Miles Marshall Lewis
Miles Marshall Lewis
ATWIAD Roundtable
Miles Marshall Lewis is the Cultural Historian of The Hip Hop Museum, a pop-culture critic, essayist and fiction writer based in Harlem. A former editor at Vibe, XXL, Ebony.com, and BET.com, his essays and arts journalism have appeared in GQ, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Essence, Ebony, and many other publications. His infamous 2015 interview with Prince has been anthologized in Prince on Prince: Interviews and Encounters. He’s also the author of Promise That You Will Sing About Me: The Power and Poetry of Kendrick Lamar, and is currently penning another cultural biography, The Lunatic’s Manifesto: Dave Chappelle in Black & White, for 2026.
Zachary Hoskins
Zachary Hoskins
ATWIAD Presentation
The Influence Wasn’t the Beatles
Around the World in a Day, “Classic Rock,” and the Politics of Musical Legacy
When Prince released Around the World in a Day as the left-field followup to his transmedia blockbuster Purple Rain in April 1985, music critics widely drew connections between the artist’s new sound and 1960s psychedelic rock–in particular, the Beatles’ epochal 1967 “concept album” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. So pervasive were these comparisons, in fact, that Prince would single them out for dismissal in his oft-cited September 1985 interview with Neal Karlen for Rolling Stone, stating, “The influence wasn’t the Beatles. They were great for what they did, but I don’t know how that would hang today.” As ever with Prince, however, the reality was a little more complex; and reading between the lines of various statements from the artist and his collaborators–as well as many of the artistic choices he made before, during, and after his mid-’80s psychedelic era–reveals a nuanced and dialectical relationship between Prince as a self-conscious standard-bearer for the Black musical tradition, and the Beatles as exemplars of the predominantly White “classic rock” canon being actively shaped through critical and commercial discourses in the 1980s.
Zachary Hoskins is the author of Dance / Music / Sex / Romance, a song-by-song blog examining the music of Prince in chronological order. His essay, “Rude Boy: Prince as Black New Waver,” was published in a special issue of Spectrum, A Journal on Black Men (2020), and his presentation from the Prince #1plus1plus1is3 virtual symposium (2021), “I Wish We All Were Nude: Prince’s Controversy ‘Shower Poster’ as Aesthetic Linchpin and Artifact,” was published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies. His presentation from the #EroticCity40 symposium (2024), “No One Wants to Talk about Apollonia 6,” will also appear in a forthcoming issue of JPMS. Zach has presented and appeared on roundtables at other @polishedsolid symposia, #Come30 (2024), #TripleThreat40 (2023), #SexyMF30 (2022), and #DM40GB30 (2020), as well as the University of Minnesota’s Prince from Minneapolis symposium (2018). He holds an M.A. in Media Arts from the University of Arizona and B.A.’s in Film & Video Studies and Creative Writing & Literature from the University of Michigan.
Zaheer Ali
Zaheer Ali
ATWIAD Roundtable
ATWIAD Presentation
Teacher, Why Won't Jimmy Pledge Allegiance?
Prince as Citizen
On August 23, 1984, at the Republican National Convention nominating Ronald Reagan for re-election to his second term as President, Ray Charles closed out the ceremonies with his soulful rendition of “America the Beautiful,” a version that he had made popular through his 1972 release A Message from the People. The original song, long celebrated as a popular alternative to the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” celebrates American greatness, prosperity, and Providential favor—all themes Reagan effectively exploited during his presidency. Less than a year later, Prince released the album Around the World in a Day, featuring the song “America,” which borrowed both a musical and lyrical phrase from “America the Beautiful”’s chorus: “America, America, God shed His grace on thee.” However, in Prince’s “America,” the soaring chorus was transgressively rendered with a growling lead guitar, verses warned of the perils of inequality, and the chorus includes both a prayer and a warning: “Keep your children free.” In an almost Hendrixian way, Prince’s interpolation of “America the Beautiful” had turned a patriot’s anthem into a citizen’s jeremiad against the perils of Reagan-era policies, with a call to government and society to live up to its democratic ideals, or suffer a divine and political chastisement. To date, “America” was Prince’s most explicit, but not only, critique of state power. Beginning with a close examination of “America,” this presentation seeks to draw out Prince’s often overlooked political concerns during the first decade of his career, and challenges us to appreciate Prince’s early artistic voice as citizen.
Zaheer Ali is a historian and scholar of 20th-century United States and African-American history. He is currently the inaugural executive director of the Lawrenceville School’s Hutchins Institute for Social Justice. As an adjunct lecturer at New York University, he taught a Spring 2017 course titled, “Prince: Sign of the Times,” an examination of Prince’s life and legacy in American history and culture. He’s presented his scholarship on Prince at conferences at Yale, Salford University in Manchester, England, and the University of Minnesota; and is currently developing the Prince Syllabus, exploring the life and work of Prince as a catalyst for social change.
Elliott H. Powell
Elliott H. Powell
ATWIAD Roundtable
Elliott H. Powell, Ph.D., is the Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music, which received the Woody Guthrie Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, as well as the Philip Brett Book Award from the American Musicological Society. He’s currently at work on a new book titled Prince, Porn, and Public Space, which examines the intertwined worlds of music and sex in Minneapolis during the 1980s.
Edgar Kruize
Edgar Kruize
ATWIAD #1 Presentation
Love Is The Color This Place Imparts
There are very few Prince albums that tell a cohesive overall story and even less of which the album cover is an integral part of that story. In many ways the Around The World In A Day concept is reflected in the album’s artwork. Brought to life by Doug Henders, but fully directed by Prince, the artwork for Around The World In A Day invites you to places within your mind. This presentation shows not only the importance of the artwork for the album, but also its echoes throughout Prince’s career.
Edgar Kruize is a freelance author, journalist and content creator based in the Netherlands. He is co-owner of communications agency buro33. He is specialized in music in general and specifically the entertainment industry. Kruize has been working for various (trade) magazines, concert and tour promoters, festival organizers and record companies for over two decades. He has written nine books on various musical subjects.
All it took was a cough in the Raspberry Beret video to have the young Edgar notice the artist he’d later found out to be Prince. Prince’s impressive body of work has been an inspiration in life and work. Kruize is the author of the books Prince: The Dutch Experience (2017) and Prince: The Ultimate Dutch Experience (2025), in which all of Prince’s steps in the Netherlands are retraced. Also, he co-hosts the Dutch Prince-blog PurplePicks.net, wrote the liner notes for the 2019 Sign “O” The Times deluxe DVD/Blu-ray set (along with appearing in the documentary about the making of that movie), and (co)hosted multiple Prince-themed lectures and live interviews. This weekend he’ll be doing two sold out Prince themed theatre shows in the Netherlands.
De Angela L. Duff
De Angela L. Duff
Symposium Creator & Curator
What Did Prince Do This Week? #WDPDTW Co-Host
ATWIAD Roundtable
De Angela L. Duff is an Associate Vice Provost at New York University and Industry Professor in Integrated Design & Media (IDM) at NYU Tandon. She also curates music symposia as polished solid, including this virtual celebration and the upcoming Prince #EroticCity40 Symposium (2024), celebrating 40 years of Prince’s Purple Rain, The Time’s Ice Cream Castle, Sheila E.’s The Glamorous Life, and Apollonia 6’s eponymous debut and Prince #Come30 Virtual Symposium (2024), celebrating 30 years of Prince’s Come; presents about music, design, and technology, internationally, at numerous conferences and events including All 7 Years: The Past, Present, and Future of Prince Studies at the University of Minnesota (2023), Black Portraiture[s] VII (2022), Pop Conference 2021, Prince 78-88: An Interdisciplinary Conference (2021) and 2nd Dayton Funk Symposium (2021), writes about music most recently in Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls (Super Deluxe Edition) (2023), AMP: American Music Perspectives (2022), Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture (2022), and the edited book volume Prince and Popular Music: Critical Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Life (2020); speaks about music, most recently at Prince’s Paisley Park (2023), on WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio radio, and BBC Manchester radio shows; appears in documentaries such as We Want The Funk! (2025) and Prince: The Final Secret (2023); and produces and co-hosts What Did Prince Do This Week? #WDPDTW, a weekly online book club series. You can view her past and present work at polishedsolid.com or subscribe to her newsletter at polishedsolid.substack.com.
Crystal Wise
Crystal Wise
ATWIAD #1 Presentation
Sometimes U Got 2 Pop Life and Show ‘em
“Pop Life” is Prince’s seventh song on his seventh studio album, Around the World in a Day, released in 1985. The number seven is often coded within Prince’s artistry to mark significance. In academia, it typically takes seven years to earn tenure, which ends an assistant professor’s probationary period and begins the period in which they can only be fired under extreme circumstances. The success of Prince’s previous album, Purple Rain (1984) cemented his status as a popular culture icon and catapulted him into worldwide fame. In this presentation, the album, Around the World in a Day will be considered the start of Prince’s career as a “tenured” artist, earning him immunity from what now can be termed, “cancel culture.” Considering popular culture as rooted in appeasing white audiences, I conceptualize “Pop Life” as a diss track to explore the ways in which Prince codes Around the World in a Day as resistance to fame and oppression, particularly the white gaze.
Crystal N. Wise is an assistant professor in literacy education at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include the historical and contemporary language and literacy practices of African-Americans as acts of liberation and resistance. Her publications on Prince, “(A)Political Prince: An Analysis of Prince’s Political Consciousness” and “It’s All About What’s In Your Mind: The Origins of Prince’s Political Consciousness” explore his evolving world views and (a)political identities represented in his lyrics.
Arthur Turnbull
Arthur Turnbull
ATWIAD Roundtable Moderator
ATWIAD #3 Presentation
Out Through the In Door
When Prince Left the "Minneapolis Sound"
In the early summer of 1985, Prince told interviewer Neal Karlen of Rolling Stone magazine, “I think the smartest thing I ever did was record Around the World in a Day right after I finished Purple Rain. That’s why the two albums sound completely different.”
And because Prince had the follow-up to Purple Rain completed by the end of 1984, he created two opportunities for himself in the following year: the room to develop his next album and film project; and the ability to walk away from the sound he created that became a template for R&B and pop music for the remainder of the decade.
In all, we can see the first glimpses of Prince’s ability to work in two timelines: one for Right Now and another for What’s Next.
Arthur Turnbull began a career in technology as a Technical Wizard for Jellyvision, makers of the video game series You Don’t Know Jack. He continued on as Technology Manager for Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, a leader in third stream. In 2018, he started Arturo Solo LLC, a managed services consultancy. Arthur is also a co-founder of Wildflower LLC, home to The Music Snobs, Snobs On Film, and Entry Points podcasts.
Anil Dash
Anil Dash
ATWIAD Roundtable
Anil Dash is recognized advocate for more humane, inclusive, and ethical technology through his work as an entrepreneur, activist, and writer, honored by the Webby Awards with its lifetime achievement award in 2022. Today, he leads Fastly’s Developer Experience team, which provides the tools that the world’s most innovative developers use to build experiences that make the internet better for billions of users every day. Dash joined Fastly with its acquisition of Glitch in 2022, where he served as CEO of the friendly coding community beloved by millions of developers.
Dash also serves as a board member for organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the pioneering nonprofit organization defending digital privacy and expression, The Markup, the leading nonprofit investigative newsroom pushing for tech accountability, and the Lower East Side Girls Club, which serves girls and families in need in New York City. Previously, Dash was an advisor to the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy, was co-chair of the Obama Foundation’s tech advisory council, served for a decade on the board of Stack Overflow, the world’s largest community for coders, and was a founding board member of the Data & Society Research Institute, which researches the cutting edge of tech’s impact on society. Today, he continues to advise respected startups and non-profits including DonorsChoose, Medium, The Human Utility, and Project Include. In 2009, he led a MacArthur-backed research project carrying out pioneering research on social media’s impact on public policy making. And, during his tenure as CEO of Glitch, the company became the first tech startup ever to voluntarily recognize its workers’ union.
Described by The New Yorker as a “blogging pioneer”, and by the New York Times as a “Prince scholar”, his personal website has been cited in hundreds of newspapers, academic papers and journals. As a writer and artist, Dash was a contributing editor and monthly columnist for Wired, has written for publications including The Atlantic, Rolling Stone and Businessweek, co-created one of the first implementations of the technology now known as NFTs, had his work exhibited in the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and collaborated with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on one of the most popular Spotify playlists of 2018.
Back when Twitter was relevant, Time named @anildash one of the best accounts on Twitter, and he is the only person ever retweeted by both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Prince, a succinct summarization of Dash’s interests. Dash has also been a keynote speaker and guest in a broad range of media and events ranging from the Aspen Ideas Festival to Desus and Mero’s late-night show, and has guested on a surprisingly large number of your favorite podcasts.
Dash is based in New York City, where he lives with his wife Alaina Browne and their son Malcolm. Like most people, he has never played a round of golf, drank a cup of coffee, filed a patent, or graduated from college.
Aisha K. Staggers
Aisha K. Staggers
Romance 1600 Presentation
A Love Bizarre
Minneapolis Sound Meets Rap in Krush Groove
“A Love Bizarre: The Minneapolis Sound Meets Rap in Krush Groove” explores the intersection of Prince’s signature Minneapolis Sound and the emerging hip-hop movement in the 1985 film Krush Groove. This presentation examines how Sheila E.’s electrifying performance of “A Love Bizarre” in the movie helped propel the song to #2 on the R&B chart, solidifying its place in 1980s pop culture. By blending funk-infused synths, driving percussion, and hip-hop’s rising influence, “A Love Bizarre” exemplifies the genre-blurring sound that defined the era. The film showcased the growing synergy between funk, pop, and rap, cementing the Minneapolis Sound’s impact on hip-hop’s evolution and the expansion of what would later become known as “Hip-Hop Soul.”
Aisha K. Staggers had her first major publication, an album review, in The New Haven Register while just a sophomore in high school. Another series of reviews published in The Hartford Courant followed. By the time she reached college, Aisha was writing for the literary magazine and interning at a local radio station, ABC-affiliate as a writer in the news department and in the A&R department of an independent record company.
As a graduate student at Fisk University, Aisha asked Dr. Raymond Winbush to chair her thesis because 1) he was one of the most renowned voices in black culture and academia, and 2) he was a Prince fan. His scholarship and guidance led Aisha to an early career as a professor of social sciences and later an administrator in higher education.
Aisha has also served as a director of education and policy research centers and on the staff of legislative commissions. She previously served on the Executive Board of the CT Young Democrats’ Women’s Caucus as an avid campaigner and has remained active in politics and public policy.
Currently, she is the co-host of “Primetime Saturday with Aisha and Lala” airing Saturdays on The Dr. Vibe Show and Indie Soup Media.