I enjoyed Anxiety's thread about Top 10 moments of '04, and realized that we did have quite a bit to celebrate as fans. But then, I started thinking...

When did things start going wrong?

When did you think Prince had "jumped the shark"?

Was it writing 'slave' on his face?
The name change?
"Tora Tora"?
Some might even think as far back to disbanding the Revolution?

What was your first inkling that something wasn't quite right?

A defining point for me was the opening of the VH1 Fashion Awards, when he performed 'P Control', and he offered a "disclaimer" about the lyrics before he even started singing. Say what??? The man who deliberately didn't include a lyric book in Graffiti Bridge, because he wanted people to actually LISTEN to the lyrics? The man who sang about Head, and girls doing strange things in lobbies, and turning 'a gay preacher into a sinner', who sincerely wanted to f*ck the taste outta my mouth, and who begged me not to let the elevator take me down was now explaining lyrics, before they even left his mouth???

Funny, but I could over look all the other antics, but that particular moment just seemed to scream "uh-oh!" to me.

For those die-hard fans who think Prince never jumped, let me clarify -- I am talking about his relevancy on the pop radar, not in musical reality!

So -- what did it for you?


Ro

**LoveLife, LoveGod, LoveSexy**

For me, the very first mistake was "Around The World In A Day". Before that, Prince could do no wrong in my book.

rosanda said:

I really hated the the slapdash picture editing on the Emancipation booklet. You know there is one picture of and Mayte together as kids and little Prince's other foot is re-aligned in a completely different position - it's just that Parke forgot all about the trunk of his shorts and now it looks like the poor kid was wearing some sort of bizarre outfit designed for three-legged freaks.

That did it for me. Up yours Prince. You can go to hell.
[Edited 12/30/04 2:56am]

I don't know. I think all of the things he did lead to some good in the end.
But what disappointed me most, personally, was "Emancipation".

There had been talk in interviews and such about this album for a long time,
even before the release of "Chaos & Disorder" and Prince's camp constantly
stated that he'd kept the best material of the last few years for this set
of cd's.

He'd recorded more than 52 songs at one point when Mayte gave an interview
in Europe.

I don't know, I guess me and a lot of other people were expecting songs like
the ones on COME, THE GOLD EXPERIENCE, EXODUS and such, but even better cause
he'd kept them all to bundle up on the new gigantic 3 disc album.

Then, when it was finally released it was just such a dud. It was all just
a bag of plastic produced songs clearly directed at the american soft rnb
market.

Admitting, after the initial shock that there were almost NO guitars, almost
NO live drums and WAY TO FUCKING MANY screaming chorus vocal layers, there
was about 1 disc worth of good to very good songs on there.

But it was nothing close to what it was rumoured to be, before it's release.
Imagine a 36 song collection of music that sounds like GOLD, PAPA, CALHOUN SQ
INTERACTIVE, P CONTROL, DOLPHIN, COME, GET WILD etc etc.

Argh.

But still, I don't think that that is "jumping the shark", that is just my
own personal gripe

I think he lost revelance as soon as all that shit about , the NPG, Mayte, Tora Tora and whatever the fuck else hit between 92 and 95. So many names and spinoffs, I have no idea what he did in that period.

I think the namechange plus the angry phase that followed were one of his coolest decisions ever...takes a lot of courage and determination and belief in yourself to do something like that at that point in your career..I also liked the numerological and alchemistic approach behind it, though at times it seemed a bit tacky...the pyramids etc...but read about Akhenaton and Nefertiti and you might understand what he was up to.
Anyway, I didn´t like the 97-99 period.
And the fact that he got way too deep into half baked conspiracy theories, and stuff like " how come Jews have nice names and blacks have ugly names " like on Family Name ...I like that song and its anger and it raises a lot of questions, but, and this is where he should have done some research, names like Rosenbloom and Goldstruck and most other Jewish names were given to Jews to discriminate them ( in Poland)...so it´s not like they wanted or chose those names..
But other than that, hats off to Prince for going through some catastrophic times in the nineties and coming out sane , healthy and wealthy and happy...that in itself is worth more than any number one hit. Just give him some time and he´ll come out with some fascinating music again. I liked his output in every phase of his career.

Novabreaker said:

during the whole era.

Novabreaker said:

Yeah, how could I forget the crappy artwork and spelling mistakes of Steve Parke ?
Just check out the back of 1999- The new master...read it, and you´ll see.
Not to forget all the cheesy looking cd covers he made. What happened to Jeff Katz, Jean Baptiste Mondino, Randee St. Nicholas etc...Prince cd covers used to look real classy before Parke stepped on the scene..he might be a good artis in his own field , but his work for Prince sucked.

rosanda said:

I thought that was a blast, there is this warning to listnen carefully, and then he starts singing pussy control, to the shock of the audience

For me, he never really "jumped the shark," per se, but one moment that sticks out for me as a point where I was like "WTF?" was the whole Diamonds & Pearls period. It was so phony looking. He named his hairdo? Godfather III meets Barbarella? The cheesy and overlong CD single for Cream. Clockin' the Jizz?

*shudders*

The music was okay,and that period spawned one of my favorite Prince songs of all time in Insatiable, but overall that whole Prince and the New Power Generation period, with Princess Mayte and the 3 Chains and all of that, which began with the Diamonds & Pearls period was the beginning of the end for me.

Fortunately, even though he changed his name shortly thereafter, the music that was to follow would be some of his best.
[Edited 12/30/04 7:52am]

when he and chance howard danced and duetted together on "soul man".
what the hell?prince....is that you?

Novabreaker said:

The most popular answer would be when Prince changed his name, but I think there was a slight but steady decline after he pulled the release of The Black Album. Having said that, the biggest change in terms of his music that I see is when he stopped releasing retail singles in the U.S. which was between the Gold Experience and Emancipation albums. From Emancipation onward there seems to be something missing from all of his new studio albums:

Emancipation
Newpower Soul
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic
The Rainbow Children
N.E.W.S.
Musicology

Basically, I'm agreeing with Novabreaker and I think Prince jumped the shark in '96.

MrSquiggle said:

heybaby said:

I would have said the name change also except that Prince released two of his best albums, The Gold Experience and The Undertaker, after the name change.

I would say Batman. Tho I really like the album, he allowed his music to be coopted by one of the biggest marketing juggernauts of the last 2 decades in order to recover from the commerical debacle that was Lovesexy. He came out of the Zone after that album and he hasn't gotten completely back in it.

I would also say that it seems like much of his better work of recent times was in the mid-90's with his NPG outfit. TGE remains his best album since the 80's,

It's a hard one to answer.

I'd say "Batman", but he was able to come back during D&P era in terms of being on the pop radar (which is what the question was).

So given the question, the name change really did it, in that he never really cambe back again....until 2004, atlhough it's still not the same.

GaryMF said:

That's reasonable. I thought the name change sent him into the music wilderness, but from an artistic standpoint, Batman would be my marking point.

Graffiti Bridge

At the time it seemed like he had everything in line knock them out. Personally Chewymusic and I were so geeked up we had to have drink to sober up. Morris was back, George Clinton, good advance tracks on on on. We saw it two times in a row and I never went to see at a theater again. I had to apologize and warn my friends that were casual fans. My faher saw it on cable last month and asked me why he'd never seen it before.

I think it still stands as the worst thing he's ever put that much energy into and his biggest opportunity lost. It clearly spoke to me that he had lost touch with what people want to see and hear. I'll stop before I get pissed all over again.

namepeace said:

I agree with that assessment I don't really like Lovesexy as an album but artistically I apprecite it. Batman is another story.

I'm going to go with something nobody has said yet and it's that Prince jumped the shark when he didn't tour the US for a while.Prince wasgoing crazy like an artist can never have a dry spell and nobody wants to listen to you for a while.He really had problems then

ABeautifulOne said:

I'll say it was a huge mistake not to do a large-scale US tour for Parade or SOTT. He could have redeemed Parade's reputation from the ashes of the movie's failure (IMHO, people held the movie against the album) and could have solidified SOTT's position as the Album of the Year and cemented its status as a classic instantly. Waiting until Lovesexy, which is arguably Prince's most misunderstood album, to tour the US only compounded the error.

The beginning of the decline was when he announced that he would never tour again

When you consider that his greatest and most undeniable strength is the quality of his live performances this decision was a travesty.

No tour for ATWIAD, Parade and SOTT. Then he releases a great album with a nude picture of himself. How many people out there did not buy his album because of the cover?

The greatest and most frivolous self sabotage ever, because he wasn't insane like Michael or in the closet gay like the George Michael. Prince he was just being a cocky and stubborn egomaniacal brat. I love him, but he has pretty much been that way ever since, with flashes of humility to go along with his usual brilliance.

In 2004 he did what he wanted when he wanted. It finally made sense to him and everyone else, because the public is finally as sick of what the music industry has become as he is. I am sure we all held our collective breath each time he was in the public’s eye in hopes that he would not do something stupid that we would have to explain to our friends, while at the same time we pinched ourselves in disbelief that his brilliance was finally shining through to the world the way it should have all this time.

He finally lived up to his expectations laid out in the song “Cream”.

Now if he would just get off of his JW kick, all would be right in the world.

rationalman said:

Perhaps the "JW kick" you refer to is one of many reasons you were able to enjoy 2004 to such a degree.

Batman- without a doubt. You can argue over the artistic merits of ATWIAD, Parade and Lovesexy- but they still constituted quality artistic expression. They still felt like works of art in a certain sense. Batman was the first album that just felt like a bunch of songs with no cohesive theme. For me it also marked the end of his extraordinary growth that each album up to that point provided. All of a sudden he looked back- rap passed him by and he was never on that creative edge again...

fmarasco said:

I strongly agree, but with a couple of provisos:

1. Batman was fairly cohesive, but Prince's vision was molded to fit a movie, not a particular artistic vision.

2. By the early '90's, hip-hop had gotten ahead of him, and had he chosen the right collaborators, he would not have so clumsily co-opted it into his sound. Native Tongues would have been perfect for what he was trying to do.

Still love Prince, but he jumped the shark:

when he gahavus diamonds & pearls

That album and made me sick when I first heard them. Since then I've learned to hear them differently. Actually, Symbol is one of my favorites, but D&P represents the moment when he lost his edge.

andyman91 said:

Even with all of his commercial success, I still call D&P "Prince's Pop Album." I suspect he was gunning for a big contract with Warners and this album was designed to show he could still churn out the hits. Even still, it is loaded with some good songs, including the classic "Gett Off," which represents possibly his best hip-hop-esque track. I love "Money Don't Matter 2Night" and "Insatiable."

was a hell of an attempt to return to the artistic heights of the 80's. But for Tony M and 3 Chains O' Gold he may have been successful. Still, it features some very good somgs (Sexy MF, Morning Papers, and 7) and one all-time great (And God Created Woman).
[Edited 12/30/04 12:24pm]

vainandy said:

I'll do you one better and say Purple Rain. He wanted fame and glory so much but didn't realize the price he'd have to pay. All of the crap that went along with that movie and tour took a toll. He had to come out with an album like ATWIAD after that to get back to normal. That album and Parade helped make his world more normal again, getting rid of the casual fans. Of course he also lost a lot of his original fans. Disbanding the Revolution was just part of this process of coming back to center if you will.

Thank heavens Prince released ATWIAD. If that's what it took for him to move to the next level artistically, then so be it.
It shows that he actually cares about his legacy as a diverse/open-minded artist, and what it means to grow and move forward rather than pleasing others.