Just when the media and the listeners thought they had comprehended the complexity of Prince fully, he returns simply romantic.  1986’s Parade is the music to Prince’s second movie. Unlike Purple Rain, Under the Cherry Moon was not a box office smash. However, what both films have in common is that the songs on the soundtracks function as actual film dialogue, framing, embodying, driving, explicating, and, even, explaining the plot of the film. As such, the Under the Cherry Moon/Parade projects were total breaks from what was happening in the mainstream of popular music or film. Rather than concentrate on the physical concerns of drugs, sex, and violence, which were saturating radio, television, and the movies, Prince chose to create a melodrama that ponders the meaning of life and love. Under the Cherry Moon, directed by Prince, is a story about the different dimensions of love and love’s ability to save humanity.

C. Liegh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, Prince scholar, 2025 Finalist for the Mississippi Poet Laureate, co-founder of the JSU Creative Writing Program, the former publisher and editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, retired instructor of English at Jackson State University, and the author of eight books, including four collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction (Scripts:  Sketches and Tales of Urban Mississippi), one work of literary criticism (The Lyrics of Prince:  A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, and Storyteller), and one co-authored work, Brother Hollis:  The Sankofa of a Movement Man, which discusses the life of a legendary Mississippi Civil Rights icon.  He is also a former First Runner-Up of the Amiri Baraka/Sonia Sanchez Poetry Award sponsored by North Carolina State A&T and edited the Black Magnolias Special Prince Issue.  He has presented papers at national conferences, such as College Language Association, the National Council of Black Studies, the Neo-Griot Conference, and the Black Arts Movement Festival, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Obsidian, Callaloo, African American Review, Black Fire This Time Vols. 1 and 2, Tribes, The Southern Quarterly, Konch Magazine, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Journal of Popular Music and Society, Down to the Dark River:  An Anthology of Poems on the Mississippi River,  Black Hollywood Unchained:  Essays about Hollywood’s Portrayal of African Americans,  Black Panther: Paradigm Shift or Not? A Collection of Reviews and Essays on the Blockbuster Film, Asymptote, The Pierian, Black Gold:  An Anthology of Black Poetry, Sable, New Delta Review, The Black World Today, In Motion Magazine, MultiCultural Review, A Deeper Shade, New Laurel Review, ChickenBones, Oxford American, Journal of Popular Music and Society, Journal of Ethnic American Literature, B. K. Nation, Red Ochre Lit, and Brick Street Press Anthology.  In January of 2009, C. Liegh, along with eight other poets, was invited by the NAACP to read poetry in Washington, DC, for their Inaugural Poetry Reading celebrating the election of President Barack Obama.  He has also been invited by colleges and libraries all over the country to read his poetry and fiction and to lecture on various topics, such as creative writing and various aspects of African American literature, music, and history.