I Wonder U: How Prince Went beyond Race and Back

I Wonder U: How Prince Went beyond Race and Back

by Adilifu Nama
I Wonder U: How Prince Went beyond Race and Back

I Wonder U: How Prince Went beyond Race and Back

by Adilifu Nama

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Overview

Featured in the 2020 Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show

In 1993, Prince infamously changed his name to a unique, unpronounceable symbol. Yet this was only one of a long string of self-reinventions orchestrated by Prince as he refused to be typecast by the music industry’s limiting definitions of masculinity and femininity, of straightness and queerness, of authenticity and artifice, or of black music and white music.
 
Revealing how he continually subverted cultural expectations, I Wonder U examines the entirety of Prince’s diverse career as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, record label mogul, movie star, and director. It shows how, by blending elements of R&B, rock, and new wave into an extremely videogenic package, Prince was able to overcome the color barrier that kept black artists off of MTV. Yet even at his greatest crossover success, he still worked hard to retain his credibility among black music fans. In this way, Adilifu Nama suggests, Prince was able to assert a distinctly black political sensibility while still being perceived as a unique musical genius whose appeal transcended racial boundaries.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781978805163
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publication date: 11/15/2019
Edition description: None
Pages: 186
Sales rank: 656,265
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range: 16 - 18 Years

About the Author

ADILIFU NAMA is a professor of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has written numerous books about the intersection between African American Studies and pop culture, including Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes and Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino.
 

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Incognegro 10

2 On the Black Hand Side 36

3 Enfant Terrible 58

4 Cherry Bomb 82

5 Chaos and Crossroads 107

6 Don't Call It a Comeback… 130

7 Dearly Beloved; An Epitaph 146

Acknowledgments 155

Notes 157

Index 165

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