Q&A: Touré on his Prince book I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon

Today is the 30th anniversary of the release of Purple Rain by Prince. So I thought I'd dig into the vaults and post this Q&A I did with author and broadcaster Touré in April last year discussing his book on Prince entitled I Would Die 4 U. The book explores Prince's place in society by looking at him through a lens of sex, spirituality and Generation X.

Why did you think now was the right time to write this book?

Well, I mean I’ve been a huge fan of Prince and I’ve been interested in his career for a long time and [Henry Louis] 'Skip' Gates at Harvard asked me to do a series of lectures about culture at Harvard. Its an annual series, he asked me to do it for last year, so two years ago we talked about it and said I could write and spend a lot of time studying the music of Prince, so that was the initial impetus. But I think on a deeper level for a few years, I think as a culture I think we collectively and righteously were in reverence of Michael Jackson following his sudden death -- and I think that was correct -- but when we took a breather after a year and a half, two years of that, I thought, well, there was this other guy who was pretty awesome at the same time and maybe we should give him some attention before he’s gone.

So do you think he’s been overlooked in some ways?

I wouldn’t say he’s been overlooked but I think over the past recent period Michael Jackson has gotten the lion’s share of the attention because he needed it. You know because he had a rough last decade in terms of how the culture viewed him so we were righting that ship and were real busy thinking about Michael Jackson and now maybe let’s think about Prince for a minute.

That’s interesting because they weren’t necessarily best buddies, They were obviously aware of each other though.

The culture looked at them in tandem, they were huge at a similar time. Like Thriller and Purple Rain come out...and they were sort of operating in the culture at the same time during that '80s period.

Just to get into some of the themes you explore you do highlight the spiritual and religious connections that some people may not look at when you first think of him? What’s been your feedback to that?

I think a lot of people are happy that I noticed that, happy that we are discussing Prince something deeper than as just a sort of sexual being. He’s much more than that.

What was the process on working and getting all your research together?

Well, I talked to a lot of people. For the first part of the book, it’s mainly talking to people, people who played with him in the Revolution and engineers, tour managers, ex-girlfriends, some musicologists. But for the last section where I talk about spirituality, you know, I wanted to talk to a couple of Bible scholars and those who are or were Seventh Day Adventists which was his childhood phase to understand a bit of what he was doing there to make the connections around what the music was actually doing. Because y’know, I think if you don’t know the faith as I did not before doing this, you will probably miss a lot of the allusions that he’s making, or the reasons why he’s saying certain things. And when you start to understand what Seventh Day Adventism is about then you’ll better understand better what he’s doing.

How willing were people to talk about him. He’s obviously a very private individual

I mean all the people who spoke to me were willing to speak to me. I didn’t attack anybody to speak against their will. There were several people who I reached out to who said they couldn’t do it and a lot of people were more than happy to talk to me. It’s been a long time since they worked for Prince in a lot of cases so y’know they’re like 'Sure, I’ll talk to you.'

There was one particular segment in the book where you detail your encounter with him while writing a cover story. As I was reading that section it reminded me of the Dave Chappelle Prince skit.

For sure, but my story predates the Chappelle skit by many years.

I guess I wanted to ask what you thought of that.

He loves playing basketball. He plays basketball with a lot of people. He had not really let the public see much of that before I played basketball with him. But they are a lot of people who played basketball with him. Most of them are not famous people but it’s one of his ways of interacting with people.

But what did you think when you saw that skit?

What I saw with what Charlie [Murphy] did, was that’s my story. It’s what I did. I lived that same thing years before.

I’ve noticed in recent years Prince has been a bit more willing to be more public given your perspective?

I don’t think he’s being any more public. He’s occasionally done a little thing here and there, like the MTV Awards, a Grammy thing, you know, he’s got some new music that he wants to play and promote, but I don’t think he’s been any more public than he has been typically.

Given how well known he is around the world there really isn’t much information out there about him. How hard was it to be authoritative and to come to conclusions when dealing with his personal life?

Well I wasn’t dealing with his personal life, I was dealing with his public life. I was dealing with the music that we’ve all heard and talking to people who know him first hand about who he is. So his private life, for the most part was not what I was dealing with.

Yeah. But there are definitely things that would obviously influence especially like the 'Prince's Rosebud' section, definitely you’re specifically touching specifically on how—

Well some people -- and I found information that would answer the questions as best as I could. But yeah, it’s hard to know what happened in his early childhood because not many people are telling the story of what happened.

There’s some really interesting and analysis of his songs in the book. The other day I was at a Raptors game and they played “Let’s Go Crazy” in one of the interludes and I heard the gospel influences that you had pointed out. In a way it’s really upfront in that song, but it’s never really discussed. Do you think he’s someone that has not really been accorded the analysis that his music really deserves?

Part of why I wanted to write this is that he was not getting the due for the complexity of his songs, so there’s definitely a void there to being able to construct these songs. I don’t think that anybody’s really done that.

There were a number of themes that you drew on for this book that I didn’t expect to see. I didn’t necessarily expect to see references to John Hughes movies or Generation X, which were pretty insightful but you were drawing on all of these different things. Did you draw on that stuff yourself or get it from the people as you were talking to them?

Well, that was the structure of the book, that it started out with what is the relationship between Prince and Generation X? What is the reason he became an icon and rather than just a superstar? It was more than just talent. It has to do with him having a special relationship to Generation X. What is that relationship? What does the generation need that he fulfilled? Well, here are the major things.

You identify it as a big brother relationship in some ways.

Yeah. He’s a baby boomer, but his audiences are almost entirely Generation X.

This interview has been condensed and edited.