An ingenious Prince deep cut predicted the South Bronx speech about all-American desire.
‘Can we take six minutes to talk about success?” That question, asked by President Trump during last week’s historic South Bronx rally in New York’s largely black and Latino Bronx borough, struck an apolitical nerve, but it also revived an important cultural memory.
It recalled the familiar real-estate investor and socialite Donald Trump who was extolled in the 1990 song “Donald Trump (Black Version),” written and produced by Prince and recorded by his R & B offshoot band The Time. This art-and-political fact proves that most political pundits are ignorant of pop culture, which explains why they fail to comprehend Trump’s popular status among working-class strivers. Prince’s song is an artifact from that era when the public loved Trump, before they were told to hate him by politicians and the media.
When the Democratic Party and its propagandists take the black and Latino vote for granted, it’s based on the socialist assumption that the party knows what’s best for those groups and that ethnics don’t know their own minds. (Biden sniped, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black!” and Hillary boasted of her Latina bona fides by noting that she always carries hot sauce in her purse — both told to black radio host Charlamagne tha God). In the Prince song, sung by The Time’s lead vocalist Morris Day, a shrewd troubadour serenades a woman who desires a man who epitomizes wealth and prosperity — the standard R & B figure of success:
But last night when you were asleep
You slipped big time
I heard you
You said your favorite color was green.
That fiduciary romantic attraction runs through R & B tradition and is genuine to the customs and dreams that politicians have stolen from black and Latino culture — truths rarely addressed until that South Bronx speech. “Donald Trump (Black Version)” was never conceived as a campaign song — and is wisely left out of this year’s campaign pop playlist — yet it shows our cultural leanings to be more revealing than our political postures.
Originally intended for an album titled Corporate World, “Donald Trump (Black Version)” adjudicated the 1987 stock market crash and then articulated the American capitalist confidence that ethnic audiences still envied and admired — especially during the hip-hop era. Prince understood what Americans have in common and included the song as a deep cut on The Time’s funk-rock Pandemonium album. This was before political culture shifted toward ethnic separatism and resentment about carceral punishment and systemic racism — the first caused by Clinton Democrats’ 1994 crime bill and the latter promoted by the Obama and Biden regimes. Prince’s R & B threnody goes against the racist and classist assumptions of know-it-all consultants and pollsters. They panic.
The Associated Press dismissed the South Bronx speech through compounded ethnic stereotypes: “Trump’s campaign believes he can chip away at Biden’s support among Black and Hispanic voters, particularly younger men who may not follow politics closely, but are frustrated by their economic situations and are drawn to Trump’s tough-guy persona.” To imply that blacks and Latinos don’t have their own thoughts or goals, especially any that whites might share, proves that pundits don’t listen to ethnic pop. The sax featured on “Donald Trump (Black Version)” completes the song’s charm, a tongue-in-cheek seduction song being more powerful than sociological rhetoric.
This is what Newsweek missed when rejecting the speech as “purely performative theater.” But Trump’s line “I’m trying to build a party that’s inclusive of you” is consistent with Prince’s own idiosyncratic popularity. On CNN, conservative consultant Scott Jennings praised the speech as “confident,” adding, “It’s a campaign unlike we’ve seen from other Republican candidates.” That also applies to the song’s chorus: “Come on take a chance / A 1990s love affair / The real romance” — lines anticipating Trump’s plea to black voters in 2016, “What have you got to lose?”
But more important, “Donald Trump (Black Version)” confounds the grievance imperatives pushed by the Obama administration. The song’s four-minute emphasis on success reminds ethnic groups what their hope-and-change representatives have forgotten.
Ignore the unfounded allegations of racism parroted by turncoat rappers and pop-music hacks. Prince’s “Donald Trump (Black Version)” confirms the fact of Trump’s icon status in the black and Latino working-class ethos and work ethic — and that it corresponds with the all-American ideal.