dave pirner
Inside the Making of Prince’s Clairvoyant Welcome 2 America
Early in Barack Obama’s first presidential term, the U.S. showed the wear that would ultimately become a crisis a decade later — when sniping, arguing and a full-blown culture war engulfed the country in a seemingly inescapable spiral. In 2010, however, many Americans were optimistic that better days were on the way. But Prince was deeply concerned about where things were going: with people’s consumption of technology (especially with the iPhone and other modern tech staples in their nascent days) and with race relations in America, particularly issues affecting the Black community. “His forethought as to what’s going to happen now by who would be consumed by these things, like the iPad and technology was just fascinating,” Prince’s creative director Morris Hayes tells SPIN over Zoom. “Whe...
