million gatekeepers and there’s not that centralized source like MTV. There are a million blogs and a million places to get the information for who’s coming out, when and with what. And, while it’s more democratizing in terms of allowing more people, more artists, to have a chance to get known, it’s harder to create that large community. It’s harder to create that group now, that community. Even in the way we consume music via the iPod. I mean, we would get an album when it came out or close to when it came out, and then listen to it front to back. We have a different relationship now with music.
Is the role of the icon necessary? TOURE: I think it’s very valuable. I think it’s a way of pulling the generation together. Everybody in the group has those recording artists that they love. There’s a glue, a common language that you can all speak. I think you see a lot of those for Gen X, from Prince and Michael Jackson, perhaps Madonna, to Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, etc. For Millennials it’s hard. It’s harder to get that big. People talk about Lady Gaga, and it’s like, “Ok yeah, but I don’t see [artists like Gaga] having that same level of widespread cultural impact.”
That’s kind of a bummer. What was it like to grow up with a music icon? TOURE: It’s fun! The thing that I used to find is that an album would come out and for three to six months everybody is talking about this given album. And it wasn’t like, “Have you heard Nirvana” or “Have you heard Tupac or Run DMC” you know, it was “What do you think about them?” Because of course you heard it, everybody’s heard it, everybody’s listening to it a lot and dug into it. [Now] there’s no way to find that common language that we can sort of come together on. And it’s a little sad to lose that I think.
What was it like to delve into the religious side of Prince?
he’s Messiah? Does he think that he is the special connection to God? And where is the evidence? I don’t know that he feels like that. I can’t say for certain that he thinks he is the second coming of God. I certainly can’t nail that down. But there is some evidence, there are some people who say he does think a lot of himself and his connection with God in certain ways, and he may. It’s unclear.
In I Would Die 4 U you suggest the idea that Prince became an icon because of the way his music spoke to Gen X-ers, and not simply from his musical genius. Would you say that Gen X culture shaped Prince or that Prince helped to shape Gen X? TOURE: I think it’s gotta be a little bit of both. In terms of the sexuality that the generation was prepared for, he was ready for that. That’s something he saw and consciously wanted to express and be part of his mythology. But then he realizes the exploding visuality of the culture. And to be so up on that in 1983, very early in MTV’s reign, is really, really astute. It’s hard to explain now how young MTV was at that point. And for him to have realized, when he started Purple Rain, that [his music] has to be visual ... people were not doing that. Nobody did was he was doing. Madonna wasn’t doing that, Michael Jackson wasn’t doing that. But he had the vision and the tenacity to do that, along with the understanding that he had to do it. It says a lot about how he understood where the times are going, and he wanted to flow with the times. So, essentially he flows with the generation but changes it a little bit, pushes the envelope. The music video, the visual piece, is the way he sort of recognizing the times and changed by going with it. NKD
TOURE: I loved that part. I needed that part. There is a real question: Does the guy think that he’s the second coming? Does he think that
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