, somewhat to an absurd degree (did Prince really think not swearing or cursing actually made someone a better person?). Yet it does represent an older, maturing Prince who was more centered on music than creating a scene. Prince has achieved a position in his career where he can freely funk and rock ‘n’ roll.
— Douglas Rasmussen
Sources
- Ali, Lorraine. “Party Like it’s 2004.” Newsweek, April 12, 2004; 56-58.
- Caldwell, H. Zahra. “Fire It Up! Prince, Rick James, Rivalry, Race, Punk Funk, and the Minneapolis Sound.” In Feel My Big Guitar: Prince and the Sound He Helped Create. Edited by Judson L. Jeffries, Shannon M. Cochran, Molly Renhoudt. U Of Mississippi P, 2023; 1-14.
- Johnson, Zada. “‘Dear Mr. Man’: The Socially Conscious Music of Prince as Black Prophetic Fire.” In Theology and Prince. Edited by Johnathan Harwell, Katrina E. Jenkins. Lexington Books, 2020; 19-44.
- Prince. Art Official Age. Warner Bros., 2014.
- Prince & 3rdEyeGirl. Plectrumelectrum. Warner Bros., 2014.
