I am so sorry somebody explain this to me:

He signs w/Warners in 1978 for a specifed amount of money/albums?? right??
I am still fuzzy on the 80's and if he signed another contract?? did he??
Now 1992 he signs a big fat ass contract, and realizes oops something is not right here, he pisses and moans how they are getting over on him??

My ? is why did he sign the contract in the 1st place?? How come he didn't bitch slap he's legal team for not reading the fine print??

So he went by an unprounable symbol, people laughed, and stayed away from his records. By doing such a stupid thing, he never got his masters, went back to using his birth name and people are still not buying his records.

He should of just sucked it up, play out his contract and negoiated a better deal after it ran out. It just seemed he wasted the 90's only 1/2 hearted projects and his reputation suffered.

So when do you think he was getting screwed??

when his career went down the toilet in the 1990's.

I think the first taste of bad blood was when Prince believed Warner Bros wasn't promoting the album and the Carmen Electra album as much as they should be. Plus I think around this time he wanted to release Gold Nigga but Warner wouldn't allow it (fearing overexposure). From what I've read, it seems that the original fued with Warner Bros was about Prince wanting to release a shite load of music and Warner Bros said no. It seems the whole thing with owning his masters didn't become an issue until The Gold Experience and that's when the shite hit the fan!!!

From what I can remember, it was his wanting to release a lot of material and WB fearing that his music was gonna oversaturate the market with too much Prince music in one small period. Also, P realized they made him a VP JUST so they can keep him near their offices and he wasn't down with that.

NeoSoulScribe said:

I'm sorry, what do u mean by that? Are u saying they gave him such special treatment creatively so that he'd stay loyal?

I understand the argument about him wanting to release a lot of music in the 90's and Warner not allowing it, but didn't this problem begin way back in '79 when his The Rebels was his first proposed album that they didn't allow?

doctamario said:

No, they gave him that feaux title just to keep him near the headquarters cuz P had a tendency to go AWOL and do his own damn thing while WB would be frantically searching for him like his name was Bobby Fisher.

This is a never ending arguement,

I sometimes wish he kept his dispute all in house and try to reslove the problem without the press being involved.

It did leave a bad taste in allot of mouthes during the 90s. Particulary as the D&P album sold very well. Release sub "Prince" standard albums only hurt him in view of allot of his fans! Which is why I guess he won't be heard much on the air ways

Why he signed the contract with all the cluses in it? Only he a can answer this question.

NeoSoulScribe said:

what do u mean, AWOL? They didn't have trouble getting him to release more music, he was always in the studio.
[Edited 6/6/05 0:31am]

doctamario said:

I mean just that! The dude was hard to get in touch with and he made damn sure to have it that way.

When failed to sell as much as D&P did. Wonder why?

Dugen said:

Exactly. I remember in the mid-80s reading about him wanting to release more than WB would allow and thinking "this won't last". Once Mo Ostin and other WB execs that he was comfortable with left, the writing was on the wall. Other artists also began having problems with WB around that time.

Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker leaving Warners was the end of an era. In the ‘70s thru the mid ‘80s, execs at Warners (and most other record companies) nurtured their artists whom they felt had talent. Waronker and Ostin were big defenders of Prince because they respected him and knew he was talented—even if his records weren’t always blockbusters on the charts.

When Mo and Lenny left, many of Warners great artists no longer had anyone willing to go to bat for them. So I think Prince had to fend for himself. Also, remember that Warner merged with Time and became a huge mega-conglomerate. Once that happened, the focus was on profit (more than ever), and “artistic merit” wasn’t valued as much as it once was.

I remember reading an article about Joni Mitchell a while back in which she said that Lenny once told her that she could record for Warners “for as long as she wanted,” even though her music wasn’t selling as well as it did in the ‘70s. Great musicians just don’t have that kind of support from the suits anymore.

I think part of the reason why Prince’s behavior was viewed as odd by a lot of people is because they didn’t know what was going on or why he was doing the things that he did. Sure, us fans keep tabs on that kind of stuff, but most folks watching the AMAs years ago, for example, and saw Prince with the word “Slave” written on the face probably just thought “WTF?” Not, “Gotta admire that Prince fella for fighting for his artistic integrity. Gee, I hope he gets his masters back.” Most folks had no real clue what was going on, which made his behavior seem all the more strange.

Prince has made plenty of money

Things started back in 1986/87 when Prince was ready to release Dream Factory/Crystal Ball as a three album set and WB told him that he couldn't do that as triple album didn't sell well and he would be over saturating the market working against himself. (They didn't realize that they missed out on the greatest Prince work). Same thing happened with the Gold Experience/Come as Prince had songs ready to go, but since new brass came in at WB, they didn't know what good Prince music was, so they asked Prince to hold off, which pissed Prince off because the freshness of the music would soon become dated. Look at the dates of the Gold Experience songs, some ofthem where copyrighted in 1994 which made at least a year old. From there the war was on.