Purple Rain

I know that I’m showing my age a bit here with this review but when it comes to Prince, I really don’t care. I’ve told anyone who would listen for the past week and a half that as a kid growing up in a Black family, you were almost forced to make a choice between Michael Jackson and Prince back when they were both at the top of their games. Don’t get me wrong, we liked them both, mainly for the fact that they were Black, but one was definitely made fun of more than the other.

Well my family chose Michael Jackson, so I kind of had to be a closet Prince fan growing up. Anytime there was a party or a fish fry, I was always the one who would sneak a Prince album into the stack of records that were on deck to be played. And even though it annoyed him to no end, I also forced my brother to play the Purple Rain soundtrack almost every night; I don’t know, something about that album just spoke to me. Maybe it was the fact that I saw that movie just south of a hundred times and wanted to marry Apollonia as a result of it. Or maybe it was because I really wanted to be Prince when I grew up. Every time he performed he somehow managed to casually ooze this dominant virility (and yes I’m aware of how that sounds) while doing, what appeared at the time, to be eccentric or weird behavior.

Just look at the original pop opera Purple Rain (sorry Beyonce’). In what other world can he simply stand behind one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the planet and convince her to fall for him? And then basically three days later, while she’s being hit on by his rival Morris Day (more on him later), sing a song called The Beautiful Ones where he says "What if we got married, wouldn’t that be cool?", so passionately that she goes off and buys him a guitar, despite the fact she lives in an apartment that most homeless people wouldn’t even want to live in.

This is also a world where it’s perfectly fine for a man to go on stage rocking white studded boots with six inch stiletto heels and a pirate shirt and somehow still be considered to be one of the sexiest men alive! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never had any desire to wear heels or have bigger hair than most women in Texas do but I did want to have the power to convince an Apollonia to strip completely naked and jump into a lake on our first date. By the way, that scene is the main reason why I refuse to watch the VH1 edited version of Purple Rain, how can I see this movie and not be exposed to one of the greatest natural racks this universe has ever seen.

Anyway, I was so impressed by this man and this movie that I practiced all of his dance moves; and that included his shirtless dancing to Computer Blue and his dry humping of the floor to Darling Nikki. However I never did get the guts to wear a lace Zorro mask around my eyes while doing so; I can only imagine the discussion that would’ve taken place had my mother walked in on me. "Well you see mom, my hope is to one day get the lead singer of this group called Apollonia 6! They are these three women who go on stage wearing nothing but lingerie and sing a song called Sex Shooter. ‘I’m a Sex Shooter, shooting my love at you’". This really happened in the movie by the way and yes, men were offering them dollar bills as they sang it. And no this wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen.

In this semi-biography, The Kid (Prince) and his band are trying to make it big in Minneapolis’s most famous nightclub while going up against their chief rival Morris Day and the Time. Morris Day is the more popular of the two because his music, while good, is what the people are used to and what they’ve come to expect from live shows. Well he’s well aware of his status and he uses it to take advantage of people at every turn. He does whatever it takes to get money and women; and for the most part he’s crazy successful at it. The funny thing is he’s able to do all of this while routinely making Charlie Chaplin faces and squawking like a bird from time to time. Trust me when I say you have to see it to understand it. And what’s even funnier is that my dad actually bought his album and played it quite frequently for his pre party music.

Well while The Kid is attempting to woo Apollonia and get his music off the ground, he’s also dealing with band turmoil and an abusive situation between his parents at home. And no matter what he does, he slowly sees himself tuning into his father. Will he get his life figured out before he destroys everything he’s worked so hard for? Or will he wind up being just like his father, too bold. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Anyway, watching this classic made me remember what made these songs so special in the first place and why they resonated with me so much. I found myself singing along and dancing to them in the theater, so much so that my leg cramped up at one point (I ran seven miles before going) and I had to let out a scream. Luckily for me, the other patrons didn’t know if I was screaming because I was in pain or if I was simply mimicking Prince. Either way, the cramp went away in time for me to sing and dance my way out of the theater. Do yourself a favor and pop into a theater to see Purple Rain while it’s still there as this film gets a rating of very FRESH!