Publication: Melody Maker [UK]
Date: August 13, 1994
Section:
Page Number(s):
Length:
Title: "The Summer of 69"
Reviewed By: Simon Price

There's no getting round it. Price's new album is, explicitly, all about eating pussy. Beavis & Butthead would explode. Simon Price needed a good hosing down

PRINCE
Come
Warner Brothers 9362-45700-2/10tks/49mins/FP

Two women I know have wildly opposing views on Prince. One confess that she and her friends regularly fantasie about him, on the grounds that 'No sexual request you made would shock him - he'd do anything'. The other just squeals 'Urrrgh, but he licks things!'.

They'll both feel thoroughly vindicated by 'Come' . Well, what do you think it's about? What do you think songs like 'Pheromone', 'Letitgo' and 'Orgasm' might be groping towards? This is , by some kilometres, the dirties record Prince has ever made. (And yes, I'm quite aware that it has formidable competition.) It's a cunni lingual concept album.

It's said that innuendo and suggestion are far more erotic than the plainly explicit, but for once I'm not sure. The title(and opening) track is nine minutes of stuff like this: 'Don't be surprised if I make you my daily meal/Put my tongue in the crease baby, I go round when I go down/Can I suck you baby? Can I f** you baby?/It's no wonder there's a puddle there, you've been holding it in for so long ...'

But never mind, he thoughtfully adds, "You can always change your underwear'. (for Prince, sex is all about unselfishly servicing his woman, 'doing my duty'). It fades out with prolonged, squelchy-squelchy, tongue-seeking-clitoris noises.

Let's just say that any 'Radio Edit' would, for decency's sake, be a 30-second instrumental . This , the last recording under the name Prince - on the sleeve, he stands outside some cemetery gates bearing the legend 'Prince 1958-1993'- is apparently his parting gift to Warners (he's contracted for another five, but they'll probably come from the archives). An album containing no feasible singles. Touché.

There's an orthodox, received opinion that Prince hasn't recorded anything worth pressing Play for since 'Sigh O'The Times'. Lazy, lazy zebrashit. If 'Alphabet st', 'Anna Stesia', 'Thieves in the Temple', 'Gett Off', 'Cream', 'Sexy MF', 'Peach'and , yes, 'The Most Beautiful Girl in The World'(which I've finally recognized as a marble-sculpted work of genius) didn't tickle your zones one way or another, your loins are barren, your soul is a desert, and you ain't got the rhythm, white boy.

Like every album he's made- yes, even the 'classics'- it's precisely 75 per cent divine. You know what this stuff sounds like. Lubricated shag-soul, as uncomfortably intimate as hearing someone f**ing in the room next door, a futuristic version of Marvin Gaye's 'Lets'get it on'.

The moist, soixante-neuflovejuice flow is disrupted four times: first by 'Loose!'which is, amazingly, a cardiac-attack blitzkrieg of 1991-style Joey Beltram stormtrooper rave, Prince's presence reduced to a maniacal scream, 'OneTwoThreeFour!!!'. 'Solo', an undulating cirrus cloud of Welsh harp, supports the rumour that Prince is obsessed with the Cocteau Twins, but I'm afraid my infantile mind suffers involuntary flashbacks to the music on 'Play School'when the camera went through the arched window.

Then his social conscience rears its intermittently embarrassing head. 'Race' is a facile 'Ebony And Ivory' like plea for unity with lyrics even Credit To The Nation might flinch from : 'Cut me, cut you, both the blood is read...get it?'.'Papa' is a graphic account of child abuse, in the manner of Suzanne Vega's 'Luka' . Why do people do this? Like The Smiths' 'Meat Is Murder', assuming you wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments, there's no pleasure in listening. It's like watching footage of laboratory experiments for perverted humanitarian kicks. Certainly, not the sort of thing you'd want to hear in the middle of a good licking.

Speaking of which, we already guessed that Prince is, beyond all doubt, the sort of guy who's tape record himself having sex. But even I never dreamed he'd put it on CD. 'Come'ends, logically enough, with 'Orgasm': a 'duet' with a partner credited as 'She Knows' consisting of 99 seconds of ecstatic, multiple-climactic female gasps and cries. It sure sounds real to me.

Prince: he licks things. Cool.

[Caption : Only one man could get away with shades like that]