Episode 184: Purple Rain and Prince’s Minneapolis with Rashad Shabazz
In this episode, I sit down with cultural geographer Rashad Shabazz to dissect the 1984 classic starring Prince — and ask the uncomfortable questions.
Is The Kid a tortured genius… or a young man replaying generational trauma?
Is the final performance redemption — or dominance?
And what does Minneapolis represent in a film about Black masculinity, ambition, and control?
We unpack race, space, violence, desire, artistic genius, and the myth of upward mobility — all through the lens of one of the most iconic soundtracks of the 1980s.
This is Purple Rain as you’ve never heard it discussed before.
Rashad Shabazz's academic expertise combines human geography, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical race studies. His research explores how race, gender, and cultural production are informed by geography. His first book, Spatializing Blackness (University of Illinois Press, 2015), examines how carceral power within the geographies of Black Chicagoans shaped urban planning, housing policy, architecture, policing practices, gang formation, high incarceration rates, masculinity, and health.
Professor Shabazz’s scholarship has appeared in Souls, The Spatial-Justice Journal, ACME, Gender, Place and Culture, Cultural Geography, and Occasions. In addition, Shabazz has also published several book chapters and book reviews. Professor Shabazz’s scholarship is also public-facing. He has published in Places and written several articles for The Conversation. He has also appeared on local, national, and international news programs, including the BBC, Time Magazine, and 20/20.
He recently completed his second book, Biography of a Sound—Prince, Place, and the Hidden History of the Minneapolis Sound (The University of North Carolina Press). The book uncovers Minneapolis Sound’s development from its mid-19th-century birth to the release of Prince’s magnum opus, Sign O’ The Times, in 1987. Dr. Shabazz is also working on a book about New York City’s built environment.