Dig If You Will the Picture Funk Sex God and Genius in the Music of Prince (Audible Audio Edition) Ben Greenman Peter Berkrot Tantor Audio Books
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Ben Greenman, New York Times best-selling author, contributing writer to The New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince.
Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet who shattered traditional ideas of race and gender, rewrote the rules of identity, and redefined the role of sex in pop music.
A polymath in his own right who collaborated with George Clinton and Questlove on their celebrated memoirs, Greenman has been listening to and writing about Prince since the mid-80s. Here, with the passion of an obsessive fan and the skills of a critic, journalist, and novelist, he mines his encyclopedic knowledge of Prince's music to tell both his story and the story of the paradigm-shifting ideas that he communicated to his millions of fans around the world.
Dig If You Will the Picture Funk Sex God and Genius in the Music of Prince (Audible Audio Edition) Ben Greenman Peter Berkrot Tantor Audio Books
The first anniversary of Prince’s passing has been an unsurprisingly busy time for publishers. At the end of February, there was Alex Hahn’s and Laura Tiebert’s authoritative biography on the artist’s first three decades, The Rise of Prince 1958-1988. Then, in the first week of April, we had Mayte Garcia’s touching, intimate memoir of her time with Prince, The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince. Finally, coming in just last week–ten days prior to the anniversary itself–was Ben Greenman’s Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God, & Genius in the Music of Prince. Greenman’s book is neither a conventional biography like Hahn’s and Tiebert’s, nor a personal narrative like Mayte’s–though it does contain elements of both of these approaches. In the canon of “Prince literature,” it most closely resembles two other books: Brian Morton’s 2007 Prince: A Thief in the Temple (later reprinted in the wake of Prince’s death last year), and Touré’s 2013 I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon.Like those earlier books, Dig If You Will attempts to present an overarching analysis of Prince’s body of work, the bulk of which occurs in a middle section of thematically-grouped chapters: “Sex,” “Self,” “Others,” “Virtue and Sin,” “Race and Politics.” But while Touré organized his analysis as a set of extended, interlinked essays–making it, for me, the most successful entry in this “genre” of Prince books–Greenman can’t seem to settle on an argument; he glosses over the surface of these major themes in Prince’s work, moving on to the next subject just when things are starting to get good. Perhaps, as Questlove suggests in the foreword (between this and Duane Tudahl’s recently-announced Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions, Quest has had a busy year of foreword-writing), Dig If You Will works best as a kind of frame, laying the groundwork for deeper dives in the future. But if you’re the kind of hardcore fan who would purchase an extended, quasi-scholarly analysis of Prince’s music, it’s sort of questionable that you would need such a frame in the first place.
This is not to say that Dig If You Will isn’t an enjoyable read–it clearly is. Greenman’s writerly credentials are evident: he’s a novelist, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and has co-authored books with Questlove, Brian Wilson, and George Clinton. He is, I have little doubt, smarter than I am (he certainly knows more about the oeuvre of William Blake than I do). At its best, his book puts aspects of Prince’s music into fresh perspective. His chapter on the “Slave” era is perhaps the clearest explication I’ve read of that thorny period; and the section on Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihályi’s concept of “flow” offers a fascinating and plausible theory for both Prince’s near-supernatural focus and (implicitly) the coping strategies that led to his death. But Prince fans, as Greenman noted in a recent New Yorker essay, can be unforgiving; and, while dwelling on minor factual errors can be nitpicky, I suspect that there are a few such errors that the community will find unforgivable. Particularly unfortunate, in light of Mayte’s book, is the misidentification of Prince’s deceased son Amiir by the tabloid-proliferated moniker “Boy Gregory”: an avoidable mistake made actively tasteless by the accompanying misreading of the lyrics for “Anna Stesia.”
In the aforementioned New Yorker essay, Greenman described Dig If You Will as both a “passion project” and an “opportunistic” one. Both of these descriptors are accurate. Greenman’s passion for and knowledge of Prince are obvious, and some of the most compelling passages are when he’s writing from a fan’s position: recalling his teenage record-shopping experiences in the 1980s, or providing a discography annotated with brief writeups on his favorite tracks, or describing a writing break in which he watches a flock of birds in the sky and waits for them to form, True Detective-like, into the artist’s “Love Symbol.” But the book’s “opportunism” makes it difficult to recommend: it feels rushed and padded, like it could have used a little more time in the oven or a more demanding editor, but was nevertheless pushed out the door to make that all-important mid-April deadline.
For that reason, it’s for the best that the next major Prince book (Tudahl’s) isn’t scheduled for release until November. Greenman, like many of us, clearly had something to work out in the wake of Prince’s death, and I’m glad he did what he had to do; his contributions are appreciated and well worth checking out, especially in this week of sad memories and ghoulish speculations. But at this point, we need polished, rigorous books more than we need timely ones. There isn’t as much money in the former for the publishing industry, of course, but there’s a lot more potential benefit for Prince’s legacy.
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Dig If You Will the Picture Funk Sex God and Genius in the Music of Prince (Audible Audio Edition) Ben Greenman Peter Berkrot Tantor Audio Books Reviews
I just finished Dig If You Will, and my emotion, as I held the book to my chest, was that I wanted to be in Greenman's space...and hope that whatever he has is contagious. I want to catch his vision, his depth, his singular voice. There is a brand of poignancy to his entire approach here...a kind of relentless delicacy that holds the hand of the reader and never lets go. I know Prince again, now and in a different way than before. Greenman gives life to the emotion of loving him. The writing is superb, and Greenman thinks beautifully.
This book focuses almost exclusively on Prince's music. I loved Prince so it was still an interesting read, but it wasn't quite what I expected. The author dove deep into different albums, songs, lyrics, beats/rhythms, etc. and was clearly a huge fan in his own right.
Greenman's book is a deeply intellectual and analytical look at Prince's impact on music, film, fashion, and culture. While there are biographical details strewn throughout, Greenman doesn't focus on the same old stories Prince fans have absorbed over the years. This is no dull chronicling of events. Instead, the author mines the more esoteric aspects of Prince's indelible influence on modern culture through the lens of his personal experience as a fan. Greenman references lofty authors and texts in seemingly tangential non-sequiturs but always relates them to either Prince's lyrics or the beguiling artist's perceived worldview. This tactic is not always successful, but Greenman's fandom is sincere and his analysis, whether you agree with it or not, shows substantive thought, craft, and care. Greenman's passion for all things Prince jumps off the page, but he's not immune to criticizing many of Prince's defiantly puzzling decisions and artistic missteps over the years. I related to this book more than any other book on Prince I've read, mainly because it was written as an obsessive fan.
Unlike other books about Prince, which are structured as biographies, or focus on a particular project like the spectacular Let's Go Crazy Prince and the Making of Purple Rain, Dig If You Will The Picture is an overarching analysis of Prince's career, with the author Ben Greenman breaking much of Prince's life and career into thematically-grouped chapters. As a Prince super-fan, reading this book was akin to talking to another Prince super-fan while waiting at the merch table at a concert. Since the author didn't interview Prince or his collaborators for this book, all of the analysis presented in Dig If You Will are his personal opinions. So your enjoyment of this book is dependent on how much you agree or disagree with his take. Sometimes Mr. Greenman's musings veer off into self-indulgent ramblings ("We break time into segments so that it can be apprehended and if not overtaken, at least undertaken" - what does that even mean!?!?!) and some chapters feel like a literature major's thesis paper. But there's no denying that Greenman knows his stuff and is passionate about the subject. I particularly appreciated the analysis of Prince's later output, from the "Love Symbol" or O(+> era. Most of the serious writing about Prince's work focuses on Purple Rain or Sign O' The Times so its refreshing to get in depth critical writing on work like Emancipation or The Rainbow Children even if I didn't always agree with his take on them. And as a former contributor to Uptown Magazine, I was thrilled to read about the heartbreaking lawsuits between Prince and the fanzine he inspired. Unless you are looking for a traditional biography of Prince's life, I would recommend any hardcore Prince fan to give this book a read. It will certainly make you rethink some of your favorite songs, and revisit albums you haven't listened to in awhile after reading Greenman's thoughts on them.
The first anniversary of Prince’s passing has been an unsurprisingly busy time for publishers. At the end of February, there was Alex Hahn’s and Laura Tiebert’s authoritative biography on the artist’s first three decades, The Rise of Prince 1958-1988. Then, in the first week of April, we had Mayte Garcia’s touching, intimate memoir of her time with Prince, The Most Beautiful My Life with Prince. Finally, coming in just last week–ten days prior to the anniversary itself–was Ben Greenman’s Dig If You Will the Picture Funk, Sex, God, & Genius in the Music of Prince. Greenman’s book is neither a conventional biography like Hahn’s and Tiebert’s, nor a personal narrative like Mayte’s–though it does contain elements of both of these approaches. In the canon of “Prince literature,” it most closely resembles two other books Brian Morton’s 2007 Prince A Thief in the Temple (later reprinted in the wake of Prince’s death last year), and Touré’s 2013 I Would Die 4 U Why Prince Became an Icon.
Like those earlier books, Dig If You Will attempts to present an overarching analysis of Prince’s body of work, the bulk of which occurs in a middle section of thematically-grouped chapters “Sex,” “Self,” “Others,” “Virtue and Sin,” “Race and Politics.” But while Touré organized his analysis as a set of extended, interlinked essays–making it, for me, the most successful entry in this “genre” of Prince books–Greenman can’t seem to settle on an argument; he glosses over the surface of these major themes in Prince’s work, moving on to the next subject just when things are starting to get good. Perhaps, as Questlove suggests in the foreword (between this and Duane Tudahl’s recently-announced Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions, Quest has had a busy year of foreword-writing), Dig If You Will works best as a kind of frame, laying the groundwork for deeper dives in the future. But if you’re the kind of hardcore fan who would purchase an extended, quasi-scholarly analysis of Prince’s music, it’s sort of questionable that you would need such a frame in the first place.
This is not to say that Dig If You Will isn’t an enjoyable read–it clearly is. Greenman’s writerly credentials are evident he’s a novelist, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and has co-authored books with Questlove, Brian Wilson, and George Clinton. He is, I have little doubt, smarter than I am (he certainly knows more about the oeuvre of William Blake than I do). At its best, his book puts aspects of Prince’s music into fresh perspective. His chapter on the “Slave” era is perhaps the clearest explication I’ve read of that thorny period; and the section on Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihályi’s concept of “flow” offers a fascinating and plausible theory for both Prince’s near-supernatural focus and (implicitly) the coping strategies that led to his death. But Prince fans, as Greenman noted in a recent New Yorker essay, can be unforgiving; and, while dwelling on minor factual errors can be nitpicky, I suspect that there are a few such errors that the community will find unforgivable. Particularly unfortunate, in light of Mayte’s book, is the misidentification of Prince’s deceased son Amiir by the tabloid-proliferated moniker “Boy Gregory” an avoidable mistake made actively tasteless by the accompanying misreading of the lyrics for “Anna Stesia.”
In the aforementioned New Yorker essay, Greenman described Dig If You Will as both a “passion project” and an “opportunistic” one. Both of these descriptors are accurate. Greenman’s passion for and knowledge of Prince are obvious, and some of the most compelling passages are when he’s writing from a fan’s position recalling his teenage record-shopping experiences in the 1980s, or providing a discography annotated with brief writeups on his favorite tracks, or describing a writing break in which he watches a flock of birds in the sky and waits for them to form, True Detective-like, into the artist’s “Love Symbol.” But the book’s “opportunism” makes it difficult to recommend it feels rushed and padded, like it could have used a little more time in the oven or a more demanding editor, but was nevertheless pushed out the door to make that all-important mid-April deadline.
For that reason, it’s for the best that the next major Prince book (Tudahl’s) isn’t scheduled for release until November. Greenman, like many of us, clearly had something to work out in the wake of Prince’s death, and I’m glad he did what he had to do; his contributions are appreciated and well worth checking out, especially in this week of sad memories and ghoulish speculations. But at this point, we need polished, rigorous books more than we need timely ones. There isn’t as much money in the former for the publishing industry, of course, but there’s a lot more potential benefit for Prince’s legacy.
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