Freed from four decades in “the vault” Camille is the forthcoming posthumous album by Prince.

Why is this relevant you ask?

Because Tuesday was the two year anniversary of Sunday Stories™ which dovetails with the anniversary of his death and as it is tradition in this small but mighty newsletter of mine, each year, we celebrate both by digging into the life and work of my favourite artist – the purple maestro.

Throughout his career Prince released 39 albums, 4 live studio albums, 4 soundtrack albums, 17 video albums, 9 compilation albums, 34 promotional singles, 13 EPs, 97 singles and 3 posthumous albums.

He was prolific in his output because he lived and breathed music.

Actually he very confidently proclaimed “I am music”.

And everyone just calmly agreed.

Gender Bending

The legacies of beloved artists have long transcended their earthly existence. Prince is no exception, continuing to incite fascination from beyond the grave, he continues to challenge the rigidity of binary gender roles. Though a straight male himself, he was at once hyper-masculine and delicately feminine, cutting a distinct enigmatic figure within pop culture history.

Camille, a cancelled 1987 album, is Prince’s female alter-ego, electronically produced when he wanted to explore the frequency of his voice, by processing the vocals to increase the pitch so that the distinct “maleness” of his voice was removed until a “female” voice remained. Thus, Camille was born, but despite finalizing the album the release was scrapped – likely because of conflict with the record label since Prince had no intention of using his real name or face on the project. What was pure art to Prince was likely the anticipation of poor sales to the company.

A deeply spiritual and soulful man, Prince spoke often about the divine, the after life and the masculine and feminine energies he carried. He played with it, inviting the listener each time to ascend to a union of truth.

Identity Retrieval

Present day society sees that the spectrum of queerness takes up space, is vocal, is political, is to be seen and heard. The conditions for this culture have arrived at a place in collective consciousness that the non-queer now participate in the queer. We use pronouns, we march in Pride, but it wasn’t always like this. And there’s something quite haunting about the blank spaces where queer histories were erased from our awareness. Where the stories and narratives of whole groups of people were wiped from public reach. Where we limited our understanding of humanity to a confined binary structure. Where we allowed fear and discomfort to swell ego and spew judgement.

What would have happened if one of the biggest Black musical artists in pop culture history had presented a feminine alter ego that took you beyond his daily provocateur and flashy high heel shoes? Without his face and name attached, would we have still liked the music? Or would we have thought the art to be that of “just another woman”? Perhaps we would have rejected the experiment in its totality.

In our social construct the value of men and women is not equal. The perceived likeness is paramount to how well we walk the line and perform the roles set out for us.

It is a daring thing to shatter the ego concept of yourself.

It is a dangerous thing to shatter the identity others have of you.

We don’t actually need Camille to be released. All but one of the songs made it on to other albums in Prince’s original voice. It is the wordplay and gender play that are worth exploring as a signifier to how far along have we come with acceptance of self and other.

Maybe Prince was just passionate about playing with vocals. Maybe he was trying to deliver a message. Maybe (as Quincy Jones says) he was making fun of his long time rival Michael Jackson’s high-pitched feminine voice. Who knows, either way what we are left with is a representation of stretching self to the boundaries of the other side to see if you still exist there too.

Have you ever met someone who is so authentically themselves in whatever form they feel to show up, that they exude freedom in human form?

That’s called embodiment.

This week I implore you to see how far you can stretch your identity. What masks do you get to put down? And what roles are no longer your responsibility to carry? Are there fragments of you once erased, that are now available for retrieval, and desiring to be fully expressed?

Thank you for 2 years of your continued readership.

And thanks to Prince for all the music.

with love + gratitude,
Zoya