Dispatches from the virtuality--Prince as superhero--Chris Rock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0g9Qkrc8nE I was fortunate to participate in another online symposium produced by De Angela Duff, my hero, a.k.a., Polished Solid. <--If you are interested in what's happening in Prince scholarship, De Angela's channel should be your first stop. SexyMF30 celebrated and examined Prince's 1992 Love Symbol album, stylized… Continue reading SexyMF30 Prince Symposium
My band's first full-length has been available for some time over on Bandcamp in digital and CD formats. We're also on the Spotify and other streaming sites. We also have a kick-ass t-shirt for your consumption! Pic follows the embed.
Recently I was thrilled to present at another Prince symposium organized by the incredible De Angela Duff and her team of Arthur Turnbull and Krysta Battersby. This was the second year that the symposium was virtual, and despite a few hiccups with the hosting platform, it was a smooth experience. The topics? Controversy at 40… Continue reading 1plus1plus1is3
Red Wheelbarrow: The Podcast and the new issue of Botticelli are online! Check them out here. Things, as you know, got weird this spring. But over at CCAD we managed to get through it, buoyed as always by our incredible students. Usually there's a year-end show called CHROMA, a big to-do, campus-wide. And usually our… Continue reading Red Wheelbarrow and Botticelli
The special issue of Black Magnolias dedicated to Prince is here, live and alive, and you should read it and buy it if you can. My essay, "How the Exodus Began: Prince and the Black Working Class Imagination," is ridiculously long and I'm grateful to editor C. Liegh McInnis for believing that all those words… Continue reading Black Magnolias, Prince, and the Black American Working Class
I moved from Cleveland to Columbus in 2002 for grad school...and to play music. I'd always felt more kinship to the musicians I knew down here, many of them transplants from nearby Delaware, than the folks I knew up north. The Cleveland "scene," for bands at least, was dominated by industrial and metal; down here,… Continue reading The Columbus Anthology
The majority of this site is in place, finally. I'll be redirecting my Nothing Has Been Done Before site here; it doesn't make any sense to keep two websites going with so many overlapping purposes and resources. All of the book resources have been transferred here. I hope to get more photos and music uploaded… Continue reading Getting There
My new new column is up at PopMatters: "Kanye West: The Iconoclast Gives In." Go there now! So, yeah, the essay is about exactly what you think it's about: how newness has led Kanye astray. (That's what you were expecting, right?) Unfortunately it's not exactly an artistic newness, which is why it's taken him into… Continue reading PopMatters Updates
Um, been a while. That means I've been busy.Updates are best found at the website for my book, Nothing Has Been Done Before.Here are a couple of direct links, though:Review of Nothing Has Been Done Before at PopMatters.An expanded version of the talk I gave this past week at the Prince from Minneapolis conference.Â
I'll be presenting a paper titled "Prince and the Event" at the Prince from Minneapolis conference this week. If you happen to be there, I hope we run into each other. Look me up on Twitter. My talk builds off of the chapter about Prince in Nothing Has Been Done Before but takes a little… Continue reading Prince from Minneapolis
Robert Loss 