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SOUL POWER: They Rock. They Rule.They Reign.
Ebony
SOUL POWER: They Rock. They Rule.They Reign.
A Black Music Month Series from EbonyJet.com and VH-1 Soul
Thursday, June 05, 2008
by dream hampton
Prince: The Early, More Dangerous Years
It was 1999, the mega successful double album with the crossover smash “Little Red Corvette” that officially signaled Prince’s arrival as an innovative musical genius with killer pop instincts. But by 1982, when that chart-topping album was released, Prince had already changed the lives of his hardcore fans with four relatively obscure, intimate, experimental albums that forever transformed what was possible when it came to music, sex and sexuality.
Beginning with 1978’s For You, Prince, in what would come to be his typically prolific approach to recording, released an album a year. The self-titled Prince, with the R&B hit “I Wanna Be Your Lover”, Dirty Mind and Controversy, served sex as their main course.
Corrupting virgin brides, fetishizing incest among siblings, creating synth-symphonies in ode to the joys of oral, masturbation, parading a seemingly fluid sexuality, nothing was off limits. Prince didn’t struggle with the sacred and profane as binary forces to be celebrated or punished, he did a dizzying dervish dance until boundaries and divides disappeared in a sandstorm of pleasure.
Where the title song of 1999 was a protest of nuclear proliferation and Reagan’s Star Wars, Prince’s early interests were bedroom based. For You was the suite of an innocent in love, inspired by the ecstasy of commitment. In ‘78 there were rumors that his muse was the equally diminutive and prodigious phenom Patrice Rushen, that she in fact had taught him his way around a keyboard, perhaps even the recording studio itself. “Soft and Wet,” a rock ballad about anatomy and “Baby”, a quiet contemplation on unplanned pregnancy may or may not have been about his relationship with Rushen, but they invoked the crazy, sexiness of live-in new love.
He may have been musically immature, with chord restrictions and a reliance on the instrument du jour, the synthesizer, but Prince has never been as sweet as he was on his first album. He promises undying devotion and monogamy on songs like “My Love is Forever”, “I’m Yours” and “Just as Long as We’re Together.” 1979’s self-titled album Prince, which many of even his serious fans mistake as his debut, was a practical companion piece to his first album. Love begins to disintegrate, dreams of intimacy are dispersed with songs like ‘Why You Wanna Treat Me so Bad”, “Still Waiting” and “It’s Gonna Be Lonely.” He catches his lover in a bisexual tryst in “Bambi” (and discovers his inner guitar hero).
The following year, with the raunchy, sexually charged Dirty Mind, Prince seems to have vacated his spring awakening, love has dissolved and left him only with his erotica. The album opens “I was only 16/But I guess that’s no excuse/My sister was 32, lovely and loose/she don’t wear no underwear/she said it only gets in her hair/and it’s got a funny way of stopping the juice/My sister never made love to anyone else but me/she’s the reason for my sexuality…incest is everything it’s said to be.” You’d have to take it back to the Bible to find a more shocking verse in pop culture.
Though 1981’s Controversy begins with “Ronnie, Talk to Russia” a scolding about presidential Cold War standoffs, the album quickly hits the sheets. “Jack You Off”, “Let’s Work” and “Sexuality” let you know where Prince’s true passions lied. The sprawling, brilliant “Do Me Baby” a seven minute, ecstasy-inducing ballad (in as much as Prince was beginning to reinvent the “ballad”), ended Controversy, his fourth album and his final effort so focused on sex. He certainly didn’t abandon the erotic as a major theme, there are countless songs scattered throughout his thirty-year career that are as sticky as anything he recorded early on. But as his musical soundscape expanded, his worldview and interests matured, his themes became more multi-faceted and less focused on straight up sex (a good thing, I’m sure).
A reformed Jehovah’s Witness whose been known to talk strippers off poles in L.A. clubs so he can lecture them about Iran (true story), Prince won’t even perform most of the early, sexually charged songs. Prince in his early twenties may not even recognize the comparative prude he’s become. Still those early albums remain road maps to sexual exploration, freedom and ecstasy.
Posted by griddus | 2008-07-02 21:01:07 | Comments (1)
Prince at 50: A Look at His Career
The ageless Prince performing on 'American Idol' last year.
The Artist Formerly (and Currently) Known as Prince is now the Artist Eligible for AARP Membership.
Prince turned 50 on June 7. It was such a low-key weekend that the musician was able to walk down Hollywood Boulevard without any security.
As the News' Jim Farber has written, "30 years into his career, Prince can still keep those little surprises coming."
In an era where celebrities are literally and figuratively overexposed, Prince Rogers Nelson still has an air of mystery to him. But while his birthday didn't draw much interest in the media, the artist is hardly forgotten these days.
He has a book coming out this fall, called "21 Nights," with photos by Randee St. Nicholas, covering his three sold-out weeks of concerts at London's O2 Center last summer.
And other media outlets have recently commemorated Prince's prodigious talents. Entertainment Weekly just named Prince and the Revolution's "Purple Rain" as the magazine's favorite album of the last 25 years, calling it "a bona fide diamond - and one of the most artistically out-there achievements in pop history."
The new issue of Ebony magazine calls Prince one of the 25 coolest brothers of all time, describing him as "a trendsetter and style maker, a leader who has no desire, or need to follow."
The artist, who got his start in 1978 with the album "For You," is known for three themes in both his music and his personal life: sex, religion, and control.
Prince was never exactly subtle with his music's sexual references - the titles of two of his early albums - "Dirty Mind" and "Controversy" - summed up much of what the lyrics were about. Yet Tipper Gore was still so shocked after hearing the song "Darling Nikki" on the "Purple Rain" soundtrack that she formed the Parents Music Resource Center to campaign against such lyrics.
But "Purple Rain" also had spiritual references as well as sexual ones, most notably in the song "I Would Die 4 U." "The Cross" from 1987's "Sign O the Times" also continued his religious exploration. And after the artist became a Jehovah's Witness in 2001, he made "The Rainbow Children," an album full of references to his new religion.
As for control, right from the beginning Prince wrote, produced, arranged, and played all the musical instruments on all of his early recordings. He had a legendary feud with Warner Brothers over the way they marketed his music. And he's recently gone after YouTube for allowing users to post his copyrighted videos up without his permission.
While Prince had his greatest period of success in the 1980s - he hasn't had a No. 1 single since 1991's "Cream," or a top 10 song since 1994's The Most Beautiful Girl in the World - his albums continue to sell well. Prince's 2006's album "3121" topped the Billboard 200 Albums chart, and 2007's "Planet Earth," hit No. 3.
But seeing Prince live gives the best representation of what the artist is all about. He continues to sell out tours. And fans are still buzzing about his Super Bowl concert last year, considered to be the best halftime show ever.
Yet despite having performed in front of a billion TV viewers, Prince, the artist who somebody who once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, is still a bit mysterious.
Perhaps the closest he's ever come to explaining himself came in his 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech.
"When I first started out in this music industry I was most concerned with freedom," he said. "Freedom to produce, freedom to play all the instruments on my records, freedom to say anything I wanted to."
Prince went on to say, "Without real spiritual mentoring, too much freedom can lead to the soul's decay." He also warned young musicians of today that "a real friend and mentor is not on your payroll."
The artist closed his speech by saying, "I wish all of you the best on this fascinating journey. It ain't over."
No, it isn't.
By Lisa Swan
Source: NY Daily News -- July 1, 2008
Posted by FadedPhoto | 2008-07-01 22:43:34 | Comments (2)
Prince Sues to Obliterate Tribute Album (Update 7-2-08)
Fifty artists who recorded Prince covers in honor of His Purpleness' 50th birthday June 7 have been slapped with a lawsuit by the short-tempered star. His lawyers now demand that all copies of the tribute be destroyed. Shockadelica had reached No. 8 on Norway's album charts and received several popular reviews by the Norwegian press.
It's perfectly legal to record and sell cover songs of someone else's material, so long as you pay the compulsory licensing fee of about 10 cents per song. To sell their five-disc set of 81 Prince cover songs, they would have to remit around $8 per unit sold to Prince, under a compulsory mechanical license.
Norway's C+C Records distributed 5,000 of the box sets starting earlier this month, plus digital versions, and claim that no one made any money from the project. As a result, they didn't think they owed Prince anything except maybe a free copy.
C+C Records owner and Prince fan Christer Falck contacted the Purple One's people to try to send one to Prince, and that's when the trouble began, according to the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (re-reported in Daily Swarm), one of many publications to post positive reviews of the collection.
For now, all 81 songs can be previewed free on C+C Records' website, and some are also available on MySpace in streamable medley form.
When this giveaway first began, there were 5,000 copies of the compilation in circulation. Thanks to Prince's lawsuit and the publicity it will generate, we expect that number to balloon significantly in the coming weeks.
Source: Wired -- June 25, 2008
Posted by FadedPhoto | 2008-06-26 20:42:08 | Comments (10)
