In 1984, Prince achieved the greatest crossover success of his career with the triumvirate of the Purple Rain soundtrack, film, and tour. With it, he demonstrated not only his musical prowess but also his brilliance as a black artist who knew how to market himself to a mainstream white audience. However, just a decade later with the release of the Come album, Prince embarked on his iconic mission to emancipate himself from his record label. At the same time, he boldly proclaimed the death of an iteration of his persona that no longer suited him.

The aptly titled track “Race,” from the Come album represents the end of Prince’s ambiguous, Pollyanna approach to race in his music. As Cedric Burrows argues in his book Rhetorical Crossover: The Black Presence in White Culture, to achieve mainstream success with white audiences, black artists are compelled to ignore race or espouse colorblindness in their music. Prince was no different. Early in his career, references to race were situated in fantasies of colorblind utopia. However, as his career progressed, Prince’s treatment of race in his music evolved from simplistic oblique references to more complex direct statements and indictments. He moved away from presentations of his own racial ambiguity to situate himself as a member of the black community and a participant in its ongoing liberation movement—to the consternation of some fans. Using Burrows’ framework for the stages of rhetorical crossover, this presentation will examine Prince’s lyrical evolution from utopian dreamer to black liberationist. 

Kamilah Cummings is a writer, editor, and visiting senior lecturer at DePaul University in Chicago. She has presented on Prince at Purple Reign, the first academic Prince conference (University of Salford, UK), and at Polished Solid Prince symposia at New York University, Spelman College, and online. She has also presented on Prince at The 2021 Pop Convergence (PopCon). Her work on Prince has been published in the Howard Journal of Communications special issue Prince in/as Blackness . . . and Prince and Popular Music: Critical Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Life (Bloomsbury). She has also created the course, Prince: A New Breed Leader. A House music researcher as well, she created the course The House Chicago Built, has presented on House music at Black Portraiture[s] IV (Harvard University), and appears in the documentary The Woodstock of House. She is passionate about exploring the intersections of race and identity in media and pop culture, with a particular focus on centering blackness in the narratives of black people.