The War: The Battlefield is in Our Mind, the Price is Our Soul
At the 1999 Yahoo Internet Awards, Prince, also known as “The Artist” (who had by then changed his alias to an unpronounceable symbol) received an award for the best internet-only single, for the song “The War” which he did with New Power Generation. While accepting the award, Prince gave a profound speech that still echoes to this day.
After he mumbles his way thanking the people involved and mentioning NPG (New Power Generation), he paused for a while, put down the award on the podium, and said this,
Don’t be fooled by the Internet. It’s cool to get on the computer, but don’t let the computer get on you. It’s cool to use the computer, don’t let the computer use you, you all saw The Matrix.
There is a war going on, the battlefield is in the mind. And the price is the soul. So, be careful, be very careful. 1
It seems like in 1999, when there were no always-online-smartphones, when there were no social media platforms, no AI-generated content, Prince had already warned us about the dark technological future that we are heading into.
To understand his speech more, to get some context to where he is coming from, we’ll need to have a listen to that song that had won the award.
Prince credited “The New Power Generation” for the song. The New Power Generation, or as Prince would call it, The NPG, was Prince’s backing band at that time. The song, “The War” itself, is like no other. It is actually 26 minutes long. It was originally a 45-minute jam of Prince and the members of The New Power Generation with a live audience, recorded at Paisley Park studio. 2
The song was first released as a free download, on the now-defunct Prince website (who says things on the internet stays forever?). It was also made available on cassette, distributed to those who had purchased the Prince Crystal Ball album.
The song is a thought-provoking, crowd protest chanting, jazzy guitar-driven track mixed with philosophical funk. Throughout the song, you could hear the crowd chanting, “The evolution will be colorised”. This here, many had said, is an homage to G. Scott-heron, a poet and jazz artist known to be an out-spoken social protester, who had a famous track titled, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. 3
The song starts out with Prince saying, “This is the war, the war will go on and on…”. Was he saying about the never-ending war in general and that it will go on and on? Or was he referring to this song, which is called “The War” and with 26 minutes long, it certainly feels like it is going on and on? Probably both, which, I think, is brilliant if it's intentionally done so.
As we go into the song, Prince then warns the audience that they will be challenged, and if they do not wish to be challenged, they should go back to the Saturday morning cartoons. This is 1999, and the only distractions that we had were the silly Saturday morning cartoons. This also seems to mean that if you are not willing to be challenged you are not adults but are just like the kids watching Saturday morning cartoons.
The ‘challenge’ that the Prince mentioned comes in the form of a series of questions. He started with, “do you love your country?” in which the crowd excitedly screamed “yes!”. Next he asked “do you love God?” in which the crowd replied with the same excitement as the first question, “yes”. The Prince then follow up with the next question, “do you love your country as much as you love God?” and this time there is a less excitement with the crowd in their answer.
He then adds, “if the government wants to put a microchip in your neck, (there is a short laugh from Prince), do you still love your country?”. If one were to listen to this during the late 90s, one would automatically put it in the realm of ‘tin-foil-hat’ conspiracy theories. Now though, with Elon Musk’s Neurolink and stuff, I’m not so sure myself. “Be very careful”, the Prince had warned in his acceptance speech.
The Prince asked another hypothetical question, “We are running out of the essentials of life, oxygen, water, food, fertile land, and that as we speak, there is an underground metropolis. Waiting for you and me. With clean air and food to eat. Would you go?” He continued to ask, “if your country no longer exists on this earth, but exists underneath this earth, will you go? Don’t you love your country?” He adds one condition for you to go to this underground metropolis, that you’ll have to let them put a microchip on you. “Be very careful”, the Prince had warned in his acceptance speech.
I’m paraphrasing the lyrics here, as he continues, “Would you stay above the metropolis? Stay above that microchip city? Would you stay above and await your fate? Do you trust God? Tonight you will be challenged.” As he had mentioned earlier, if you do not wish to be challenges, ‘Saturday morning cartoons’ awaits you. Would trust your country and go and live underground microchipped in the metropolis? Or do you trust God and live above ground?
“Without God, there is no country, there is no metropolis, there is no oxygen, there is no food to eat, there is no microchip for your neck.” And the song continues, with Prince and NPG jamming.
The song also mentioned AIDS / HIV being a manufactured disease, and that ‘they’ had the cure. The Prince refers to ‘they’ as ‘the beast’. A manufactured disease and a manufactured cure, if the Prince was alive during the Covid-19 era, he probably had something more to say about it.
The last few parts of the song lyrics were a modified version from the Prince’s other song, Gold.
There’s a mountain, that’s mighty high,
Can’t reach the top, unless you fly.
Ain’t about the money, it’s about the gold,
21st century, money just got sold.
These lines are more relevant than ever in our current times.
Now that we had gone through the song, the Prince’s last line in his Yahoo Internet Awards acceptance speech is clear which “war” he was referring to. The battlefield is in our mind, and the price is our soul.
Footnotes
