OdysseyMiles said:

I'd agree with that. Purple Rain made me a devoted Prince fan, but ATWIAD made me a devoted Prince fan for life.

namepeace said:

Excellent posts. Can I clone your mindsets? I'm so tired of the "I stopped liking Prince after Purple Rain" argument. Some people harp on the same point ad nauseam.

namepeace said:

Aha!

rosanda said:

Uh, that would be VH-1's disclaimer,not Prince's.

sextonseven said:

With the exception of Emancipation (which I think has at least one disc's worth of stellar songs), I wholeheartedly agree with the above statement.

Novabreaker said:

Thats pretty good..I had the feeling like "He made an ass of himself for this?" That package is so plain dumb, from the cheesy cover image to his head being shaved on the side to the 'oooo lightning' picture on the discs to the crummy photo spreads to the bad 'artwork'

It was definitely time for a Prince-break after that

mynameisnotsusan said:

thought Prince was pregnant n that booklet. Kinda reminds me of the Around The World In A Day cover.

For me it was Batman. After the pure brilliance of the Lovesexy album and tour it just didn't do it for me. Then on the Nude tour once he started letting Tony rap I for the first time started being disappointed with Prince which had never happened up to that point.

[quote]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.

Good point.

If you really think Prince has 'jumped the shark'--a reference to the time when Happy Days should have called it quits but instead decided to milk the cash cow long after it had soured-- means you think Prince should have called it quits at SOME point in time... ultimately saying you're here at the org because you are a retard holding on to Prince's cock for what reason?!
That's not to say he hasn't had his up's and down's. But even my least fave albums- Batman, for instance, appears more of a calculated risk looking back yrs ago. He wouldn't have gotten WB's ok to film Graffiti Bridge had he not sold a gazillion albums the yr before. He has since rebounded beautifully IMHO and has continually done so yr after yr.

DorothyParkerWasCool said:

The kind words arew greatly appreciated, and that mindset you describe. . . I don't understand it. Had those fans been paying attention to the "killer B's" and the album tracks they would have recognized that the P that they loved never left, he just grew.

hmmm.... i think it was the name change 4 me... i really idetified with that becuz i'm Muslim & my name i have now is not the name that was on my Birth Certificate. i truely felt a BOND with Prince when he did that & i started calling myself Prince becuz he did that but still way back when my mom met & married my stepfather he used 2 call me "The Prince Of Bilalia" & i was like ok, i'm The Prince & it stuck.

but when he changed his name back i was like "What Tha F..." c'mon man i thought u said it was The Cre8tor/God that told u 2 do that. mayb it was mayb it wansn't only P & The Cre8tor know... but that kind of bugg'd me...

XNY said:

That's not what 'jump the shark' means. It means the point when the quality started to noticeably decline. There were several good episodes of 'Happy Days' after Fonzie jumped the shark, but overall the series wasn't as good as before that moment. Just because there is a downturn in a series/career doesn't mean that it should have stopped at that point.

larry graham

I have absolutely no problem with people that stopped liking Prince after "Purple Rain". Even though I like his work that followed it, I still consider it much weaker material than his previous work. Me and those people get along just fine and they get no argument from me.

whodknee said:

yep.

vainandy said:

Call it the "Generation Gap." The fans of the Pre-PR era are like pre-baby boomers and fans of the post-PR era are like the baby boomers. I'd guess that a sizable portion of the orgers on this site got hooked on Prince after PR. That's our frame of reference, and thos of us that fit in that category judge even the classics that preceded PR by the post-PR/pre-Batman standard (roughly).

Only an artist as diverse as Prince could spark such arguements between his own fans.

vainandy said:

Indeed. Remember the heated arguments over TRC about 18 months ago?

mynameisnotsusan said:

I sure hate that my Emancipation cut out doesn't have the damn liner notes in it

for me the begining of the slide was lovesexy, still a good album, but in no way matched the brilance of his earlier work. The stuff that followed was hit and Miss. i really loved Gold and exodus and thought he had found it again. the first time I heard Chaos and disorder i thought he had totally lost it. I hated that album at first but it has grown on me since then. I think NPS was the low point and he has been on a slow, steady return to form since then

For me it was "Cream" even though I like the song and some songs on Dimonds and Pearls it just seemed like he was becoming a parody of himself during that era.

sextonseven said:

Actually that's exactly what it means-and although I'm certain you could document which Happy Days episodes came after 'the shark'-the phrase refers to when the show just got greedy and instead of doing the right thing and bowing out, they decided to milk the cash cow until nobody gave a squat anymore, ultimately tarnishing its place in entertainment history.

Batman. It's been gone over already.

He jumped the shark with the GRAFFITI BRIDGE movie. Yes, Batman wasn't great, but it had some excellent songs on it. When he chose to do Purple Rain 2 it was an admission that he had to go back to his roots and find his way again. The album was just a slapped together collection of old songs (some like Tick Tick Bang, almost 10 years old). The script for the film was terrible and the execution of the entire event was evidence that he was revving his motorcycle to jump the shark.

He was able to get some popularity back again with D+P, but his use of Rap on his songs showed that he was no longer pushing the envelope of what was popular, he was following, and for the first time, he was seriously showing how out of touch he was.

There was a period in the 80s when he people turned to him to see what was going to be popular. 1999, PR, ATWIAD (remember how popular wearing Paisley was!!!), Parade, and SOTT were all cutting edge and bold. His album releases were an event that garnered alot of attention. That stopped after the 80s and Graffiti Bridge (the album, but more importantly THE MOVIE) was the sign that he had lost his way.

The movie should have started out with him jumping over a tank of sharks.

Wow! Great thread! I'm amazed so many ppl think like me.

Batman was definitely it. I liked the album when I heard it, but something wasn't right. It seemed until then that he was being chased by his muse - he was racing to say all that he needed to say, musically and lyrically. With Batman it was like he didn't really know why he was doing it. It wasn't self-expression and it doesn't burn with the URGENCY of all his previous releases. Most of all, it had Arms of Orion. Now, I was never crazy about Take Me With U, and there'd been low-points on his albums before, but there'd NEVER been a song I thought was CRAP!

But then he topped that with GB. I got excited by the album, especially the collaborations, but We Can Funk was disappointing. And the movie! until Batman, P could do no real wrong (even UTCM is cute). After that...

BTW, I'd never heard the expression "jumping the shark" and I was a big Happy Days fan. Thanx. Can u give more details?

PS Changed my mind! The Hits was when he really Jumped the Shark. The P I knew would never release a hits package. He would keep pushing the envelope with new stuff!
[Edited 1/2/05 11:09am]

The Pussy Control disclaimer was all part of teh act - anybody who went to teh Gold Experience shows will know that.

Everytime he playedthe track he would say something along the lines of "if you aint 18 you'd better leave the room" or "parents youd better take your kids outside or ya'll gonna have trouble explaining this tonight"

Its all part of the show, just liek when he asks "ya'll want quick funk next or slow funk next"...then plays exactly what he was going to play anyway no matter what the crowd shouts.

wasitgood4u said:

Here you go:

http://www.jumptheshark.com

It's also a book.

The whole "slave" "Im too good for this " attitude era

...Way too much bad press showing P as arrogant and mean

GaryMF said:

Thanx