Being involved in that kind of conflict and changing your name as a result, might have implications on your inspiration as an artist.

I believe that any situation can bring about lack of inspirational motivation, or could fuel a person to address their personal concerns, that protect their soul's expression.

The way it went for Prince personally, is His, life and perspective...The way it went for me as a listener...was that I stayed on board, as a fan, and continue to love whatever Prince offer's as a musician.

I think Prince's output quality would have lessened a bit eventually anyway, with or without the WB feud. All artists fade a bit, but then come back. Prince took that to extremes though, unfortunately.

If Prince had stayed with WB - or longterm with any major label - his output would have been MUCH better than what it's been.

Se7en said:

hmmm u can´t be sure.....

peter430044 said:

I think so, but only because in those days no one stopped him from releasing 2 much songs/albums. He should have picked the best an cut the nr of albums by 50%.

I remember P saying (in 93) that WB would get his weak stuff and he would keep the good music for himself until his contract ran out. That explains "Come".

But I'll give him credit. He tapped into the indie thing online before it became mainstream.

that's a good question. i think it could be somewhat.

SPYZFAN1 said:

I agree, he did tap into the indie thing before "indie" was cool and more mainstreamed. I do miss the 90's just because he was on creative overload and didnt really care what was coming out, musically or visually. As fans we got it all and some we didnt like and some we did.

I´m not too sure if he really considered the material on Come inferior to his other music because if he wasn´t proud of those songs, then why did he use them for Glam Slam Ulysses or the Beautiful Experience TV film ? Sure, he played them to Alan Light during that Vibe interview and said the Gold material sounded different and fresher compared to the songs on Come but I´m not really buying it that he didn´t like the songs on Come. The title song ( except for those annoying sucking sounds) , Space, Solo and Letitgo and Dark are quite nice, not really that different from the Gold Experience material, though I must admit that TGE sounds much more positive and upbeat.
Even the songs on Chaos and Disorder, considered a contractual obligation, were at some point in his career considered good by him or his fans before they got that "contractual obligation" label attached like a stigma.
Into The Light, I Will and the title track were never considered weak, or were they ? Right the Wrong sounds a bit silly but other than that, the rest isn´t that bad. He released worse material than that AFTER the WB contract expired.
[Edited 6/28/08 10:35am]

Good point Kool.

IMO the songs on the album would have been considered "classics" if the material would have been promoted by both Prince and WB.

Many people have forgotten the "dis" that WB gave Prince by putting him in the Black?R&B/Urban department. That cut him off from 60% of his fan base by marketing the R&B songs to Urban Radio. That have an effect on Prince's output because the last hits from Prince from WB had a RB flavor thus ending the "Rock" Prince that emerged with 1999 and Purple Rain.

Nope, I enjoy much of the 90's work. Sure Prince was angry as hell at WB/music industry and fueled by pure anger at times. I just thought the entire period was insightful. However no one could have predicted the crash of the music industry from high speed internet and downloading. It's cool that he ran with the times and was an legend that was around for a decade and still wasn't afraid of change and was almost showing the world what could be done with distribution through the net.

I believe what Prince is doing now will become a trend. Release a book with a cd. It makes sense, books are much better being books instead of downloaded in pdf format up on the screen. Some people may not buy and just download the stuff but I believe a good number will wanna get the book. I know I will. Just bought the U2 book and it rocks.

I guess the 90's period would be a cooling off period anyways as far as hits and popularity goes. Hey, he kicked everyones ass thru the 80's so it was bound to happen. Looking at the music now I guess he was still kicking much ass during the 90's.

I think whats happening now is he is slowing the releases because they will only be downloaded and stolen. Music is like a promotion tool to get you to the shows. As much as charts don't matter I believe the Musicology way of distribution is a good one.

Once he had Paisley none of that really mattered. The "war" was just about getting other people's hands out of the pot and having more control. It never affected his spirit.

If anything I'd say the state of music affected his output. He went from coming for certified legends to going against roaches babbling over samples and watered-down versions of stuff he'd done YEEEEEARS ago.

peter430044 said:

Actually, I think the complete opposite was true. The conflict with WB gave
Prince an amazing burst of creative energy. He made an enormous amount
of excellent material during this time, and in my opinion, it was his most
productive creative high since the classic 86-87 writing period.

It was only AFTER this WB conflict period (from around 1996 onwards) that I
felt like Prince's quality control had slipped somewhat, and a certain
'generic-ness' had crept in.

Tame said:

I agree

SPYZFAN1 said:

Come was not one of the contractual obligation albums, if that's what you're implying. He stood behind Come and Gold, so much so that they're almost interchangeable for that time (both appear in The Beautiful Experience, and songs from each appeared on the other's various tracklistings). In fact, his original plan was to release them on the same day, but WB wasn't having that . . .

No

Whether it was by the stress of his conflict with WB or not, Prince looked terrible, his actions were erratic at best, the quality of his work was at its worst.
I always attributed the 90's as Prince experimenting with drugs because those are all classic symptoms.
Lastly delving so heavily into so heavily into another religion and proclaiming to be see the light is also a classic example of drug addicts I have known, especially the ones that ended up in jail or some other traumatic outcome of their ways.

Whatever the case his 90's music as a whole sucked
[Edited 6/28/08 19:40pm]

Se7en said:

But didn't he want to release Come & The Gold Experience on the same day to prove that his "new" material was better than the "Prince" material (Come)? So in a way, he wanted Come to be perceived as a contractual obligation, no?

Well from P's interviews back then, he made it clear WB was the enemy and he wasn't giving them anything good and no hits. "Come" was given to WB so I was under the impression it was a "throwaway" disc to fufill the contract.

And I agree with almost everything violetblues said. Because those were my thoughts about P back then (in 94 and 95).

LiveToTell86 said:

In a way, yes - but he didn't detach himself from the Come project as he did with Chaos and The Vault (on those 2 going so far as stamping "contractual obligation" on them).

Like I said, Come was featured heavily on The Beautiful Experience, and also documented in the Sacrifice Of Victor photo book. Think about that last part: how many photo books has he released? He wouldn't have released it if he didn't stand behind it.

I think he was using the two-name strategy as a way to release more material . . . sad that didn't catch on.

Nope, as always music is subjective so what might sound good to you might suck to someone else. I can think of several jams from that era that I absolutely love but others call it crap.Go figure!!!

BorisFishpaw said:

I can agree with this,on the creativity part.
I would think that during this time one would most definetly be influenced by creativity. It was going on the early 90's and there was a creative wave in the air that struck most. Especially as an artist going through troubled times,stress and change that it fueled and unleashed an artistic energy within. imho,conflict and change could work for the better in an artistic manner giving one inspiration to dig deep and turn 'shit into gold' so to speak. like alchemy.
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