Come - Prince (CD 1994)

In 1994 rumor had it Prince was retiring. If it was true, he'd picked an apt time. His box set had just come out the year before and, to be honest, his past few records had been, in my opinion, less than his best stuff. The peak had come and gone and he might as well get out while he can with some dignity. So it was a surprise to me one day when I was walking to the bank to cash my paycheck, saw some friends I hadn't talked to in maybe a month, got into the car, went to the mall with them, and saw sitting in the record store a new Prince tape. It was a black and white cover photo of Prince in front of a high metal gate with the legend "Prince 1958 1993" at the top and the word "Come" in big white letters across the bottom.

What's this? I wondered. I'd just cashed my check so, without hesitation, I bought it.

There is a God and he loves me.

"If you're 18 and over, come here. I got something for your mind," Prince says in the opening. We're in for a treat, I think.

COME is only 9 tracks, just like the Prince albums of old, an understated quantity of tracks in the age of 13-, 14-, 18-track albums, and there was almost NO promotion for this thing. Anyone who bought this record did so because chance led them to see it, believe me. If I'm not mistaken, this was a "contractual obligation" record, not one Prince set out to make, but one he put together to get Warner Bros. off his back (and here I'll let you in on a secret--for about 5 years, the "contractual obligation" records were better than the "official" Prince records). Anyway, back to COME.

This is definitely a different breed of album. There's a running theme throughout the record, waves crashing and Prince reciting poetry, part of which is lifted from Song of Solomon in the Bible, between songs, I guess to give a kind of unity to an otherwise chaotic jumble.

Whatever the reason, I don't care, I'm just glad I happened to see this record in the store the day I got paid.

The first song, "Come" is an 11:13 marathon of jazzy horns over a drum machine coupled with some of Prince's most "daring" (I hate to use that word, but it's really the only one that fits) lyrics in a long time.

"When I call you up, I wanna tell you what to wear / Don't be surprised if I tell ya go bare / Long as you wash between your soul and through your hair / I'll do my duty there."

Nice.

Dirty lyrics aside, the music is great, a perfect combination of two genres like only Prince can do it. It's only somewhere in the middle, when you begin to realize this song isn't ending any time soon, that it gets less enjoyable and a little tedious, especially when he stops singing in the middle of the song and makes . . . slurping noises . . . to simulate, well, never mind. It's the only part of the song I really would rather do without because it's here where he crosses the line between interesting song and gratuitous crap. And at over 10 minutes, it begins to throw off the balance of the rest of the album.

"Space", the second song and one of the few singles from the record is another interesting bit. Starting with a sample of dialogue from, of all places, the (70s version?) of the TV mini-series version of Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles", the dance beat comes in and we're off.

I never been one to hide my feelings / Baby you blow my mind / I painted your face upon my ceiling / I stare at it all the time / (I) Imagine myself inside your bedroom / (I) Imagine myself in your sky / (You) You are the reason there's bass in my boom / (You) You are the reason I'm high / If you and I were just ten feet closer, then I'd make you understand / Everything I wanna do to your body, baby, I would do to your head / Then you'll be hip to the deep rush / Deeper than the boom of the bass / With every other flick of the pink plush / The closer we get to Space."

It's not a song for everyone, but I think if the record had been given the proper promotion, this song MIGHT have hit the top forty, it's certainly worthy. It's really a record of half dance tracks and half "social commentary" songs, all done Prince style, with some of his best lyrics in years over the top.

In hindsight, I see what he was doing with the "retiring" bit and changing his name, distancing himself from Warner Bros. and any post-1993 Warner Bros. Prince albums, but come on, they were releasing the stuff he should have been releasing all along.

The third song, "Pheromone" opens with one of those Song of Solomon quotes I was telling you about. "Lie down beneath my shadow with great delight and your fruit will be sweet to me." His falsetto on this song suits it better than any other of his many singing voices would have.

"Pheromone rush over me like an ocean / Pheromone control my every motion / Pheromone, I'm helpless as a pet / Pheromone, when I see your naked body sweat."

It's been too long since he's been this dirty on a record, and those are the clean lyrics, believe me.

"Loose!", the side one closer, is really not all that intriguing, a straight club song with pounding beats and Prince rapping--although it is better than the remix "Get Loose" from the Crystal Ball set. There are, however, some interesting lyrics in verse 2. "Bangin' gangs, slangin' wangs and rock / Won't gain you nothin' but an angry cop / Get your education first, then buy a pair of shoes." Another political song perhaps, a rap song to speak to the rap-listening youth who, at the time, were all about NWA and the gangster rap scene? Probably. Nice job.

The 2:48 "Papa" continues the social message portion of our record. It's a slow, steady beat with a little synth underneath, nothing over the top, Prince pretty much speaking the lyrics.

"He got snatched by his pop who then opened up the closet door / & pushed the 4-year-old down into the closet floor / Baby cried, 'I'm sorry, I won't do it no more' / Papa said, 'Yeah, I know. That's what this here is for'

SMACK--Ooh Papa
SMACK SMACK--Ooh Papa, Papa"

slow and steady until the last few seconds where Prince utters, quietly, "Don't abuse children, or else they turn out like me" before the drums and guitars really kick in for the close.

Things stay pretty much the same with "Race", yet another dance track, this time with a "Face the Music" sample and lyrics so rapid you can hardly follow along.

"Of all the things that base a rhyme / How is it that you every time / Regurgitate the racist lines that keep us apart?"

You can hear it in his voice, the message he's trying to get across, the seriousness with which he wrote the song, the hopefulness with which he wants someone to get it.

"Race--in the space, I mark human
Race--face the music, we all bones when we dead"

I read an interview with Prince years before this record came out where he was talking about his newest song, a 20-minute opus called "So Dark", which he was trying to whittle down to a more album-friendly length. For COME, he got it down to 6:10 and it comes on as the Prince ballad to raise the bar on all future Prince ballads, with some hints of songs to come, most notably "I Hate U" from the then-unreleased GOLD EXPERIENCE. Sometimes that falsetto of his says it all.

"Solo" is one of two Prince songs I absolutely hate, and I might just hate it more than "Strollin'" from DIAMONDS AND PEARLS. That song I can at least suffer through. "Solo" however, is just . . . it's so bad I can't even explain it. It's also the only song on the record he didn't write himself, collaborating with David Henry Hwang. I can't even go into it. It's just bad.

"Letitgo" was the first single and I even heard it on the radio once, to my surprise. I was not, however, surprised to never hear it again. Good song, though. Standard Prince pop beat, nothing sets it apart, really, from any other song except the lyrics. Prince sings a lot about himself, I've noticed--at least I think it does--but rarely with this kind of . . . let's call it honesty.

"All my life I've kept my feelings deep inside / Never was a reason to let somebody know / Lover here, lover there, who cried, who cared, foolish pride / Never was a good seat at any of this man's shows"

and in verse 3,

"14 years and tears I've longed to sing my song / But a horse couldn't drag your a ss to put me on / But now I've got an army and we're 3 million strong / The song will ring in your ears when we are gone."

Again, better promotion--and if he hadn't just said he was retiring and then changed his name to the symbol, solidifying the world's "freak" perception of him--this song could have been a big enough single. Probably not huge, but it's better than some of the other stuff he's released.

Anyone who knows anything about Prince records knows that typical Prince fashion is that he does few things in typical Prince fashion. As proof, listen to the album closer "Orgasm". It's a song in only the most basic way. It's got music in the form of some very Hendrix-inspired guitar play, and it's on an album. If that qualifies it as a song, then it's a song. Otherwise, it's a woman--Mayte I'll assume, his soon-to-be, if not already at that time, bride--moaning in what simply has to be authentic bliss. Not even Meg Ryan was this good at faking it. It's a song every man will love and most women too--despite its lack of lyrics, melody, or anything else that makes a song--even if only for the shear daring behind it. It goes on for just over a minute and a half, then Prince says, "I love you" and there's silence as the record ends, leaving the listener wondering what the hell they've just experienced.

Start to finish, COME is one of the best Prince records in his long career, even if he is reluctant to claim it (I see his website no longer has "contractual obligation" pasted over the cover on his discography page, but that's still what it was, I'm almost positive). The problem would be in finding a copy now almost 9 years later. It's got a feel to it that no other Prince records have, a certain something I can't pinpoint that makes it stand out, but no matter how different it is, it's still Prince and I have to commend whoever it was that picked the songs, whether Prince himself or an exec at Warners, cuz someone did one hell of a job (excepting "Solo", that is--HORRIBLE song, yuch!!!).

If you're lucky enough to find a copy of this, buy it. Don't think about it, don't ponder the question, just pick it up and take it to the counter. And if you happen to find an extra copy of it on CD, buy it for me so I can listen to this one in my car, too, will ya? Thanks.