It’s not surprising that an artist who is as deeply influenced by Prince as Morris Mills would chafe at the genre limits and expectations imposed on black artists by the music industry. Prince used his determination and talent to force fans and music executives to rethink the way that they viewed and marketed what would be normally labeled as R&B. Those racialized labels and genres became clay in Prince’s hands that he reworked into the form of his choosing. Mills finds himself pushing against the same constraints with his latest album, The Dawn, a record that is a Princely cauldron of funk, rock, punk, R&B with a dash of hip-hop. The Dawn shares an additional commonality with much of Prince’s work, in that Mills’ art resides comfortably at the intersection between the sacred and the worldly.