Prince

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Yet, Prince’s androgyny always felt different. As author Sasha Geffen wrote, it went beyond costume, it was “a part of who he was, reflected not only in his clothes but in his voice, mannerisms and presence”. He often played with a hypersexual mode of masculine musicality, as documented by songs like Erotic City, while his visual persona could easily be described as “soft” or “pretty”, as he appears on the cover of his eponymous album. So Prince’s ambiguity is entangled within his entire persona. Nowhere is this clearer than on this currently unreleased gem. The voice Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. Several highly-acclaimed recent television series’ have also focused on queer history at a time contemporaneous with Camille’s original planned release date. Russell T Davies’ mini-drama It’s A Sin focused on the lives of young queer Brits during the AIDS epidemic that decimated the community. Equally lauded was FX’s Pose, which explored the lives of LGBTQ+ people of colour in the New York ballroom scene of the 1980s. The resurgence and reinsertion of the ballroom scene documentary Paris Is Burning (filmed again in the mid-late 1980s) into public consciousness points to a wide and continued fascination with this period of queer history. It revolved around one core concept that Prince wanted to explore: his voice. Through processing his vocals in the studio, Prince and Rogers were able to increase the pitch of his voice so it no longer sounded what we might call “male”. The process was actually the same as on the “ Chipmunk” records of the late 1950s, but done to a much more subtle degree. This more “feminine” or “female” voice was christened Camille by Prince and became the centre of his new project.

With Camille, we can hear Prince parsing experiences of sex and the sexual between his own experience and that of his female alter ego. Prince is interested in all things erotic, and that extends as far as donning a female or queer persona to allow a full range of experiences. Camille tells us so on Feel U Up: “I don’t really want to be your man, I only want to feel you up.” The 1990 Graffiti Bridge film (directed by Prince) wasn’t well-received but the double album was his third chart-topper in a row in the UK and ‘Thieves in the Temple’ was a top 10 single. This is the only 2LP set in this reissue campaign. If I Was Your Girlfriend is one of the songs which survived and made it on to Sign ‘O’ The Times, and in some early releases is even credited to Camille. The song is perhaps where the combination of lyrics and artificial vocal manipulation are most striking. Opening with six bars of falsetto sighs and screams, the song introduces us to a more vulnerable Camille. This vulnerability soon gives way to something more urgent. Band [The New Power Generation], Sampler [Purpleaxxe™ Sampler], Keyboards [Other Various Keys], Other [Sex Symbol] – Tommy Barbarella In the process of listening to and revisiting the songs made for the album, we have found ourselves running in circles trying to define this mysterious and intriguing persona. Each time one of us thought we had found a definition we could pin down, it would slip from our grasp on a second listen. In light of this, we decided that it would be more valuable to celebrate her ambiguity and ask what the release of the album means now, rather than trying to pigeonhole or categorise her.The deeper into this album we have gone, the more apparent Camille’s separation from Prince has become. We think it is fair to say that Prince never thought of Camille as some form of fleeting sonic drag. Rather, Camille is an entire alter ego, or a new frontier for Prince to explore.

Prince was sexy. Not necessarily just as an object of desire, but his persona, music, lyrics, dance moves, album covers, and public image oozed sex, ambiguous sexuality, and overt sensuality. He was a cheeky champion of all things kinky. The lyrics to Darling Nikki, Get Off, Soft and Wet, Head, and Dirty Mind, among others, should be enough to convince you of his sexual credentials.

On The Go

Although these reissues are not full new remasters – the audio still benefitting from modern repressing – the NPGs Diamonds And Pearls and Love Symbol albums (the latter turning thirty in 2022) are interestingly (yet not surprisingly) omitted. Diamonds And Pearls, anticipated to receive a Super Deluxe Edition remaster in 2021 on the 30th anniversary of the original, is highly expected to appear in 2022, bumped due to the delayed release of Welcome 2 America Deluxe Edition during the summer of 2021 and the potential impact of coronavirus. It is also hotly rumoured Warner will be doing likewise with Parade at some point – being that a Netflix documentary on Prince is to air sometime next year, one of the predicted SDEs may coincide. Among today’s so-called “culture wars”, the denigration of the trans community, and the recent rise in homophobic and queerphobic hate, a celebration of the diversity of gender performances is surely as welcome as ever. In recent years the unique perspectives of queer, trans and non-binary artists have been praised by popular music fans and pundits alike. Sophie, Mikki Blanco, Kim Petras, Julianna Huxtable, Anohni, Honey Dijon, Arca, and many more have greatly increased the audibility of queer voices for the broader pop music fan base.

Pop has long been a rich space for subverting gendered stereotypes and Prince consistently challenged the rigidity of binary gender roles. At once hyper-masculine and delicately feminine, he cuts a distinctive and enigmatic figure within queer pop history.Camille’s long absence leaves us only able to speculate on the impact she might have had. Had the Camille album been released as planned, could she have contributed to the wider representation of queer artists earlier in our pop culture past? What kind of ruminations around gender could she have provoked in the public consciousness? What would a Camille tour have looked like? There are surely queer elements that might have become part of broader public discourse, at least among Prince’s established fanbase, as a consequence of Camille’s presence. Here we are of course conflating aspects of gender, sexuality, and sex. But with Prince, it’s hard to untangle those elements. Prince was at his most interesting and successful when he wrapped himself in ambiguity and androgyny. The opening lines to I Would Die 4 U specifically tell us this: Freed from her four decades in the vault, Camille will finally be allowed to come out. The question now is how and where to situate Camille within a queer pop history. Will she be lauded as an important lost voice in music history, or cast aside as a novelty for Prince completists?

The Hits 1 (originally released as Warner Bros./Paisley Park 45431, 1993 - reissued NPG/Legacy, 2022) The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale (originally released as Warner Bros. 47522, 1999 - reissued NPG/Legacy, 2022) The Camille persona did not just arrive fully formed. Rogers was instrumental in bringing Camille to life. As Prince’s sound engineer for Purple Rain and Sign ‘O’ The Times, she facilitated his performances and helped craft his most seminal albums. She has described Camille as a figure “who might have been male, might have been female, it wasn’t really clear – might have been kind of ghostly, might have been kind of humanoid”. Feel U Up would also find its home as a B-side, in this case for 1989’s Partyman. Feel U Up is classic Prince hedonism. Camille urges the object of her affections to enjoy the moment – any subsequent relationship, however fleeting, is not of concern here. Camille prioritises the other person’s pleasure in this song, encapsulating Morris’ points about Prince’s focus on “you” with lyrics like: “I ain’t looking for a one night stand, I only wanna feel you up.” Around the World in a Day (originally released as Paisley Park 25286, 1985 - reissued NPG/Legacy, 2022)

Release

The history of androgyny and genderplay in pop is a rich one, but Camille embodies something that eludes neat compartmentalisation. While we can’t know for sure what kind of impact Camille would have had at her inception, she belongs to a vibrant hidden history of queer artists. Personally speaking, we like the fact that Camille is so challenging to define. She brings ambiguity, playfulness, and queerness to bear in a way that few artists ever explore. That androgyny and otherness is, to us, where her real power and contribution comes from. The last album in the sequence of vinyl reissues is 1994’s Come. A classic ‘contractual obligation’ album, Prince cobbled this together and did zero promotion. ‘Letitgo’ deserved better as the single stalled at No 30 in the UK (not helped by a limp CD single with just one single edit of the song, while the USA got eight remixes on their disc! However, the technology used to create Camille’s voice from that of Prince was rudimentary. In 1986, “realistic” male-to-female voice modification in a recording studio was not possible, and still poses challenges for technology companies today. But the limitations of the technology are one of the most revealing aspects of Camille.