Prince has been gone for a little over two years but for his fans, the pain lingers. Black culture is lessened by his absence. For such a prodigious, high-profile talent, it isn’t often that we get a chance to see some of the intimacy behind the scenes. We rarely get a glimpse at the quiet moments of creation; the building blocks that led to greatness.

For Prince, we have that chance right now. This moment, entitled 17 Days (Originally cataloged on a handwritten tape as Cold Coffee & Cocaine) is just Prince, a piano, and a microphone. We get to see the purple one at his most primal, stripped down.  We get to hear subtleties like “good God” ad-libs requests to “turn the voice down a little.”

Prince Musicality

We hear him experimenting with his range, transitioning from gutteral lows to falsetto highs, scatting and freestyling along with his piano-driven rhythm. Prince’s mastery of the ivory keys is apparent, with runs of sharp stabs and jazzy high end plinks coexisting with low end, agile Broadway plunks. Back then he was more well-known as a guitarist. We he here his musical agility.

Prince Lyricism

Prince laments:

I want to call you every day, beg you to be near me. I know your head is underwater, I thought that you could hear me. Let the rain come down rain come down, rain come dow-ooown.

The song is clearly not without a definitive foundation but the jam session format feels as if Prince is trying to form a legit song out of clay, feeling his way on the spinning wheel, his hands fully immersed.

All the elements we know are here. The gutteral utterances, the manic musicality, the raw ambiguous sexual energy. All present in its virgin, undistilled form. This is nice. Almost like being a fly on the wall during a pivotal point in history. 17 Days. From the upcoming release Piano & A Microphone.