Prince, Musical Genre, and the Construction of Racial Identity

by Griffin Woodworth

Throughout his career, the Minneapolis musician Prince was known for fusing different musical genres as well as moving between different identities—sexual lothario, devout man of God, androgynous sprite—qualities that fit the postmodernism of the 1980s. This volume takes a fresh look at Prince’s work, arguing that his music was deeply informed by the history and techniques of Black culture, and that his multigenre fluency and changeable image were weapons that he deployed in a career-long fight against the racially segregated structures of the American music industry. Using a methodology that mixes musicology with African American literary theory, queer theory, and gender studies, this book analyzes the ways that Prince mixed and manipulated musical genres that are indexed to racial identities—such as “White” rock or new-wave, and “Black” funk, gospel, or R&B—in order to construct pluralistic identities. 

Each chapter includes detailed musical analyses and transcriptions of Prince’s songs, focusing on his use of rock guitar, new-wave synthesizers, funk drumming, gospel singing, and R&B horns. By tracking Prince’s transformations of instrumental and vocal idioms derived from specific musical genres, and considering the historical and cultural values embedded within those genres, Griffin Woodworth explores the ways that Prince musically broke down stereotypes of Black masculinity. With its intersectional approach to musical analysis, this book captures the sounds of American racial politics in the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s as heard through the music of one of the era’s most popular artists as he worked to transform and transcend those politics.
 

354 pages, Hardcover

Published March 14, 2025

Reviews

[Shannon Heaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the mega-Prince fans, this is a great book. For music theory enthusiasts, this is a detailed book. For the rest of us? I'm not so sure it's that easy to get past the first couple chapters, because the middle of the book takes the reader on a slog through fifths and sevenths, through the synthesizer -- in 2025 -- being described as an uncanny instrument. I felt when I finished that the book was definitely mis-titled. Musical genre? OK, there were frequent nods to encapsulate Prince in one or another genre throughout the book, but not anything that wasn't better done by other writers (Swensson comes to mind most prominently). And construction of racial identity? There were academic nods to social theorists, but would Mr Nelson have agreed with some of the axiomatics to pin him down? Maybe. Maybe not. We're left to wonder on that one. A better title might have been An (R)Evolution: The Music Theory of Prince. That, we get much detail on, and again, unless you've got an advanced understanding of that discipline, it's not that hard to get lost pretty quickly.