Google the words “Prince” and “shade.” Go ahead. It’s worth it. Or just click here, lazy­bones. Lis­ti­cle after arti­cle on how the depart­ed genius was the “King of Shade.” And seri­ous­ly, check out the memes. What the hell am I ram­bling on about? What’s “shade”? If you’re feel­ing unhip, look no fur­ther than the video above, which has the added bonus of fea­tur­ing The Artist in a solo acoustic per­for­mance at New York’s Web­ster Hall for an MTV Unplugged episode, doing a kind of high­lights reel of some of his best-loved songs.

He is, of course, bril­liant. You don’t need me to rhap­sodize about what an amaz­ing musi­cian Prince was. You already knew that, and if you didn’t, the Inter­net has told you so sev­er­al hun­dred times over and, for once, it did­n’t exag­ger­ate one bit. But back to the shade. In Prince’s case, the sub­tle side-eye, the with­er­ing looks of dis­dain and dis­ap­proval, the WTF sneers…. When you take in the full range of the man’s expres­sions, you’ll see why Miles Davis com­pared his stage per­sona to Char­lie Chap­lin—he wasn’t just a musi­cal genius, bene­fac­tor to many, film star, sexy MFer…. He was also a phys­i­cal come­di­an.

Watch him toy with the audi­ence above. He invites them to sing along as he starts with “Cream.” They do so bad­ly off-key, Prince stops and throws shade. Audi­ence shuts up, suit­ably shamed, then cracks up. Repeat. It’s fan­tas­tic crowd inter­ac­tion from a man who could put on a Broad­way-wor­thy pro­duc­tion with all the smoke and pyrotech­nics and a cast of thou­sands, or who could sit onstage alone with an acoustic gui­tar and wrap the crowd around his lit­tle fin­ger. (Lat­er dur­ing “Sweet Thing” he turns the mic around and lets the audi­ence take over com­plete­ly.) And his acoustic blues chops ain’t bad either. See the full per­for­mance here.

As an added bonus, above, see Prince’s very first tele­vised inter­view, broad­cast on MTV in 1985 and shot on the set of the “Amer­i­ca” video. Watch him answer pre­screened ques­tions and explain to us how, “I’m just like every­one else. I need love… and water.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Prince and Miles Davis’ Rarely-Heard Musi­cal Col­lab­o­ra­tions

See Prince (RIP) Play Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Cranky, aging rock stars may kvetch and bitch, but it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. Hip Hop is here to stay. The musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion that began in the Bronx has gone glob­al, acquired bil­lions of dol­lars in hold­ings, and pushed every oth­er form of pop­u­lar music to adapt to the world it cre­at­ed over the past sev­er­al decades. And whether you’re a casu­al fan or die-hard hip hop head, you’ve prob­a­bly learned a list of names—the names of the found­ing fathers of the genre: Grand­mas­ter Flash & The Furi­ous Five, Africa Bam­baataa, the Sug­ar Hill Gang, DJ Kool Herc, Kur­tis Blow….

The list goes on. Those are the inven­tors of rap, right? The men—and too often unsung women—who turned sev­en­ties dis­co, funk, and R&B into some­thing else entire­ly, who re-invent­ed NYC street and club cul­ture, and even­tu­al­ly the world with only their voic­es, dances, graf­fi­ti, atti­tudes, turnta­bles, and mobile sound sys­tems? Not exact­ly. Maybe it wasn’t the Bronx in the late ‘70s. Maybe it was Brook­lyn and Queens in the late ‘60s. And maybe the found­ing fathers had names like Grand­mas­ter Flow­ers, Nu Sounds, King Charles, Mas­ter D, Charis­ma Funk.…

Nev­er heard of ‘em? You’re not alone. The doc­u­men­tary above, Found­ing Fathers—nar­rat­ed by Chuck D of the immor­tal Pub­lic Enemy—makes the case that these obscure pio­neers did it first, and nev­er received the cred­it they deserve after the uptown artists picked up their styles and ran with them. The claim is attest­ed not only by vet­er­ans of this orig­i­nal Brook­lyn par­ty scene, but also by New York scen­ester Fab 5 Fred­dy and Queens his­to­ri­an Dan­ny Wells (who traces the ori­gins of the genre back to Louis Arm­strong, Mal­colm X, and the Black Pan­thers), among oth­er observers—and by the end of the film, you’ll have a very dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of where the music came from.

We learn that rap­ping began in 1970 with the rhyming pat­ter of radio and club DJs, who imi­tat­ed and one-upped each oth­er in friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion over dis­co records, then cre­at­ed the call-and-response refrains that char­ac­ter­ized the genre ear­ly on. And the musi­cal “mixol­o­gy” of hip hop began at the end of the ’60s with Brook­lyn DJ Grand­mas­ter Flowers—“the first Grandmaster”—who got his start in pub­lic parks. DJing then evolved into an almost ath­let­ic event with twin broth­ers The Dis­co Twins. Con­struct­ed main­ly from inter­views and archival footage, Found­ing Fathers presents a his­to­ry of hip hop that you’ve nev­er heard before, one cre­at­ed by local stars who did­n’t achieve world­wide fame and glo­ry, but who nonethe­less for­ev­er changed the way the world sounds.

Found­ing Fathers (made avail­able on Found­ing Fathers Youtube chan­nel) will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rick Rubin Revis­its the Ori­gins of Def Jam Records & the NYU Dorm Room Where It All Began

How ABC Tele­vi­sion Intro­duced Rap Music to Amer­i­ca in 1981: It’s Painful­ly Awk­ward

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Rock and roll hagiog­ra­phy presents us with a canon of instru­men­tal saints, gui­tar gods, drum demi­urges, bass demons. It’s true, the front­man has often enjoyed a near-mes­sian­ic sta­tus (it’s almost always been a man), but rock his­to­ry has grant­ed less author­i­ty to the voice as an instru­ment and allowed for all kinds of non-traditional—and not always par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant or accomplished—voices. The influ­ence and imi­ta­tion of folk and blues and the rise of punk and met­al has giv­en rock singers plen­ty of license to growl, howl, mum­ble, scream, and moan instead of singing in any clas­si­cal sense.

But then there’s Fred­die Mer­cury, who ele­vat­ed rock vocals to oper­at­ic heights. Whether you love his intense, soar­ing vibra­to or not, there’s no deny­ing his unmatched vir­tu­os­i­ty. Now—as they often do when it comes to music—scientists have “con­firmed the obvi­ous,” as Con­se­quence of Sound puts it: Fred­die Mercury’s voice was some­thing spe­cial.

The spe­cif­ic find­ings of a new study, how­ev­er, tell us things we prob­a­bly didn’t intu­it. Like Tuvan throat singers, it seems that Mercury’s singing and speak­ing voice vibrat­ed both ven­tric­u­lar and vocal folds, cre­at­ing rich sub­har­mon­ics and a vibra­to faster than that of any oth­er singer.

To put that in plain­er terms, researchers found, Con­se­quence of Sound writes, that Mer­cury “was vibrat­ing some­thing in his throat even Pavarot­ti couldn’t move.” That is indeed sur­pris­ing. But we must be cau­tious in inter­pret­ing the results obtained by this group of Aus­tri­an, Czech, and Swedish researchers, who pub­lished their study on April 15th in the infe­lic­i­tous­ly named jour­nal Logo­pe­dics Pho­ni­atrics Vocol­o­gy. Since Mer­cury died in 1991, the sci­en­tists were unable to gath­er what they refer to as “phys­i­o­log­i­cal or bio­me­chan­i­cal data of vocal fold vibra­tion” from the sub­ject him­self. Instead, they exam­ined, among oth­ers, record­ings from The Acapel­la Col­lec­tion, a boot­leg com­pi­la­tion of iso­lat­ed Mer­cury vocal tracks, and attempt­ed to cor­rect for stu­dio manip­u­la­tion.

You can hear a few of those amaz­ing record­ings here (“We are the Cham­pi­ons” at the top, “Some­body to Love” below it, “Keep Your­self Alive” fur­ther down, “I Want to Break Free,” above, “I Want it All” below, and “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at the bot­tom.) To exam­ine Mercury’s speak­ing voice, they ana­lyzed sam­ples from six dif­fer­ent inter­views. To get a fur­ther sense of how Mer­cury made the sounds he did, the team used a ringer, a Mer­cury imi­ta­tor named Daniel Zang­ger-Borch. As he dupli­cat­ed Mercury’s vocals, they filmed his lar­ynx at 4,000 frames per sec­ond to visu­al­ize how the Queen singer might have employed his own instru­ment.

But of course, this is only an approx­i­ma­tion, and—given that Mercury’s voice was in a class of its own—it’s dif­fi­cult to under­stand how anoth­er singer could have recre­at­ed his one-of-a-kind tech­nique. In any case, the research con­clu­sions are intrigu­ing, espe­cial­ly since the study sug­gests that not only did Mercury’s vibra­to and sub­har­mon­ic tech­nique cre­ate his thor­ough­ly unique vocal sound, but that they also may have con­tributed to his “eccen­tric and flam­boy­ant stage per­sona.” The researchers were unable to sub­stan­ti­ate, how­ev­er, the pop­u­lar idea that Mercury’s voice spanned a full four octaves. You can read the full study, in all its minute tech­ni­cal detail, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Queen Doc­u­men­tary Pays Trib­ute to the Rock Band That Con­quered the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The days and weeks after a celebri­ty death tend to fill up with pub­lic inquiries. The vaguer the cir­cum­stances, the more ques­tions pro­lif­er­ate, lead to inves­ti­ga­tions, tri­als, depress­ing tabloid pay­days…. But many fans don’t linger over pro­ce­dur­al goings-on or pruri­ent details. Many won­der instead “What if?”—as in, how do we reck­on the artis­tic loss? What projects went uncom­plet­ed? What kind of col­lab­o­ra­tions might have been on the hori­zon?

The spec­u­la­tive answers to the lat­ter ques­tion often give us far more inter­est­ing results than the real thing. While David Bowie’s work with Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen is unques­tion­ably mas­ter­ful, for exam­ple, his joint effort with Mick Jag­ger now just makes us laugh. Bowie worked with near­ly every­one it seems—there are few match-ups left to pon­der…. Well, every­one that is except Prince. What if….?

And now that Prince has left us, we might won­der about all of the super­du­os that might have formed had he lived into his six­ties and beyond. One col­lab­o­ra­tion that did bear some fruit dur­ing his life­time came just in time for Prince’s super­star part­ner, Miles Davis, who died in 1991. Dur­ing the lat­ter half of the ‘80s, the two formed a bond, based on mutu­al admi­ra­tion for each other’s music, of course, as well as for each other’s image and gen­er­al­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing per­son­al­i­ty.

In fact, since at least 1982, Davis, writes his biog­ra­ph­er Ian Carr, became “almost obses­sive­ly inter­est­ed in the androg­y­nous, mul­ti-tal­ent­ed black pop star… whom he rat­ed very high­ly as an artist.” In the short (almost inaudi­ble) inter­view clip above, Davis describes Prince as a syn­the­sis of James Brown, Mar­vin Gaye, Jimi Hen­drix, and Char­lie Chap­lin. He also com­pared Prince to Sly Stone and Lit­tle Richard, writes Carr, and com­ment­ed, “He’s a mix­ture of all those guys and Duke Elling­ton.”

For his part, Prince sup­pos­ed­ly saw in Davis an old­er ver­sion of him­self. After the two artists met in 1985, they crossed paths sev­er­al more times in the fol­low­ing years, with Miles appear­ing onstage to play a solo at a Pais­ley Park New Year’s Eve ben­e­fit and record­ing a solo on the Prince/Chaka Khan song “Sticky Wicked” in 1988. What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing about Prince and Davis’s musi­cal love affair is that the result­ing music played to both artists’ strengths, instead of attempt­ing to meld their styles into some­thing out of char­ac­ter.

Davis’ exper­i­ments with ‘80s R&B tropes in his 1986 album Tutu stem from their work togeth­er, and the record was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a Prince col­lab­o­ra­tion. At the top of the post, you can hear an unre­leased track orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for Tutu called “Can I Play With U?” and fea­tur­ing Prince’s vocals. Tutu end­ed up going in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and received some high­ly mixed reviews, but it retained much of the spir­it of Prince. And for Miles—who since the late six­ties had absorbed and trans­formed influ­ences from so many con­tem­po­rary styles—this seemed per­fect­ly fit­ting.

The Tutu col­lab may not have panned out—Prince was appar­ent­ly unhap­py with the results and scrapped his songs—but the two didn’t give up on each oth­er. On the con­trary, much of the music Davis played and record­ed at the end of his life was writ­ten by Prince. Above, hear one such com­po­si­tion, the sug­ges­tive­ly named “Pen­e­tra­tion,” in a 1991 per­for­mance. Though Prince’s funk roots shine through, it’s also a work very much in Davis’s fusion wheel­house. Although Davis died before the two could com­plete their long-await­ed col­lab­o­ra­tive album, we don’t have to won­der “What if?”

Much of the music they wrote togeth­er sur­vives in live per­for­mances like that above and has cir­cu­lat­ed in a Davis boot­leg titled Miles Davis Plays Prince and a Prince boot­leg titled Cru­cial. Does the music on these record­ings live up to the out­sized tal­ent and per­son­al­i­ties of these two genius­es? Prob­a­bly not—whatever could? But it shows us the direc­tion Davis would have con­tin­ued to move in had he lived on, and also gives us a way to think about the sig­nif­i­cant jazz influ­ences in Prince’s music, a sub­ject rarely dis­cussed but wor­thy of much more con­sid­er­a­tion.

via Bill­board

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Prince (RIP) Play Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Prince didn’t cov­er a song, he pos­sessed it. He took over its limbs and made it do things it had nev­er done before—dance wild­ly down the aisles, scream, shout, and fall to the ground. When he cov­ered a song, it got reli­gion the way peo­ple only do in the movies. And if you had the priv­i­lege to see it hap­pen, you too became a believ­er in every word and note. As the pro­duc­er Fafu, a one­time mem­ber of his army of play­ers and techs, tes­ti­fied yes­ter­day: “I nev­er saw Prince make a mistake—in any­thing.” It may sound like a musi­cian who fits that descrip­tion would have to be some kind of robot; Prince was pre­cise­ly the oppo­site, the apoth­e­o­sis of what a human being could do with voice, gui­tar, and vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er instru­ment.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Prince’s all-pow­er­ful con­trol over his musi­cian­ship extend­ed to most oth­er areas of his life. He “was hard on peo­ple,” Fafu remem­bered, “I don’t want to paint an ugly pic­ture, but he was tough. You want­ed to please dad­dy.” He was equal­ly hard on peo­ple who dis­sem­i­nat­ed his record­ings and per­for­mances in unau­tho­rized ways. But in at least one case, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke fought back, forc­ing Prince to unblock access to Youtube footage of his 2008 Coachel­la ver­sion of “Creep.” And wow, are we glad he did. See it above (espe­cial­ly poignant is his gospel deliv­ery of the line, “you just want to have con­trooool.”), and be reborn.

Prince reminds us that every hard rock bal­lad since the ear­ly ‘80s owes him a roy­al­ty check, and that just one of his screams, one of his explo­sive gui­tar fills, even one of his preg­nant paus­es, had more pow­er and beau­ty in it than some entire albums. Prince didn’t have to want to be spe­cial. He just was.

As I shared yes­ter­day, he was with­out a doubt the most incred­i­ble live per­former I have ever expe­ri­enced, so much so that I gen­er­al­ly pre­fer his live recordings—bootlegged or otherwise—to his stu­dio stuff. Mil­lions of peo­ple feel like­wise, and thanks to one fan, we have the full audio of that head­lin­ing Coachel­la show. Hear it all here (and see the setlist fur­ther down)—the ridicu­lous­ly catchy funk/soul hits, the between-song inspi­ra­tional pat­ter, the soar­ing, snarling gui­tar solos, and the cov­ers: includ­ing “Creep,” “Come Togeth­er,” Sarah Mclach­lan’s “Angel,” songs by San­tana, The Time, Sheila E., and, no kid­ding, The B‑52’s “Rock Lob­ster.”

via Live for Music

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Prince (RIP) Play Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More   

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Amidst all its oth­er unset­tling excess­es, 2016 has become a year of col­lec­tive mourn­ing as musi­cal icon after musi­cal icon pass­es away. The names begin to sound like a list of bat­tle­field casu­al­ties. Our lat­est loss was much more than a leader among men: he was roy­al­ty.

Prince’s death strikes me as a tragedy for so many rea­sons: he was too young, only 57. He was—as for near­ly every­one of my generation—a fix­ture of my child­hood, a fig­ure of impos­si­ble cool; his loss feels deeply per­son­al. Last­ly, Prince seemed so above it all—above all of the ugly, pet­ty crap the rest of us slog through every day, includ­ing death.

All pop stars seem like that to their fans.

But when it comes to Prince, it wasn’t just his for­ev­er young sex­u­al­i­ty that made me think he’d nev­er die, but the fact that he could do any­thing, and I mean any­thing at all as a musi­cian. He seemed to have no lim­i­ta­tions. Unlike many of this year’s lost stars, I was lucky enough to see him play. That show became the high water­mark by which I’ve unfair­ly mea­sured every oth­er per­former.

He played for three hours, then held an after­par­ty and played for two more. He tore through his cat­a­log, then played every­one else. Mem­bers of his band left the stage one by one, and Prince con­tin­ued, pick­ing up instru­ment after instru­ment. The huge­ness of the sound didn’t seem dimin­ished one bit when he remained on stage alone with his gui­tar at three o’clock in the morn­ing.

And that gui­tar, man.… Whether his trade­mark but­ter­scotch Tele­cast­er or series of unique, sig­na­ture instruments—he played like no one else: he made the gui­tar cry, sing, howl, wail, and launch into out­er space hys­ter­ics. His pow­er and con­trol were unmatched. Eric Clap­ton, when asked what it felt like to be the world’s great­est gui­tarist, sup­pos­ed­ly said, “ask Prince.” Apoc­ryphal or not, it’s believ­able. No gui­tarist can be any­thing but blown away by Prince’s prowess. Wit­ness his solo at the end of the 2004 all-star Rock and Roll Hall of Fame George Har­ri­son trib­ute per­for­mance of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (top), wide­ly cit­ed as one one of the best gui­tar moments caught on tape, and as evi­dence for why Prince belongs in the top ten of world’s great­est play­ers. He’s accom­pa­nied on the stage by Tom Pet­ty (RIP), Steve Win­wood, Jeff Lynne and Dhani Har­ri­son.

I don’t think there’s any hyper­bole in say­ing that Prince may have been the great­est stage per­former of the past forty years, as a total pack­age: show­man, song­writer, and musi­cian. And though he dom­i­nat­ed cen­ter stage, he wasn’t too proud to play the side­man. Check him out above, for exam­ple, back­ing Lenny Kravitz on “Amer­i­can Woman.” But when it came time for Prince to take a solo (see him tear it up at around 4:50), it was like every­one else had left the stage.

Rest In Peace, Prince. As a gui­tarist, singer, and gen­er­al explo­sion of pur­ple amaz­ing­ness, he was in a class all his own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More      

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

The Memo­r­i­al Ser­vice & Cel­e­bra­tion of “Lem­my” Kilmis­ter, Motör­head Front­man, is Now Stream­ing Live

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness