When Prince spoke those words over celestial organ sounds in the opening moments of "Let's Go Crazy," he wasn't just inaugurating yet another Billboard Hot 100 hit--one of forty-seven in his career; he was also giving voice to the deep-seated and richly complex spiritual underpinning of his art. Prince is beloved by millions worldwide, and a true legend of the pop genre. Yet most of his fans don't recognize the spiritual messages coded within his work, nor understand the connections between Prince's own religious devotion--which evolved over time--and the sexualized messages of his music. Prince was beguiling and used his seductive and mysterious charm to draw his fans into his spiritual and cosmic worldviews, often without their knowledge.
In Dearly Beloved, Pamela Ayo Yetunde, a lifelong Prince fan and founder of the Theology of Prince project when she taught at United Theological Seminary in Prince's own Minneapolis, decodes the spiritual and sexual messages behind Prince's work, from For You to Graffiti Bridge to The Rainbow Children and beyond.
Dearly Beloved: Prince, Spirituality, and This Thing Called Life by Pamela Ayo Yetunde will be published April 22, 2025. Broadleaf Books provided an early galley for review.
I've been a Prince fan for more than two-thirds of my life, having discovered his music with the 1981 release Controversy. He is my all-time favorite artist and an important creative influence in my adult life. So, I was curious to see what this author had to say about his music. Turns out she and I have similar upbringings (around the same age - give or take a few years, raised in families where church was a foundation - for me the Catholic church). That means we're generationally speaking the same language.
Yetunde structures her study of his work very much like an academic course, complete with "homework" in the form of "listen along" lists at the start of each chapter. I like this approach as it puts the music front and center in the discussions. I also was comforted by depth of the catalog from which the songs were drawn. It speaks highly to the author's qualifications for this discussion (she is by no means a casual fan).
Where things might get tricky for some readers is in that Yetunde is taking her knowledge and experiences with spirituality and interpreting Prince's songs through those lenses. While not an issue for me, it is still coming across as her interpretations of his meanings. Since he is no longer with us, we can't be sure 100% what Prince meant by any given song. In fact, even if he were here, he likely would not give definitive answers (he liked to be mysterious). I like to think he, like many artists, enjoy leaving it up to the individual listeners to find their own meaning in the work.
Still, Yetunde gives the reader plenty of food for thought. If one has an open enough mind, one can appreciate the interpretations and concepts she is discussing. And, of course, you have to stick around for the Epilogue where she delivers her own Prince-inspired epic poem (I found it very inspiring).
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