3232 said:

Light-skinned blacks being shunned in the black community is news to me.

prince worked what he had to astounding results in regards to image, look at him brotha's wouldnt have accepted him anyway had he tried to step into that "grown man" arena rick is in. people of color have binary ideas when it comes to gender, we are ultra conservative when it comes to "what is masculine" because we've had to fight 100's of years just to be human. Prince understood that gender and sexuality are different things entirely and the 80's were a perfect time for a brotha that looked like him to benefit (look at boy george).At this time i was a short, androgynous teenager getting all the girls, brotha's were not only offended but frightened because they feared that someone that looked like me was doin something to their girl that they couldnt follow.Yet i was just a horny assed young boy just like them, i just benefited from the broadening idea's about "what" is attractive. Prince was responsible for broadening that idea with black folks. Black Male Comedians still joke about loving him at the expense of how they might be viewed sexually ( sometimes we can be so small). The funny thing is you can take the wayans, jamie foxx bill belamy and put them all together and they aint seen more ass than this brotha. He takes our black male fears sourounding masculinity, pisses on it, does what he wants and laughs his ass all the way to the bank and to the bedroom.i even love how he is now cherished as a national treasure by conservative black america giving him NAACP awards and shit. Watching him perform for that set is funny to me cus i know that this brotha is so bad that half of those people in that crowd called him a fag at one time or another and still his talent broke them down. Now that's pimpin 4 real.

Let's face it...
Back then Prince was the kind who would never say "Thank you", never "Please."
Prince was still looking for the Ladder.

yeah it's funny. 2 see relatives who called him a fag or ?'d my sexuality for liking him now giving it up for him like they "know" a nigga. i always tell them u dont know prince like i know prince and they dont say shit cus they know i was down when it wasnt "hard" to be down . have we come a long way? or does winning cure all evils?. i think it's the later, in the real world the bobby cutts type brotha's still get the nod (from women) because they are viewed as real men on face value in our community. i'll always love prince because he's a challenging brotha in that way and i wouldnt want him to be the kind of cat rick james would hang with.hell i got cousins who are the type of brotha's rick james would hang with LOL, but i dont want that from an icon. I love Hip Hop but some of them cats are annoying cus they remind you of annoying niggas u see everyday LOL. Prince 2 his credit is such a star ( in looks ,clothing, smell and attitude) that he reminds us that mystery is still the shit.The funny thing is some of the hardest cats admit to being starstruck around him, imagine that a little dude that in any other context u would call a fag is so talented so famous that he got hardcore rappers all nervous like some lil bitches LOL.

blackguitaristz said:

Rick James, is that you writing this post from the grave? LOL Seriously, I think Rick's bitterness toward Prince is demonstrative of his own deep-seated jealousy and inability to confront his own issues with race. Yes I believe Prince has issues with color, which is reflected in the type of women he dates. However, Rick was the same way and is just hating because P's looks and cross-over appeal allowed him to do this on a greater level than Rick. It was Rick who mostly dated and married white women. At least the majority of Prince's women were mixed or mixed looking. Rick was with Teena Marie and admitted, in this same book, that he only fooled around with Maxi (the white member) of the Mary Jane Girls. The song, "Cold Blooded" was written about Linda Blair OF ALL PEOPLE, whom Rick had a big crush on at the time and dated her a short while if my memory serves me correctly. The chick that RJ went to jail for enslaving was white as well. His wife is white. Also, RJ calls P uppity for not wanting to socialize with him? His focus was music not drinking and drugging all the freakin time. That's being a real brother? Rick was just mad that he couldn't dish more dirt on P in this book like he did Teena Marie. She kicked it with RJ romantically and musically and how did he repay her? He outed her as being bisexual and talked about how he was the first to give HER an orgasm in the book! Now who's egotistical?

I make no excuses for Prince being an asshole back then. He like most young musicians had to mature and learn how to handle success and how to treat people. I never would have wanted to meet P back then. It's called growing up. I'm sure a lot of us were jerks when we were younger. RJ was the epitomy of an egotistical jerk back then and up until his death, "I'M RICK JAMES BITCH!" He was pissed because no one cared about him and he thought in his mind that he deserved the attention that P got. NOT!!! P put in the work. Rick didn't! In terms of P biting Rick, ALL MUSICIANS BITE SOMEONE ELSE AND CALL IT INSPIRATION!!! They just put their own stamp on whatever they bite, which Prince has. There is no one that is like him. Rick bit Parliament, Sly & the Family Stone and a list of others. He wasn't purely original.

Plain and simple, Rick was better with the funk but P was BETTER with EVERYTHING else; lyrics, singing, instrumentation, gorgeous looks, intelligence, musical styles, clothes etc. After the 80s, RJ was basically a fat, washed up cracked-out funkster with no musical home to call his own. He had served time in jail for his super freak ways and was living in the past and blaming Prince for his lack of presence on the musical landscape. I like Rick James' music but it's ALL IN THE PAST. If you look at his Web site, most of the imagery is from the PAST!He didn't possess the talent to enjoy the longevity that Prince has had. Outside of MJ, no other artist has had an impact on music like P. The music he's created not only for himself but for others exceeds ANYTHING that Rick could imagine in his wildest dreams. The artists that he's inspired and worked with, the projects that he has brought to fruition - films, interactive Web sites, perfumes, tours etc. Rick was just bitter because he COULD NEVER BE PRINCE!
[Edited 6/26/07 8:07am]
[Edited 6/26/07 8:19am]

dreamshaman32 said:

Godd post and I can dig what you're saying. I've said similar shit on here in the past. BUT to Rick's credit, P DID bite off of Rick's image, show, the whole 9. And that is some bitch shit in my book. And that's P like a motherfucker to do it on the same tour as Rick. P knew that shit would look like Rick was biting off of P when it was the other way around. There was many elements about P, especially when it came to dealing with others, that left a lot to be desired. I can see why P ended up get a bodyguard, cuz I can see P getting jumped by some folks backstage. I've said on here before that P had come off like he was color struck. Came off like he was better than brothers. He couldn't front this shit off with Andre cuz Andre's family took care of P's ass when he literally could have ended up on the street. The shit he ended up doing to Andre is shameful. He has to and will answer for that. He didn't pull that shit with Dez cuz he needed Dez to help him give him confidence with his rock thing. BUT he did pull that shit with Mark. If P was soooo innovative, he wouldn't have stole from Rick like he did. Period. Was Rick a better musician than P? Hell nah. Better songwritter overall? No. But so the fuck what? Man up and come with your own shit. Stop trying to up stage others by having your bodyguard carry your sissy acting ass around the theatre. P couldn't fuck with Michael in his prime with all the guitars in the world and he knew it. P thought cuz he was light and he saw how folks responded to him being light, that he could act the way he did. That's what time THAT shit was. He's lucky that he didn't get fucked up by a few cats from Rick's band. As a band, P's band wouldn't have stood a chance against Rick's band, if they would have threw down. P would have stabbed some cats in the side with his knife and ran away. U can belive that shit. Andre probably would have fared best. Dez wasn't fighting a spider on the wall so...he would have tried to "talk" about it and shit. And Teena would have kicked every girl's ass P had ever fucked with. Jill was probably the toughest girl P had ever worked with. That's why he had problems with her.

blackguitaristz said:

Just curious, what exactly was it that Prince copied (from Rick James)? I don't really think he looked like him at all and I don't know what exactly Rick James meant with "flipping the microphone" but from what I know that Prince did, it's totally James Brown.

Didn't he write "I Wanna Be Your Lover" for Patrice Rushen who he had a crush on?
What part of her can be mistaken for white?
What part of Vanity could one mistake for White?
Where the fuck are these issues of color in Prince's life coming from?
Take a look at where he's from(Minnesota), his multi-racial band and use it as a measuring stick of his attitudes towards race.
Listen to the lyrics of "Uptown".

I honestly don't think Prince gives a fuck about the race of a woman nearly as much as(but not only) her sexual talents.

EmbattledWarrior said:

bro where are you getting your sources
THE WHITE MEDIA dubbed him his royal badness

Prince lied about his racial background in the early years. He also has lied numerous times about "retiring his hits". Rick said, till the day he died, that he was not guilty of the crimes that sent him to prison and I think he was guilty and lying about it. Rick also said in the late 1980s that he was clean and wasn't doing drugs anymore and that turned out to be a lie. Both Rick and Prince have lied numerous times in the past. It's hard to know if Rick was telling the full truth about the tour with Prince. Prince just doesn't speak about it so we will probably never hear his side of the story either.

I can definately believe that Prince was probably anti-social towards Rick and The Stone City Band. However, I had always heard that Prince's band had no problem with either Rick or his band so that part doesn't sound right to me.

I don't really buy the bit about Prince "stealing Rick's act" on that tour. I think Prince definately took notice from Rick's performance as to what grabs an audience's attention, which is shock value. Rick had been more successful than Prince during that time because he came out the gate from day one with a shocking appearance, wild clothes, and songs about drugs, prosititution, the ghetto, etc. Prince had began fairly tame, except for his gay appearance, which I'm sure just came naturally. Rick was known for firing up joints on the stage and telling people to "fire it up". Rick smoked joints in public as if he was smoking a cigarette. He absolutely didn't give a fuck and carried himself with a "fuck you" attitude.

Considering the crowd's reaction to Rick's antics, I'm sure Prince saw what he needed to do for the same attention....be shocking. However.....Prince was shocking in a totally different way than Rick. Prince stripped to his G-string, licked all up the side of his guitar like he was licking a dick, stroked the guitar like he was masturbating, layed all on top of the guitar on the floor. Basically, had an orgasm on the stage.....not to mention looking very gay in the process and gay, in those days, was very shocking.

As far as that tour goes, Prince is simply guilty of learning to be shocking to be successful from Rick. As for "stealing Rick's act", Prince definately had an act all his own and Rick was pissed because he had to follow an outrageous act like that and try to top it. I would have been pissed also but that's life and it makes for a damn good show for everyone attending the concert.

Prince ain't no innocent little saint though. He stole Vanity from Rick. He learned of Rick's planning of a girl group and beat him to the punch. He made a movie after years of Rick bragging about making "Alice In Ghettoland" which never happened. However, Rick might as well have called Prince and told him what he was planning to do because he was always announcing his future plans in the "Right On" magazines and on "Soul Train" (that's where I heard about "Alice In Ghettoland"). I always say...."if it's a secret, keep your mouth shut about it".

Prince had his bodyguard carry him into a Rick James concert through the audience to disrupt it, with Rick eventually saying..."pay no attention to Princess". Teena Marie even was the opening act for Prince the very next year after he got off the Rick James tour. You know Prince was just loving the fact that that might piss Rick off.

Both Rick and Prince were some evil, mean, lowdown, dirty, backstabbing motherfuckers that hated each other and I looooove them both for it. It made for several years entertainment with the best music of both of their careers when they hated each other. Both of their music became much weaker in 1985 when Prince took over Rick's horns and more traditional instruments and Rick took over Prince's synths and colder instruments. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And that goes for both Rick and Prince.
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[Edited 6/28/07 18:16pm]

vainandy said:

Vain, where the FUCK u been? Very nice post.

Thanks Blackguitaristz and Hotlegs. I've been back and forth to the hospital visiting my mother for the last two weeks and getting together with my sister who is trying to get her medicare extended, since she has no insurance and the hospital seems to be doing her like a used car....trying to rush and get her just well enough to release her from the hospital before her medicaid runs out....then, she needs 24 attention at home, which we can't give.

Other than that, I've been fine.

Thanks Blackguitaristz and Hotlegs. I've been back and forth to the hospital visiting my mother for the last two weeks and getting together with my sister who is trying to get her medicare extended, since she has no insurance and the hospital seems to be doing her like a used car....trying to rush and get her just well enough to release her from the hospital before her medicaid runs out....then, she needs 24 attention at home, which we can't give.

Other than that, I've been fine.

Then you could blame every black artist in history until the early 90's. It wasn't until Heavy D. made a conscious effort to use dark skinned models in his videos did the trend even begin to change, even in Afrocentric Hip Hop. Don't put this solely on Prince my friend.

airbak said:

I'm not blaming this on Prince alone: Please see my comment on "historical conditioning." I'm also black and fully aware of the issues that we have within our race concerning skin color and hair texture. I mentioned Prince's color issues as it relates to the discussion. RJ said that P hung with only whites and I was stating that although he certainly had his color issues, RJ had no room to point the blame at Prince because he definitely had color issues as well, if not more so than Prince. And in today's black music videos, nothing's changed. Mostly the light women are portrayed as the objects of beauty/girlfriends/love interests, while the chocolate girls are usually in the back bumping, grinding and doing everything short of standing on their heads. This is an observation that I have made. I don't have issues because I'm neither dark or light. LOL I'm in between so I don't care! LOL