murph said:

Civility without patronizing? Look. I can't keep going back and forward with you on this. Some people have referred to your opening statement as an 'essay' which I think is a bit much but, suppose it to be true, any professor will tell you that, without notes or citations, they would simply have to award you with an F (FAIL). So, unless you want to pass, you really have to provide evidence for what you say--so we can be assured it's not all in your mind. Am I the only one that get's this? Please, there really is no point in responding unless you can come up with the goods. Anything else is a waste of my time.

jdcxc said:

so true ... great post in reply

But if you bite a Bruce or U2 fan on the org they hate it!

pald1 said:

I don't care how people refer to my posts...lol..You seem to be the only one concerned with such things...Whether it's just my thoughts or an "essay" it comes down to you either agreeing or disagreeing with me...But throwing around a bunch of condescending jabs and outright derogatory comments is not going to make me see your point or type out what exactly you are looking for...

Indeed, you are the only one that get's this, as you so eloquently noted.."This" being the need to push your Online-Lord of the Flies agenda...Now it's gotten to the point where you are telling me there's no point in responding?...lol....You think much too highly of yourself...It's not that serious...Let's just stay out of each other's way...Because it's obvious you lack basic civility....

But that's what the Org has become...

murph said:

Your obfuscation is tiring me out. Everything you say is just an opinion. Which is fine. WHy can't you just admit it?

NelsonR said:

You know, I like your rose-colored outlook on life, but it's just not realistic.

This is a perfect example of what I'm referring to;

http://politicususa.com/e...ack-dialec

Now, the issue here is the mere fact that his "dialect" is even a concern. WOuld a white president with a Southern dialect be called out on it? No, people wouldn't stand for such nonsense. But pundits can do it regarding a black man with no real consequence, because, well, a lot of people think this way.

So what do black people do? They ignore it and go on with their lives as it's obvious that saying anything about it would amount to whining. But when they get together to vent about it, that's not an exclusionary thing. It's getting discussing a topic that other people agree is there instead of pretending it's not.

TheVoid said:

Check again.

muleFunk said:

The half-black, half-Italian myth was propagated mostly during 1999 and Purple Rain. It added to the mystique and probably made a lot of people more comfortable being a fan. It is absolutely false, of course, as his parents are both black.

I never heard anything - ever - about him being half Mexican.

jdcxc said:

The short answer is yes. Minus Springsteen, and Neil Young. And I love Neil Young. I don't think James Brown and Marvin were in Prince and Stevie and Bowie's and Beatle's league.

It kind of sucks that you reduced this conversation to black vs. white superstar musicians.

Great thread, murph.

I think racism certainly plays into a bit of how he's been categorized and marketed. I've always seen him more as a pop act than an R&B one, but he's usually put in the latter bin in record stores.

Prince has done much to invite lofty comparisons, though. I think he's done more to invite comparisons to other legends -- Joni, James, Sly, Dylan, Elvis, Stevie, etc. -- and I think such weighing of oeuvres is par for the course.

But folks who say "Chocolate Box" or "Future Baby Mama" is beneath him and who do so with "Empty Room" spinning on their players are just as likely to say Clapton's last album stank to high heaven compared with "Journeyman."

I see race playing a far lesser role than music quality. And, Prince continues to act like a weirdo to most people, a trait that has constantly rubbed people of every hue the wrong way.

merrickjones69 said:

We all evolve, grow up, and mature. Thankfully Prince has too. The so called fans holding on to 80s or 90s Prince need to play their old cd's and-- please move on with life and off of this site. I want the Prince of Lotusflower-not SOTT, 2010 and beyond. SOTT was great, but he released SOTT in 1987. That was 23 years ago folks!
I thank God everyday for my gift of life, my wife, my kids, and the family I grew up with...AND to be alive to experience each new Prince cd and his amazing live shows. There isn't a performance on the planet that comes close to a Prince concert.

XNY said:

Oh?

Se7en said:

truly a weird myth...i remember it from back in the day; many believed it

JudasLChrist said:

It kind of sucks that Blacks folks live this EVERY SINGLE DAY that they are breathing.

Graycap23 said:

Victim much?

JudasLChrist said:

Factual much.

Graycap23 said:

That's what I've been waiting for in this conversation, for folx to lay down some facts instead of conjecture. I'm factual as much as I can be, holmes.

If you present some facts and evidence, then we can talk about what those facts mean. Until then they are just your unquestioned assumptions about how the world works.

JudasLChrist said:

At last! Some good old fashioned common sense...

JudasLChrist said:

lol.....walk in a black man's shoes 4 a wonth.....and get back 2 me.

Graycap23 said:

You know, I don't deny that racism and white supremacy are problems in America. I also know that not all people agree in unison about how those problems manifest. We can't really walk in each others' shoes. What we can do is talk to each other. That is way more productive. What is not productive is constructing grand narratives about how "the black man just can't get a chance" (or whatever) without articulating what it is exactly you are referring to.

I'm under the assumption that the original poster here wanted to talk about race. Well, I say BRING IT! Come to the table with concrete examples.

Thought this excerpt from a Bay Area newspaper was relevant and timely consideirng the topic and comments of this and other recent threads:

Concert review: Ageless Bon Jovi delivers fresh, but flawed, show at HP Pavilion
By Jim Harrington
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 02/23/2010 10:35:17 AM PST
Updated: 02/23/2010 11:14:25 AM PST
http://www.insidebayarea....i_14454849

The fans who came out to this stop on Bon Jovi's newly launched "The Circle" tour...didn't act like they were listening to a group that recorded its first hit single ("Runaway") nearly 30 years ago. ... they treated Bon Jovi like it's still a relevant group, and greeted the band's new material, off last year's "The Circle," with nearly the same gusto they showed the old radio favorites...

Just ask Billy Joel, Elton John, KISS or any other classic rock act with a career spanning 25-plus years what a rarity that is...

This is a direct result of Jon Bon Jovi's unswerving commitment to stay off the nostalgia circuit...

Sure, fans get a dose of nostalgia... but it's only part of a mix that is more focused on what the band has been up to recently...

The HP date nicely illustrated the band's ongoing effort to hone a more mature some would say, age-appropriate country-rock sound. The new material sounds more like something one would hear on a John Mellencamp record than the songs from one of Bon Jovi's classic '80s pop-rock albums, which explains why the group has been able to cultivate a "New Country" audience to go along with its existing classic-rock crowd...

Some might knock the group's country material and that's easy to do, since it can come across like Rascal Flatts on a bad night but at least the band is trying to grow as a musical entity...

All of those negatives, however, can't outweigh the one main positive: Bon Jovi is one of the few acts that manages to come across as both timely and timeless...

For its encore, the New Jersey rockers delivered "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Livin' on a Prayer," capping a show that featured just enough greatest-hits material, yet still seemed more about the new songs than the old. Bon Jovi is one of the few acts that can actually pull it off...

I've always like Bon Jovi. Good for them, nice to hear.



//
[Edited 2/23/10 20:20pm]

sweething said:

I see that you highlighted the parts that you thought were relevant, but can you say a bit more about how you think this review applies?

I agree, the Press (The great -----(Insert name of country) press clobbering machine comes along if you lose steam). And its not just musical artists like Prince, its athletes. Tiger Woods and OJ Simpson enjoyed a lot of good press and positive reaction while they were great athletes, but the press was there to catch them when the fell. I agree that yes both men did regrettable things but the press (In the USA run by conservative white men) had a field day, searching for dirt and MILKING the story for it all its worth, why ? Because both scandals were enough to end Tiger and OJ's reign as a SUPER NEGRO, and they became typical black people who can't handle fame, a stereotype the white press loves to perpetuate, they love it when Rick James and James Brown went to prison, its the tall poppy syndrome, unfortunately the racist adage "Don't let the negro get above his place" still exists
And then theres Michael Jackson, man the press had convicted him, before the jury found him not guilty twice. Henry Louis Gates (Clearly he was the victim of a racist police racial profiling incident), but even here it was reported he used the word Motherfucker to the cops liberally, again reinforcing the stereotype, no matter how educated or powerful an African American is, at heart hes still crude.
I feel for Obama, because I know the press are watching him and waiting for him to slip (Especially Fox, who runs it the KKK?), but at the moment Obama is the SUPER NEGRO of the moment. The fact hes half white has never meant anything, the less informed sectors of society only want to focus on his blackness.
Murph, this easily the best thread I have seen on the org for months, good job, you sum up how I feel at times. This stuff pisses me off, why can't a black man be left alone to enjoy his success like white people.

Huggiebear said:

It's not the press, per se, that is waiting for Obama to fail and to pounce on every infraction real and perceived. It is the greater far-right movement that includes republicans, neo-cons and their conservative christian base which includes the Tea-baggers, et al. Those people obviously control big swaths of the media. They use race as factor to stir up the redneck base.

But, if you think about it. They did the same thing with Bill Clinton. The Clintons became 'the root of all evil' and the right in this country declared total war on them. The same thing is happening to Obama. Race is just one of the tools they use against him. They know that Obama is the smartest man in the room, they also that they can use that fact to piss off their white, christian followers. Therefore, they portray him as arrogant, foreign, illegitimate, etc... But it's not like that's what they actually believe about him.

Obama better follow through on campaign promises, Tiger better stop fucking bitches cus we've given that nigga too much $ to cheat on a perfect blond, Black coaches better win the fucking super bowl first year out, Prince better not age and the nigga better recreate music every album, Lebron better win some shit and feed Haiti while he's at it!! lol, dont snark me to death i'm just having some fun

Prince is far more than a racial category...attempting to analyse his art via a racialistic perspective might be eye-opening to some, yet vain to others

While I can't definitely say that this post is wrong, I must admit, that I too find it a bit hard to swallow as it is now.

The problem to me, and the single most important thing to do for you as the writer, is to back up some of these claims with something substantial. Right now, you're backing your theory up with myths.

If you knew David Bowie better, for intance, you'd know that he indeed gets roughed up by his fans. You'll find constant remarks about "why everything he made after 1980 was up to no good?" and so forth. The difference between Bowie and Prince, is of course, that Bowie has now been dissapointing his fans for nearly 30 years, and I speculate that his fans are now turning immune and aren't bothered to get cynical about it anymore. Prince has argueably only been dissapointing his fans in some 15+ years, so as of yet, he hasn't reached that point, where his fans have given up on him and embraced the new Prince as an aging musician (I think a fan needs to have hope for his idol's abilities in order to be bothered to complain about his current lack of sparkle, a fan who doesn't have hope for the future of his idol, probably just forgets him and move on).

I am not familiar with Springsteen (who's mostly an American idol), Gabriel and the others to an extent where I'm comfortable claiming this or that about their fan base (and who outside any fan based community really is? Are you so involved with these musicians online communities to claim all is honky dory over there?), but Prince actually seems to outsell Springsteen and Young and Dylan if you look at it on an international level.

How ever, I can't rule out that race indeed has something to do with it. I'm not from America and I think America in many ways is still utterly **cked up about this issue to an extent where someone from Europe like me simply cannot begin to understand HOW this could be an issue at all, but with that said, a simple case study in Nina Simone probably will underline the fact, that black musicians in the USA are treated differently.

There's just two things I think you're missing in this theory, besides facts:

1) I wonder if the "Bill Cosby Syndrome" applies to Prince. By this I mean, that in the 1980s Bill Cosby complained about some reactions from various black communities who wanted the Bill Cosby Show to not just show ONE type of black family, but rather as one of the very, very few black mainstream acts embody the entire black community. What Cosby complained about was, that he felt he had to carry every black man and woman on his shoulders, as if he as a successful black man now had been appointed, unwillingly, to speak for everyone with colour. Could the same apply to Prince? Is he not allowed to fail, because he is black, and because in doing so will "fail" an the behalf of his race? Is this bull shit, or is it a possible factor? As I said, I'm European, and I have a really hard time understanding what "race" means to Americans.

2) Prince's career has been weird in the sense, that he is now self employed and in absolute control over his own output. I think it shouldn't be missed, that ever since the 1990s Prince hasn't had a BIG company to keep his stardom shining. Regardless of one's talents, I think you need money to be canonized in rock history. The Beatles, Bowie, Springsteen, all of them, have been elevated to legends mostly after their careers peaked, all due to clever schemes by record companies. No one but Prince is pushing his legacy right now, and I'm afraid it's the lack of money and record company schemes and not the presence of race, that'll eventually make his musical output forgotten by the masses.

Anyway, in hope to keep it civil.

Cravens said:

I agree with the Super Negro theory 100% but this is a factor and is always overlooked in this discussion.

In 1995 Prince was placed in the R&B division of Warner Brothers. This was done after Prince had signed a record deal that shook the foundations of the industry. What we found out later was this deal was predicated on him selling 1 million albums.

What is often overlooked by fams and critics was how W&B then promoted the following CD and single releases. Prince's single releases then suddenly shifted to R&B themed songs.... Sexy MF and My Name Is Prince were released as the opening singles off the "Symbol" album. I could see Sexy MF as it was released to be a club jam and was a huge hit there but My Name Is Prince flopped.Some will jump up and say that the artist is the main promoter of his or her songs but that's not 100% true. The record company has the final say in the matter.

The real drama came when the Come/Gold era materal was ready for release.WB told Prince to release a Greatest Hits album. Prince had just had a comeback with Diamonds and Pearls and had a minor hit Symbol. He had hit materal ready with the Gold/Come materal why a greatest hits record?

Then Prince is told in 1994 by a WB suit that he did not have another hit in him. Prince then goes out and hits indy style with TMBGITW.

I could go on here but the bottom line was WB was sabotaging Prince to keep him from making that contract work for him. Then someone then set out to destroy him by sabotaging other deals he had with other labels. The biggest example was the Arista deal which had him at Clive Davis throat until he found out Clive was kicked off his own damn label. Clive was replaced by longtime Prince rival L.A. Reid and the Rave project was through.

This trend continued until the Musicology deal which the big label promoted the shit out of the record and multiple hits followed.

Prince did not help himself during this time but it's obvious that someone was trying to put this "nigger" in his place.

Bottom line ..."if the RECORD COMPANY does not want you to have a hit you won't have one. And I don't care who you are."
Barry White
[Edited 2/24/10 4:31am]

muleFunk said:

Wow.....someone who UNDERSTANDS the game.
Nice.

Good post muleFunk. Didn't know about the L.A. Reid story.

JudasLChrist said:

Sure, a couple of points but first let me remind you that the original post notes the numerous "Prince has lost it threads" as means of concluding there is no middle ground for Prince.

I felt the article was relevant as a comparison for the following reasons:

1. There's much discussion on this board about Prince's musical offerings of late, i.e., he should do more the 80's stuff, his sound hasn't been this/that since (insert name of and album prior to musicology) --- on and on. There are those who always seem dissapointed in whatever he does and appear to not want him to grow as a musician and/or performer.

I use Bon Jovi as an example of another 80's/90's rock band that is experimenting, trying to stay "relevant" expanding their fan base by adopting new music -- the very thing Prince is and has done all along.

2. Bon Jovi has 11 studio albums in 26 years to Prince's 44 albums in 32 years.

This is no dump on Bon Jovi, and clearly based on numbers alone, Prince is in a completely different category not only in terms of his prolificness but his ability to write, compose and perform diverse music and attract a diverse audiences throughout his career.

Here's the difference:

3. Although the article does use the word "flawed" in terms of Bon Jovi's attempts to infuse "country" into its new music, the writer praises, supports and compliments the band's efforts; fans "greeted the band's new material, off last year's "The Circle," with nearly the same gusto they showed the old radio favorites... Bon Jovi is one of the few acts that manages to come across as both timely and timeless..."

While again, Bon Jovi is not really in the same league as Prince, clearly the nearly sold-out Pavilion (20,000) and the writer's perspective imply that the band is still afforded the respect and accolades from their fans. In fact I know someone who went to this concert, she had not a bad word to say, loved it completely--old and new songs.

Prince, arguably a better musician on paper and in craft, on the other hand must contend with ungrateful fans, disrespect, uncessesary criticism, labels, etc.

This implies to me there is no middle-ground for Prince (at least for some) as they cannot accept his growth, experimentation, diversity, longevity and all-around-ability for what it is; truly unmatched -- instead they must continually "find" something to discount him at all costs.

Prince's efforts really should be applauded since he is in fact the American Dream.