Ben Greenman

Listen to "Ben Greenman Dig If you Will The Picture" on Spreaker. "Dig If You Will The Picture" is NOT a traditional biography or a conventional critical consideration. It is not filled with gossip and gotcha moments. It is not simply a survey of Prince’s greatest hits. Rather, it’s a singular attempt to investigate the whole of Prince’s work and thought, to isolate the meaningful moments in his music, to think about the ways in which he provided the soundtrack for a generation, to define what genius means in pop music. Bestselling author and longtime journalist BEN GREENMAN applies his encyclopedic knowledge of Prince and his music to the man and to the time in which he lived. He moves from his own suburban upbringing in Miami to Prince's history in Minneapolis, from brash early albums like Dirty Mind through breakout classics like Purple Rain to mature complex works like Art Official Age. Prince is considered as a musician, but also as a gender theorist, an activist, and an independent businessman. In these pages, Greenman illuminates the hidden corners of Prince’s vast discography. Do you know the mid-nineties manifesto “Style”? Do you know the mid-eighties B side “Shockadelica”? Do you know the outtake “2020”? You should. And you will. DIG IF YOU WILL THE PICTURE answers countless questions about this most mysterious and misunderstood of pop icons, including: What were Prince's thematic preoccupations? \How did he change pop music forever? How did he make so much fantastic work? Did he really do it all himself? Why did he go to war with his record label? What did he think about sex, God, and the difference between them? What were his politics? How big was his afro when he was young? And what was with that symbol, anyway? DIG IF YOU WILL THE PICTURE meets Prince at his own level, as a pop-culture provocateur, brilliant manufacturer of meaning, and a complex man who was at once a brooding introvert and a good time.