It\u2019s been a decade since Prince died \u2014 though his words are with me every day.<\/p>\n
The tattoo on my right biceps reads \u201crich in personality,\u201d borrowed from the opening verse<\/a> of 1984\u2019s \u201cBaby, I\u2019m a Star.\u201d<\/p>\n Hey, look me over<\/p>\n Tell me, do you like what you see?<\/p>\n Hey, I ain\u2019t got no money<\/p>\n But, honey, I\u2019m rich on personality<\/p>\n Growing up poor during the 1980s was like being in an upside down version of \u201cThe Wonder Years\u201d: I wondered if the lights would be on when I came home from school; I wondered if we would have enough to eat that night; I wondered if poor was all there was.<\/p>\n As such, the songs about poverty I heard on the radio \u2014 John Mellencamp\u2019s \u201cPink Houses,\u201d \u201cThe Message\u201d from the Furious Five, Donna Summer\u2019s \u201cShe Works Hard for the Money\u201d \u2014 were more than hits. They were snapshots of different, yet familiar worlds. So naturally, a song with the line \u201cI ain\u2019t got no money\u201d feels like home. And those same five words were the opening line of Prince\u2019s first hit, in 1979, \u201cI Wanna Be Your Lover.\u201d <\/p>\n I was too young to understand sex, thus the full meaning of that song wasn\u2019t clear to me until later \u2014 but I knew what it meant not to have any money. In fact, one winter it seemed everyone in school wore these black boots with a large white kangaroo logo on the side. Don\u2019t ask me why, we just did. Anyway, the poorer kids \u2014 trying to keep up \u2014 often bought knockoffs, which usually came with a noticeably smaller logo. The really broke kids, the ones like me, well, we had an entirely different animal on our boots. I think I had a polar bear or a scorpion wearing a scarf or something. Whatever it was, it wasn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n Even some of the teachers laughed.<\/p>\n We never really leave behind our early years. Even decades later, I tend to hear lyrics about poverty like an echo from nearby.<\/p>\n In the opening five words that began his ascent, Prince told his crush<\/a> he didn\u2019t have any money before quickly pointing out the ones who do \u201calways seem to let you down.\u201d The sense that there\u2019s more than the material hark back to him being raised a Seventh Day Adventist and spending his high school years as a de facto orphan. When you don\u2019t have much, you have to shape your sense of self-worth around something greater than yourself, to look outside of your situation. It\u2019s in doing so that words like \u201cnothing comes from dreamers but dreams\u201d and \u201cnothing comes from talkers but sound\u201d act like breadcrumbs leading to a higher place. The spiritual nature of Prince\u2019s songwriting provides constant reminders that there\u2019s more to living than the trappings of a glamorous life<\/a>. You can wear furs, read the Robb Report, watch \u201cDynasty\u201d but: <\/p>\n Money only pays the rent. <\/p>\n Love is forever, that\u2019s all your life.<\/p>\n Love is heaven sent,<\/p>\n It\u2019s glamorous.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why Prince\u2019s observations reverberate after his passing more than the sexual innuendos he was initially known for. It was his storytelling, not the salaciousness, that made the sound of \u201cPurple Rain\u201d during the montage of the \u201cStranger Things\u201d finale move audiences. Not just the generation that grew up hearing it every hour on the radio. Also those who didn\u2019t know who Prince was until Eleven told Mike goodbye.<\/p>\n Although admittedly on occasion, I think about the robin that \u201csings a masterpiece that lives and dies unheard\u201d from \u201cThe Screams of Passion<\/a>\u201d or his sonically lush collaboration with George Clinton, \u201cWe Can Funk<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n I could tell you things to get you excited, things you never heard.<\/p>\n You know the Kama Sutra? <\/p>\n I could rewrite it with half as many words. <\/p>\n In lesser hands, the line would sound like overcompensating projectile from the bowels of the manosphere.<\/p>\n But Prince\u2019s words about sex feel less like macho boasts from an insecure man and more like the surrendering of an attentive lover … if only for the night. This is the craftsman who is also vulnerable enough to write<\/a> \u201cwould you run to me if somebody hurts you, even if that somebody was me?\u201d and to proclaim<\/a> \u201clove is too weak to define just what you mean to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Amna Nawaz, co-anchor and co-managing editor of \u201cPBS NewsHour,\u201d told me nowadays she often finds herself quoting<\/a> \u201cdearly beloved, we are gathered here today, to get through this thing called life.\u201d<\/p>\n For Donnie Wahlberg, whose band New Kids on the Block shared the charts with Prince in the late \u201980s and early \u201990s, one lyric stayed with him even though he missed a key part of it for years.<\/p>\n \u201cI never knew what he said after the words \u2018and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy\u2019 \u2026 like \u2018one, two, three, four,\u2019\u201d Wahlberg told me recently. \u201cOne day my friend heard me sing along to the intro and incredulously asked, \u2018What the heck did you just say?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Prince\u2019s version<\/a> is: \u201cIf the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy, punch a higher floor.\u201d<\/p>\n To mark the 10th anniversary of Prince\u2019s death, which will be Tuesday, celebrations are planned across the country, including in Minneapolis, where his life and career began. His former art director and personal photographer, Steve Parke, who recently published a photo book called \u201cPrince: Black, White, Color<\/a>,\u201d told me he misses the friendship more than the opportunities life working with a rockstar provided. When Parke feels down, he thinks of the words from \u201cPop Life<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n What\u2019s the matter with your life<\/p>\n Is the poverty bringing you down?<\/p>\n Is the mailman jerking you \u2019round?<\/p>\n Did he put your million-dollar check in someone else\u2019s box?<\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t about dwelling on the bad, he wasn\u2019t about waiting for things to get better, like hoping to get a check in the mailbox,\u201d Parke said. Instead, Prince sought to \u201cspread good for goodness\u2019 sake regardless of the circumstance. That\u2019s really who he was at his core.\u201d<\/p>\n At a time when greed was considered good, Prince was among the lyricists reminding us that being good still mattered more.<\/p>\n