“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.