Prince loses sense of humor, regains funkiness (Orlando Weekly)

Last month, Prince got a spell of bad publicity by going after fansites for … hell, I don’t really know. All I know is the dude is crazy protective of his image and gets really bent out of shape when he feels that someone else is profiting from either his work or from pictures of his perversely youthful face. This isn’t the first time the man’s gone batshit on his fans on the advice of counsel, and it probably won’t be the last. But this time, a bunch of the fansites got together and formed a cute little protest organization called Tempest in A Teacup “Prince Fans United,” abbreviated to PFU. Prince, in his inimitable fashion, responded with a blistering track on his homepage called “PFUnk.”The track, now available at iTunes under its new name, “F.U.N.K.,” is probably the best song Prince has recorded in 15 years. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the 1917 reviews it’s gotten have been negative.”THE WHOLE SONG IS TERRIBLE AND THE VOICE I CAN’T STAND” is one all-caps remark. “Prince sounds like a chipmunk on this song” is another.I don’t know what the rest of the world wants from Prince, but “F.U.N.K.” is exactly the sort of song that reminds me why I’ve put up with this guy’s crap for so long. All the longwinded ballads, all the plasticky pop garbage, all the vain attempts at being contemporary, all the ridiculous behavior … all of it washes away when he sits down and bangs out a weird-ass, guitar-driven, funk-heavy, quirky, dirty (as in noisy-dirty, not “fuck the taste out of your mouth” dirty) jam that was written in probably the exact amount of time it took to record.Anyway, the song’s great, but out of fear of being called into court, we’re not going to post it here. Instead, find below an example of Prince actually having a sense of humor: his appearance on The Muppet Show: Originally appeared on Orlando Weekly’s “Bloggytown.”