The Truth (1998)
Long before 3rdeyegirl and the tri-spectacle phase there was 3rd Eye – an Adam and Eve story from the sublime Truth album. Naked, save for a few digital fig-leafs, Prince’s unencumbered guitar frolics with Rhonda’s electric bass in a garden of earthly, acoustic delights. It also features his last released, uncensored obscenity before he got bashful with overdubs and malapropisms. It’s a shame the curseword’s a flimsy and shitty “shitty” though. The cathartic, air-rending “MOTHERFUCKIN’ PIECE OF PIEEEEEEE!!!” on the album’s opener would have made a much more satisfying, final nail in the swear jar. A blue murder scream so defiant that immediately afterwards you can hear the bleep machine materialising into existence. Normally more associated with Eastern religions, Prince again links the pineal gland with Genesis in Y Should I Do That When I Can Do This? when he raps “if the word was God then people need to use it with a third eye”. Coupled with 3rd Eye’s message of God being inside you, it leads me to assume the reference is to the birth of human understanding between good and evil. The inner eye that was opened with the eating of the forbidden fruit. Although let’s be honest, given the highly suggestive nature of the lyrics (“the serpent… between Adam’s thighs… tries 2 release upon Eve the nectar”) the third eye in question may very well be of a different anatomical kind.
