C. Liegh McInnis

C. Liegh McInnis

Analyzing Diamonds & Pearls: Poetic Gems from a Poet Concerned with Every Aspect of Life


After having his last two albums connected to and somewhat limited by movies, Prince is ready to return to unlimited creativity.  His fourteenth album, Diamonds and Pearls (1991) reflects this attitude. This collection of gems represents the diversity of Prince. He is an encyclopedia and a prism of music, having the ability to take all that has come before him and create his own, unique brand of music-literature and, in doing so, expand the world of popular music.  In his article, “The Musical Alchemist,” for El Pais, Luis Hidalgo asserts that “The difference is [Prince’s] influences, his musical inspirations, the ease with which he assimilates them and then reinvents them with his own personal imprint. Prince has created his own unique style…an incomparable way of making music, style you can distinguish by the second verse” (Hidalgo 1994). Diamonds and Pearls acts as a small prism to reflect the history and variety of music-literature. It includes everything from gospel to straightforward jazz, from the big band sound to hardcore funk, rock, and soul. Moreover, the lyrics cover issues from spiritual salvation to economics, from comments on social independence and politics to love and romance.  With Diamonds and Pearls, Prince is once again championing his philosophy of obtaining and being at peace by asserting, unapologetically, that God is the answer for a world struggling with its flesh and looking in the wrong places for direction and identity. Furthermore, Prince is proving that he is a master poet as he is one of the few who writes equally well about politics and romance in a manner that is work remains gems of insight and wisdom for a holistic human experience.


C. Liegh McInnis


C. Liegh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, instructor of English at Jackson State University, the former publisher and editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts: Sketches and Tales of Urban Mississippi), one work of literary criticism (The Lyrics of Prince: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller), and one co-authored work, Brother Hollis: The Sankofa of a Movement Man, which discusses the life of a legendary Mississippi Civil Rights icon. He is also a former First Runner-Up of the Amiri Baraka/Sonia Sanchez Poetry Award sponsored by North Carolina State A&T. He has presented papers at national conferences, such as College Language Association, the National Council of Black Studies, the Neo-Griot Conference, and the Black Arts Movement Festival, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Southern Quarterly, Konch Magazine, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Down to the Dark River: An Anthology of Poems on the Mississippi River, Black Hollywood Unchained: Essays about Hollywood’s Portrayal of African Americans, Black Panther: Paradigm Shift or Not? A Collection of Reviews and Essays on the Blockbuster Film, Asymptote, The Pierian, Black Gold: An Anthology of Black Poetry, Sable, New Delta Review, The Black World Today, In Motion Magazine, MultiCultural Review, A Deeper Shade, New Laurel Review, ChickenBones, Oxford American, Journal of Ethnic American Literature, B. K. Nation, Red Ochre Lit, and Brick Street Press Anthology. In January of 2009, C. Liegh, along with eight other poets, was invited by the NAACP to read poetry in Washington, DC, for their Inaugural Poetry Reading celebrating the election of President Barack Obama. He has also been invited by colleges and libraries all over the country to read his poetry and fiction and to lecture on various topics, such as creative writing and various aspects of African American literature, music, and history.

McInnis can be contacted through:
Psychedelic Literature
203 Lynn Lane
Clinton, MS 39056
601 383 0024
psychedeliclit@bellsouth.net

psychedelicliterature.comnUSfest Podcast Ep03: The Prophetic Pop Life of Prince

Miss TLC

Miss TLC

Miss TLC


Miss TLC is an entertainment industry veteran with over 15 years of experience in the business of pop culture. As a graduate of NYU’s prestigious Music Business program, with a resume that includes Arista Records, MTV Networks, Jive Records & Universal Motown Republic Group; Miss TLC has studied music through the eyes of commerce AND creativity. While working as a consultant in 2016, Miss TLC’s world was rocked by the news surrounding her most treasured artist Prince. As a response to the tabloid-esque press potentially clouding his powerful legacy, Miss TLC recognized a need for details-driven celebrations of his immeasurable accomplishments & began posting uplifting online “lessons” focused around his work. Connecting holidays, world events, various artists & special dates to Prince, the “Princerversaries” concept was born in September 2016 & continues to spread the message of Mr. Nelson’s indelible mark on the world of music.

#Princerversaries
misstlc.com

Joan Morgan

Joan Morgan

Joan Morgan


Joan Morgan, Ph.D. is Program Director of NYU’s Institute of African American Affairs & Center for Black Visual Culture (IAAA & CBVC), an award-winning feminist author, and a graduate of NYU’s American Studies Ph.D. program. A pioneering hip-hop journalist, Dr. Morgan coined the term “hip-hop feminism” in 1999, when her book was published, the groundbreaking When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. Her book has been used in college coursework across the country. Regarded internationally as an expert on the topics of hip-hop, the Caribbean, and gender, Dr. Morgan has made numerous television, radio, and film appearances — among them HBOMax, Netflix, Lifetime, MTV, BET, VH-1, CNN, WBAI’s The Spin, and MSNBC. Dr. Morgan has been a Visiting Instructor at Duke University where she taught The History of Hip-Hop Journalism, a Visiting Research Scholar at Vanderbilt University, and Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University’s Institute for the Diversity of the Arts where she was the recipient of the prestigious 2013 Dr. St. Clair Drake Teaching Award for her course The Pleasure Principle: A Post-Hip Hop Search for a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure. She is the first Visiting Scholar to ever receive the award. She is also a recipient of the 2015 Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowship, the 2015 Penfield Fellowship, the 2016 American Fellowship Award, and a 2020 finalist for the ACLU Emerging Scholars Fellowship.

In 2018 Simon & Schuster published her book She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the acclaimed and influential debut album. Her writing is interdisciplinary as she explores the ways in which music, literature, history, feminism, and the arts provide an entry into her work. In her work, Dr. Morgan examines the complexity of representation of women in visual culture and music by focusing not only on the subjects but also by including a close read of archival materials that looks at the context in which these stories are created.

She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down
linktr.ee/JoanMorgan

Monique W. Morris

Monique W. Morris

What You Mad About?: The "Work" of The Rainbow Children


This presentation will explore The Rainbow Children as one of Prince’s most explicit musical statements on racial justice and the African American tradition of resistance to oppression.


Monique W. Morris


Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. is an award-winning author and social justice scholar with three decades of experience in the areas of education, civil rights, juvenile and social justice. Dr. Morris is the Executive Producer and co-writer of the 2019 documentary film, PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, based upon her two books Sing A Rhythm, Dance A Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls (The New Press, 2019) and Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (The New Press, 2016). She is also the author of Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century (The New Press, 2014), and Too Beautiful for Words (MWM Books, 2012). She also worked with Kemba Smith on her book, Poster Child: The Kemba Smith Story (IBJ Book Publishing, 2011) and has authored dozens of articles exploring race, gender, justice, and education.

moniquewmorris.me

Mark Anthony Neal

Mark Anthony Neal

“Money Don't Matter 2 Night”: Prince and the Mainstreaming of Black Music in the 1990s


During the days of the so-called “Chitlin Circuit”, some Black musicians put more of a premium on being on the road than selling records. The latter issue mattered less in an era where artists, Black artists in particular, were challenged by unfair and exploitative record deals that denied them royalties on record sales and in some cases publishing. Artists made their money being on the road, and most importantly being high up on the bill; the money mattered every night.

When Prince emerged as a Pop star in the 1980s, he did so when the metrics for Black Artists had shifted, and they were not just measured on their appeal to Black radio. Indeed Prince, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Lionel Ritchie, and Whitney Houston, were of a generation of artists expected to commercially outperform rank-and-file R&B acts, but also to match, and even outpace, the sales of the top White pop stars. Prince’s success through the early part of his career, I would argue, was connected to his adeptness at performing Black music on the fringes of mainstream Pop taste. Diamonds and Pearls marks a moment when Prince seemed most invested in presenting Black music in its full and varied forms — anticipating shifts in the political contexts of his music and career.– because he was at a point in his career where “Money [Didn’t] Matter 2 Night”.


Mark Anthony Neal


Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D. is Chair of the Department of African & African American Studies and the founding director of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) at Duke University where he offers courses on Black Masculinity, Popular Culture, and Digital Humanities, including signature courses on Michael Jackson & the Black Performance Tradition, and The History of Hip-Hop, which he co-teaches with Grammy Award Winning producer 9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit).

He also co-directs the Duke Council on Race and Ethnicity (DCORE).

He is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1999), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002) and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013).  The 10th Anniversary edition of Neal’s New Black Man was published in February of 2015 by Routledge. Neal is co-editor of That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Routledge), now in its second edition. Additionally, Neal host of the video webcast Left of Black, which is produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke.

Left of Black Video Podcast
newblackmaninexile.net

Nicolay in front of First Ave

Nicolay

Nicolay


Born and raised in the Netherlands, classically trained multi-instrumentalist and producer Nicolay played in a number of hip-hop and R&B bands around his homeland, but it wasn’t until 2000 that he decided to start producing his own beats. In 2002 Little Brother MC Phonte Coleman stumbled across one of them on Okayplayer’s message board and asked if he could put his rhymes over it, and soon a friendship and a musical relationship were born. This transatlantic collaboration, which they called The Foreign Exchange, led to an album, Connected, in 2004, after which Nicolay continued producing tracks for Little Brother and Cesar Comanche, releasing City Lights Vol. 1.5 first only online and then through BBE Records in 2005. The Dutch Masters, Vol. 1, which featured Nicolay DJing, came out that same year, followed by Here in 2006. In 2008 the producer teamed up with Houston rapper Kay (whom he had also met through message boards and had put on a track on Here) and issued the album Time:Line. The second Foreign Exchange album, Leave It All Behind, came later in the year on the Foreign Exchange label. One of its highlights, “Daykeeper,” was nominated for a Grammy, but not before the 2009 release of Nicolay’s own City Lights, Vol. 2: Shibuya. The Foreign Exchange label expanded during the early 2010s with additional albums from FE and Phonte, as well as releases from collaborators YahZarah, Zo!, and Median. In 2015, Nicolay released another predominantly instrumental solo album, City Lights, Vol. 3: Soweto. Its material, enhanced with vocal contributions from Phonte, Carmen Rodgers, and Tamisha Waden, was inspired by South Africa dates on the Foreign Exchange’s world tour the previous year.

The Foreign Exchange Music Website
Nicolay on Bandcamp

Rhonda Nicole

Rhonda Nicole

(R)Evolution: Prince’s 21st Century Gospel as Imagined through The Rainbow Children


After 2 decades of innovation, envelope-pushing, boundary-erasing, and line-blurring, audiences had come to expect Prince to emerge with a new look, a new sound, and even a new band with every album. An artist who melded the sexual and the spiritual from the very beginning, longtime listeners of his music were hardly surprised by his references to God juxtaposed with musings about his insatiable desires of the flesh. From early performances where he paraded about in bikini briefs and a trench coat, to changing his name to the now-iconic symbol, Prince was never short on surprises. And yet, in 2001, with the release of The Rainbow Children, he once again caught the world off guard with an album that pushed everything he’d done before over the edge, sonically and thematically. This piece explores the cultural reset that is The Rainbow Children, the album that marked a turning point in Prince’s spiritual ideology and reaffirmed his place in the Black music tradition.


Rhonda Nicole


Rhonda Nicole is a Los Angeles-based independent singer/songwriter, music journalist, and social and digital marketing consultant, whose life officially turned purple in 1984. As the managing editor for the now-defunct SoulTrain.com, she interviewed a number of Prince-related artists including Jill Jones, Taja Sevelle, fDeluxe, LiV Warfield, and Andy Allo. She’s currently the director of social media for the National Museum of African American Music, which opened in Nashville in January 2021. Rhonda Nicole’s 2010 debut EP, ‘Nuda Veritas’ and self-produced 2020 releases ‘Radical Ecstasy’ and ‘Home’ are available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms.

rhondanicole.bandcamp.com
rhondanicole.com

Jason Orr

Jason Orr

Jason Orr


Jason Orr is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, marketing consultant, cultural arts curator, and festival producer, most notably, FunkJazz Kafé Arts & Music Festival and Life Arts Documentary Film Festival + Music Conference. He’s the director, writer, and producer of the award-winning documentary film, “FunkJazz Kafé: Diary Of A Decade”, producer of the award-winning “Maynard” documentary on former Atlanta mayor and visionary, Maynard Jackson, producer/director of “Stepping Into Tomorrow’ and director of “Hoodwinked: The Nigga Factory,” a web series produced by Speech of Arrested Development.

Orr has also produced and directed short films and music videos with several mainstream artists such as Meshell Ndegeocello, UK artist Omar Lye-Fook, Dionne Farris, and Van Hunt.

On-screen, Orr has appeared as himself on TV One’s hit series, “Unsung” and Centric’s “Leading Ladies – India Arie,” providing expertise commentary on music and social history.

In 2014, he received a proclamation from the City of Atlanta for his contributions to the city’s music, film, and cultural arts communities.

funkjazzkafe.com

Tonya Pendleton

Tonya Pendleton

Tonya Pendleton


Tonya Pendleton is a multimedia journalist with a two-decade history in news, sports, lifestyle and entertainment reporting. In her current position as a Contributing Editor for The Grio and as “Things To Do” curator for WHYY, she crafts content for a local and global audience. The Philadelphia resident was born and raised in New York City and is a graduate of The New School.

The Grio

Elliott Powell

Elliott H. Powell

Elliott H. Powell


Elliott H. Powell is an Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. His work merges critical race, feminist, and queer theory to consider the political implications of Black popular music. Writings from these research areas are published or forthcoming in The Black ScholarGLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Studies. He is currently at work on a manuscript, Prince, Porn, and Public Sex, which explores the politics of sex(uality) and music in 1980s Minneapolis.

Sounds from the Other Side: Afro–South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music
academic website

Harold Pride

Harold Pride

Perhaps U Recall - "Gett Off" - The Quintessential Maxi Single


The 1980s saw Prince capitalize on the limited space offered on many singles by way of the B-side. By the top of the new decade, no longer having to limit his excess promotional material to a standard variation of the album edit, extended/dance mix, and unrelated B-side, maxi-singles on compact discs gave Prince wider ground to curate experiences around a single; varying from derivations of the original (“Do Your Dance” from Cream) to a non-B-side composition, altogether independent and recorded outside of the thematic structure of its lead (“Loveleft, Loveright” from New Power Generation.) The more common industry practice of the time, content-wise, was to include mixes of the original studio track, occasionally with unused vocal and instrumental components, that endorsed particularity. “Perhaps U Recall” will highlight Prince’s re-establishing dominance as a pop culture producer with “Gett Off”, the most supported maxi-single of his recording career.

Harold Pride


Harold Pride is an independent Black music scholar, community-based lecturer, and arts enthusiast. In addition to various podcast appearances, he’s presented at Spelman College as part of the Posing Beauty exhibit and the Black Albums Matter series at Cal State University among others. An ardent Prince scholar, he’s presented at numerous conferences and symposia on Prince.


Casci Ritchie

Casci Ritchie

The Style We Sportin’ - Redefining New Power Masculinities in Prince’s ‘Gett Off’


His Royal Badness stormed the MTV Video Music Awards stage on September 5, 1991, with an infamous live performance of the single ‘Gett Off’. Prince performed a giant burlesque on stage without removing a single layer: gyrating, flexing, and grinding in a two-piece crafted by Stacia Lang with an illusion net peephole that framed the musician’s pert derriere. The citron yellow Guipure lace buttocks bearing ensemble is now part of the global pop vernacular and heralds Prince as the immortal sexual deviant of popular music.

Diamonds and Pearls solidified Prince as a fashion icon for the new decade and introduced the audience to a New Power masculinity had not witnessed before. Against the growing popularity of hip hop and the genre’s aggressively heteronormative masculinities, the Diamonds and Pearls wardrobe was a defiant subversion of traditional Black masculinities, resulting in a gender and genre non-confirming sartorial statement that remains both controversial and influential today.

Looking at the ‘Gett Off’ maxi-single music videos including ‘Violet the Organ Grinder’, ’Gangster Glam’, and the salacious VMA performance, this presentation will examine the many ways in which Prince disrupted hegemonic masculinities through dress, styling, and performance.


Casci Ritchie


Casci Ritchie is a fashion historian, writer, and independent film programmer based in Glasgow, Scotland. She holds a BA Hons in Fashion Design, an MA in Fashion Body Wear, and an MLitt in Dress and Textile Histories. Her dissertation explored the impact of cinema-going on Glaswegian women during the 1940s and the relationship between Hollywood, personal style, and body image. She has continued to develop her passion for twentieth-century fashion from creation to consumption with a particular interest in fashion in film, popular culture, and sub-cultures.

Thanks to her parents’ excellent taste in music, Casci has been a lifelong fan of His Royal Badness and is passionate about raising awareness of Prince’s sartorial legacy within fashion studies. She is currently researching all aspects of Prince’s iconic style and has presented her purple research at various academic conferences across the UK, Europe, and America. Her chapter “Before the Rain, 1979-84: How Prince Got ‘The Look” was recently published within Prince in Popular Music: Critical Perspectives. Earlier this year her articles, “Fashioning Prince: Bikini briefs, trench coats, and zoot suits, 1978-1991” and “Prince the provocateur: The disruption of masculinities through the style of Prince Rogers Nelson” were published in the peer-reviewed journals Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion and Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture. She hosts a film night with illustrated fashion talks specializing in cult films with killer style and writes for various online platforms such as Screen Queens and Dismantle Magazine. Casci is currently in the process of writing an illustrated short book celebrating Prince’s life in fashion.

casciritchie.com

Chinisha Scott

Chinisha Scott

Chinisha Scott


Chinisha Scott is a multihyphenate working in film, television, and live production for the last 15 years. She is also a life-long, certified Prince super-fam. She attended The New School where she received her MA in Media Studies, and a BA in Cinema Studies with a minor in African-American Studies from the CUNY Macaulay Honors College, cum laude. She enjoys doing the NY Times puzzle (in pen) but prefers the app on her phone.

justchinisha.com
cosmic dust productions

Hasit Shah

Hasit Shah

Hasit Shah


Hasit Shah is an editor at Quartz, a research fellow at Harvard University, and a former senior producer at BBC News. He is from London.


Afshin Shahidi

Afshin Shahidi

Afshin Shahidi


Afshin Shahidi is a New York Times, Best-Selling Author, and award-winning Photographer, Cinematographer, and Filmmaker. His journey began in his native Iran, where he was surrounded and inspired by the art of his city of Mashad. The films, poetry, and rich culture of Iran became foundational and influential to his work. Shahidi migrated to the United States, alongside his mother, settling in Minneapolis. He considers himself fortunate to be placed in a city so steeped in art and music and that ultimately connected him with the most important collaborator and supporter of his career – the late musical Icon, Prince.

Shahidi first met Prince in 1993 at Paisley Park on a music video shoot and eventually became his cinematographer and still photographer, capturing Prince in concert and at play, in highly styled settings and in candid situations. Shahidi was the photographer for the musician’s legendary 3121 parties in Los Angeles as well as on the road with Prince all over the world.

His work has been featured on the covers of several albums including Prince – 3121Prince Live at the Aladdin Las Vegas, and Prince & the New Power Generation One Nite Alone…Live!.

His 20-year collaboration with Prince helped shape Shahidi’s vision of a world where, as Prince exemplified, anything is possible. In his recent NY Times Best-selling book, Prince, A Private View, Shahidi’s photos and stories chronicle his time with Prince.

Shahidi’s career has spanned three decades and five continents, with projects ranging from commercials, music videos, album cover art, feature films, and most recently, documentaries. His Documentary, With Drawn Arms, brings to light Olympic Gold Medalist Tommie Smith’s journey from his Iconic salute atop the winners’ podium in 1968 to how his profound gesture and activism is a call to action for us today. The film was an official selection of the Tribeca Film Festival and the opening night film for the Hamptons International Film Festival this year.

As an immigrant whose culture has many times been overlooked or stereotyped, Shahidi is focused on championing untold stories and bringing to light the rich textures of life outside of the mainstream.

Shahidi, alongside his wife Keri and daughter Yara, has moved into the expanded world of storytelling, through their new production company, 7th Sun Productions.

Upcoming projects for Afshin include a two-man show, “Icons & Immigrants”, a new literary project, and the development of three original scripts.

Shahidi lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

Prince: A Private View Photo Book
Afshin on San Francisco Art Exchange

D Simmons Jendayi

D Simmons Jendayi

D Simmons Jendayi

Moderator


D Simmons Jendayi is a Brooklyln-based organizational development strategist who uses the power of social impact to build diverse and equitable cultures of inclusion. She has loved Prince from jump; always mesmerized by the way Prince’s life and music help underserved and marginalized people recognize their worth and feel centered. D serves as Associate Director of Special Initiatives for the Liberal Studies Dean’s Office at New York University and is an alumna of Stanford University. As a social justice advocate who connects with Prince’s artistic portfolio, D is excited to join this dynamic collection of Prince connoisseurs.


Aisha K. Staggers

Aisha K. Staggers

7 Ways Prince Celebrates Black History, Culture, and Political Ideology in The Rainbow Children


From its cover art to its lyrics and musical composition, The Rainbow Children is a celebration of Black history, cultural traditions, and political thought that takes listeners through Prince’s journeys and experiences as a Black man in America. In this discussion, I will point to seven specific examples where Prince weaved the telling of Black American history, Black artistic expression, and the theoretical studies of Black thought and philosophy he was undertaking at the time with his life experiences as a Black man who grew up during the civil rights era, the Black power 1970s, his prosperity in the ’80s and his enlightenment in the ’90s and millennium. This journey will look at some of the often overlooked and misunderstood interpretations of this album and offer a way to reconsider how to listen to it based on stories I have learned from Prince’s friends and associates that explain some of the cultural nuances, as well as a historical perspective that will foster a better understanding of the ways in which blackness influenced the making of this album.


Aisha K. Staggers


Aisha K. Staggers, M.F.A., is a writer and literary agent. She appears weekly as a political analyst and culture critic with Jill Jones and Dr. Vibe on the award-winning, internationally syndicated Dr. Vibe Show. Her work has been published by Paper Magazine, Medium, The Spool, GREY Journal, MTV News, HuffPost, Blavity, AfroPunk, Atlanta Blackstar, For Harriet, The New York Review of Books, and a host of other first-run publications and syndicated outlets. She agented the book, There Was A Time: James Brown The Chitlin’ Circuit And Me (Post Hill Press, 2020), by Alan Leeds with a foreword by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. She is currently the Managing Editor for Sister 2 Sister magazine and News Onyx.

muckrack.com/aisha-k-staggers

Matt Thorne

Matt Thorne

The Opposite of Nato is What Now?:  How Seriously Should We Take ‘The Rainbow Children’ Twenty Years On?


Prince’s The Rainbow Children is an album that divides Prince fans: those who love it, and those who really love it (there may be some other fan-perspectives but I’m choosing to ignore them for now). For an experimental record, it also had a surprisingly wide impact, both at the time and subsequently. Prince played sizeable venues on the tour, with an uncompromising show, and the album and live set have been reissued in a recent set while other more mainstream albums languish. But when it was over it was over (Prince played few songs from it live in later years, and rarely discussed it). My talk will discuss some of the reasons for this and why it remains important to any understanding of Prince the man and musician.


Matt Thorne


Author of six novels, three children’s books, one film and critical study of pop star Prince, Prince: The Man and His Music (2016).

Prince: The Man and His Music
literature.britishcouncil.org

Erica Thompson

Erica Thompson

‘1 + 1 + 1 is 3’ – Order, Discipline, Truth and other Christian Values in Prince’s The Rainbow Children


In his memoir, The Beautiful Ones, Prince describes his father as an orderly, moral, self-sufficient man who attended church regularly and read the Bible daily. In Prince’s eyes, there was a direct correlation between spirituality and his father’s structured way of living. “Religion is about self-development,” Prince writes. “That’s all it is.” That philosophy can be found throughout Prince’s discography, but most pointedly on his 2001 album, The Rainbow Children.

At that time, Prince was embracing the Jehovah’s Witness faith, a sect of Christianity based on unique Biblical interpretation, strict rules for living and a rigorous practice of evangelism. This presentation outlines how Prince uses The Rainbow Children to promote the religion and its emphasis on order, discipline, and truth. The presenter will tie those values back to Prince’s father, one of his earliest religious and musical influences, and demonstrate how they show up in the sound and aesthetic of the era — which focuses heavily on jazz and funk traditions.


Erica Thompson


Erica Thompson is the Ohio regional business reporter covering race, gender, and the economy for the Columbus Dispatch and the USA Today Network. Her articles have also appeared on Billboard.com, Mic.com, HuffPost.com, TVLine.com, and UltimatePrince.com. She has been awarded by the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting.

A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Thompson has a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University’s acclaimed E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, where she completed her thesis on Prince. She was invited to present her research on Prince’s spirituality at Purple Reign: An interdisciplinary conference on the life and legacy of Prince at the University of Salford, UK; the Prince from Minneapolis symposium at the University of Minnesota; the Prince EYE NO: Lovesexy symposium at New York University (NYU) and the virtual Prince #DM40GB30 symposium at NYU.

She has been published in Theology and Prince, an edited collection on theology and the life, music, and films of Prince Rogers Nelson. She is currently finishing her first book, a comprehensive study of Prince’s spiritual journey.

apurpledayindecember.com

Laura Tiebert

Laura Tiebert

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Diamonds and Pearls


After the commercial disappointment of Graffiti Bridge, Prince told USA Today, “It was one of the purest, most spiritual, uplifting things I’ve ever done. Maybe it will take people thirty years to get it. They trashed The Wizard of Oz at first, too.” The liner notes for Prince’s next album, 1991’s Diamonds and Pearls, include acknowledgments ranging from “insomnia” to “Glam Slam,” with the final tip of Prince’s fedora going to The Wizard of Oz. Now, thirty years later, can we better understand Diamonds and Pearls by considering it against the framework of The Wizard of Oz?

Like The Wizard of Oz, Diamonds and Pearls opens with a storm (“Thunder”), then launches us down the yellow brick road. From “Cream” to “Willing and Able,” “Walk Don’t Walk” and “Push,” the majority of the songs are an encouragement about the power, beauty, and intelligence we each have. Diamonds and Pearls is Prince’s declaration that while the journey down the yellow brick road to self-empowerment is filled with challenges, confidence and trust in ourselves is the key that will ultimately open the gates of Oz.


Laura Tiebert


Laura Tiebert, formerly of Chanhassen, MN, is a writer and editor who’s spent several years studying and writing about Prince. Laura is the author of five books, including The Rise of Prince: 1958-1988, which she co-authored with Alex Hahn and which won a national award for biography from Independent Publisher. A lifelong Prince fan, Laura’s experience delving into Prince’s life inspired her to devote an entire year to living like him. Her blog, lauratiebert.com, became a near-daily exploration of the roadmap Prince left us, showing how to live an extraordinary life. A regular contributor to the Press Rewind podcast hosted by Jason Breininger, Laura also speaks frequently on how to live like Prince and is creating an online course which will launch later in 2021. Rather than simply admiring Prince, Laura encourages fans to take a walk in his shoes — because we’re all capable of so much more than we realize.

The Rise of Prince: 1958-1988
http://lauratiebert.com/

Karen Turman

Karen Turman

Filthy Cute: Image, Style, and Dance in ‘Cream'


“Hail the grown-up ‘gangster glam’ image”: George Kalogerakis described Prince’s aesthetic as such around the release of the Diamonds and Pearls album in his article accompanied by a now-legendary photoshoot by Herb Ritts for Vogue’s January issue of 1992.  Prince’s newly polished and refined image, which Kalogerakis pronounced as a bizarre mashup of the aesthetics from the films Godfather III and Barbarella, centered on an exquisite “typhoon” hairstyle, “reorganized” five-o-clock shadow, and entirely reconstructed wardrobe by new head of design, Stacia Lang. Diamonds and Pearls proved his most successful album since Purple Rain in 1984, with four singles in the Billboard Top 30. His second single “Cream” claimed its place “on top” as the last of his five number 1 hit songs in his career. Often critiqued as merely a “production-tooled” and “empty” track created solely for commercial success, the “Cream” music video belies significant depth below the surface of pastiche, camp, and self-conscious lyrics and references. This presentation will analyze the aesthetics, style, and choreography of “Cream” as the crystallization of Prince’s “gangster glam” and “pop dandy” image, showcasing the completed transition from his late 1980s rebranding before his tumultuous legal and artistic journey into the 1990s.


Karen Turman


Karen Turman Ph.D. is a Preceptor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She earned her B.A. (2001) at the University of Minnesota, and her M.A. (2008) and Ph.D. (2013) in French Literature with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her interdisciplinary research interests include 19th-century Bohemian Paris, music, and dance during the Jazz Age, fashion and popular culture studies, community engagement scholarship, and topics of social justice and sustainability in the language classroom. Dr. Turman’s publications on Prince include an essay on Josephine Baker, Claude McKay, and Prince entitled “Banana Skirts and Cherry Moons: Utopic French Myths in Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon,” and “Prettyman in the Mirror: Dandyism in Prince’s Minneapolis.”

rll.fas.harvard.edu/people/karen-turman

Arthur Turnbull

Arthur Turnbull

Arthur Turnbull

Moderator & Symposium Co-Producer


Arthur Turnbull began a career in technology as Technical Wizard for Jellyvision, makers of the video game series You Don’t Know Jack. He continued on as Technology Manager for Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, a leader in third stream. In 2018, he started Arturo Solo LLC, a managed services consultancy. Arthur is also a co-founder of Wildflower LLC, home to The Music SnobsMad UnrealSnobs On Film, and Entry Points podcasts.

The Music Snobs podcast
Mad Unreal podcast
Snobs on Film podcast
Entry Points podcast

Marc Wiggins

Marc Wiggins


Left school in 10th grade to work as a roadie with Bay Area bands including Journey, Santana, and Night Ranger.

Decided to go college in 1985 after a discussion with Journey guitarist Neal Schon.

Essentially went from completing 9th grade straight to CSU Sacramento.

In 1987 while in college, I became a Pro Wrestler, which was a LOT of fun, but a Cornea Transplant in 1990 ended that.

In 2005, I had an essay published in the autobiography of Hall of fame Wrestler Dusty Rhodes, Memories of An American Dream.

After completing law school and being admitted to the Bar, a judge suggested that I become an agent. I did the research and at the time the NFL was the only one that required a test for certification. So I gave them a call and set it up.

So in the population of “dropouts who go from 9th grade to being a roadie then directly to college, spending time in the wrestling ring, becoming a California attorney, then becoming an NFL certified contract advisor and member of the United States Supreme Court Bar Association and Grammy member,” as of now only has one person: Me.

Podcast on Prince on podcastjuice.net
Support Podcast on Prince on Patreon

Darling Nisi

KaNisa Williams

The Truth or That Which is Resistant to it: The Rainbow Children as a Path to Personal Enlightenment and Integration


You see what you see based on how you see. The Rainbow Children, dubbed “controversial” even in its marketing is one of Prince’s most divisive works in his discography. While undeniably funky, many tend to dismiss the messages of this work as “too religious” or hard to follow with the dense allusions and thematic threads through the music. However, much can be learned from this work, especially as an exercise in liberation of the mind, or in “surrendering what you know to what you’re willing to learn.” From identity politics and societal programming to Black liberation and personal enlightenment, The Rainbow Children asks a wealth of insightful questions designed to help the listener engage more deeply with the world they live in and leads the listener in introspectively exploring the bias and motivations behind their own behavior.


KaNisa Williams


KaNisa Williams is a lifelong computer enthusiast with a passion for humanizing technology. As an avid gamer and programmer from the age of 4 via her family’s Tandy 2000, she has grown up with a vested interest in technology, developing websites for local arts organizations from the age of 11, graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and turning her love affair with digital solutions into a career in Human Computer Interaction and Organizational Ergonomics.

KaNisa is currently a Senior Lead Technologist at Booz Allen Hamilton working in the capacity of an Agile Coach. In this role she works as a consultant in Agile software methodology transformations for large organizations, teaches classes in these topics, and coaches teams in optimizing their group dynamics, when she herself is not facilitating development teams as a Scrum Master. KaNisa also leads a cohort of Human Computer Interaction professionals for her market! She wears a lot of hats!

Outside of work life, KaNisa is known as “Darling Nisi” and she lends her talents to help be a purple signal boost, especially in regard to self-reflection through the study and appreciation of Prince. She is the host of the Muse 2 the Pharaoh podcast, where she explores purple topics from a female perspective. KaNisa also maintains a purple presence on Tumblr and Twitter to help spread the message of compassion toward others, but more importantly toward self, through the lessons found in the music of Prince.

Muse2thepharaoh.com
darlingnisi.net