Prince

Released: August 16, 1994

Songwriter: Prince

Producer: Prince

[Intro]
Lie down, fair one, and come away
Till the rain is over and gone
G-G-Gimme the beat now (Face the music)
Lead line (Face the music)

[Verse 1]
If the air is a little thick in this room tonight
I reckon it's the result of an onslaught of separatist rookies
Overcome by this colorful sight
Talking so fast that even they
Talking so fast that even they
Don't know what they mean
Of all the things that base a rhyme
How is it that you every time
Regurgitate the racist lines that keep us apart?
Thank God this ain't Monopoly
You'd make us all go back to start

[Chorus]
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Race
Face the music
We all bones when we dead
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Cut me, cut you
Both the blood is red
I gotcha
Race
Race
Check it

[Verse 2]
Three seats over there's a lady black
Entrusted to her care is a little white girl
And the fact of the matter is
Before her mama or another kid at school
Tells her about the fallacy that one race rules over the other
She'd be a much-better-off-left fool (Face the music)
If we never heard about the evils that those before us committed
Then how my dear, tell me now how my dear, tell me now how now would we know
And then the band say

[Chorus]
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Race
Face the music
We all bones when we dead
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Cut me, cut you
Both the blood is red
I gotcha

[Verse 3]
D-d-down with H-I-S-T-O-R-Y and all this BS propagandi
Keepin you from me and me from you as we grow
I don't wanna know (I don't wanna know)
Why those before us hated each other
I'd rather believe they never did
I'd rather believe (I'd rather, I'd rather believe)
That there's hope for a kid
And if he imitates the best
I guess that's what I'll try to be
And I will let the rest dissolve with my guitar underneath the sea

[Chorus]
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Race
Face the music
We all bones when we dead
Race
In the space I mark human (Face the music)
Cut me, cut you
Both the blood is red
Get it?

[Outro]
Got it

An American singer-songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist, and actor that produced 22 RIAA-platinum albums during his 40-year career, Prince may be known for one of many different things – his turn as “The Kid” in the iconic film/album/8 ½ minute ballad “Purple Rain”, being the writer behind the acclaimed anthem “Kiss,” rivaling Michael Jackson at the pinnacle of his career, being the inspiration behind censorship laws, or being the artist addressed as an unpronounceable symbol throughout the 1990s—but while many know of Prince, most don’t fully understand the impact his legacy left on this world.

Going by many aliases throughout his life, Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 7, 1958 with his father’s (John L. Nelson) stage name as his own given one. Growing up, Prince suffered from serious epileptic seizures at a very young age, but he had wrote his first composition of many by age seven, and outside of his love for basketball, he wanted music to be his purpose in life. His tumultuous childhood, witnessing alcoholism and abuse, caused him to find refuge in neighbor André Cymone’s home in his teens, where the two competed in local band competitions, leading to Prince’s introduction to Morris Day alongside music with his cousin’s band 94 East, leading him to be courted by record labels and ultimately signed to Warner Bros. Records with complete creative control; at 19, his debut album, For You (1978) was released – Prince played all 19 instruments on the record.

Influenced by the likes of Miles Davis, Rick James, and James Brown, Prince desired to form a music dynasty and after the success of his next albums – the platinum-selling Prince (1979), the sexually-charged Dirty Mind (1980), and politically-motivated Controversy (1981) – he negotiated for the ability to form his own label and manage artists of his own. Prince’s trademark sexual/religious rhetoric within pop-and-dance, funk-rock sound gained him a following, but his opening slates for Rick James and The Rolling Stones were both negatively received and facing bankruptcy, the young artist began to reach for mainstream popularity. Cashing on the drug-influenced doomsday mania of the times, 1982’s 1999 easily achieved that mainstream appeal, landing him on MTV, music charts, and radio stations across the world.

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