Dig If You Will The Picture: Funk, Sex and God in the Music of Prince

Description

Ben Greenman's monumental yet intimate book on Prince comes a year after the star's death at the age of 57 in an elevator at the legendary Paisley Park complex. With the release of a string of critically acclaimed albums and a new solo tour, the Minneapolis Genius looked set for a renaissance after a quiet-ish (by his standards) decade or so. And then: the silence, forever. Dig If U Will The Picture is a portrait of The Artist, who was also the artist who will be remembered by many as the brightest, most seductive and enigmatic pop star of his generation. In thematically structured chapters, Ben Greenman anatomizes a career and an aesthetic that at times seemed otherworldly. Drawing on over 40 studio albums, a repertoire of 2,000 plus live shows and close analysis of the unreleased highlights of the Vault, Dig If U Will the Picture is a critical consideration of Prince's art, a testimony to the author's deep and abiding personal connection to the work, and a fitting memorial.

Ben Greenman is a New York Times-bestselling author and New Yorker contributor who has written both fiction and non-fiction. His novels and short-story collections include The Slippage and Superbad; he was Questlove's collaborator on Mo Meta Blues and Something To Food About; and he has also written memoirs with George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. His journalism, criticism, and fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, McSweeneys, Rolling Stone, Miami New Times, and elsewhere, and his work has been widely anthologized.