monk76 said:

I can only speak for myself. It seems that you know all about me. Those that change prob are the ones who are not secure in themselves and that is not his responsibility. So when Prince was dry humping in his tight black numbers.. he was a role model? He never put himself there, other people did. He has always rocked the boat.. I think the media make and break people by over-reacting and they have way too much power - u know what they say about power huh. What makes u so sure he was not misquoted?

monk76 said:

I can only speak for myself. It seems that you know all about me. Those that change prob are the ones who are not secure in themselves and that is not his responsibility. So when Prince was dry humping in his tight black numbers.. he was a role model? He never put himself there, other people did. He has always rocked the boat.. I think the media make and break people by over-reacting and they have way too much power - u know what they say about power huh. What makes u so sure he was not misquoted?

PEJ said:

call me what u like, but just like people who disapprove of R. kelly, Janet, michael, britney, etc, prince neds to be taken down a leg or two.. and i am the one who will start the rally.. it only takes one to gt the ball rolling

and like may 'fans" your brain washed.. i can't wait until he doe somewthing that really gets under your skin,,, see you on the otherside.. lol

marcia204 said:

you're right about the media's power to make or break someone. but in this
case it seems unlikely that they would misquote him to cause harm. usually
they will use some other means of manipulation.

prince is much more "insane" these days than he ever was, even during his
battles with warner brothers. yet somehow, if you gloss over all of that
madness with a generous outpour of religion, the media, the corporations,
the fans and most other artists seem to respect you all of a sudden.

the minute he dropped the sexual out of the equation they put him back in
the spotlight.

think about that for a minute.

religion is the last stronghold for separation and segregation because you
can say whatever you want to and no one can call you out because religion
is somehow above answering to common laws (of decency).

when he wrote "slave" on his face, people tripped on him like no tomorrow
for the connections to that word in regards to history.

yet, come "the rainbow children" and prince's feet being firmly planted in
JW doctrine people called it silly or psychedelic but none of the official
media outlets dared call it anti-semetic, racist and fanatic. once you put
up your hand and declare your loyalty to a religious group you can pretty
much get away with anything.

i know a lot of devout people with the best possible intentions probably
never even consider such stuff since they practice their religioun with
their heart in the right place and with only kindness and love in their
hearts. but that doesn't make the abuse of it by an incredible amount of
people any less sickening.

IstenSzek said:

Thank you for responding rationally and not coming across as hysterical - it just makes u want to leave and never return to this org. The problem is that I am obviously not taking this serious enough.

I don't want to bash religion of any kind... it absolutely has a place in our society. I am yet to find anyone who in their own way is not judgmental about one thing or another.. however, I find in parts this current society that if you 'heavens forbid' state that you don't agree with gay marriages or women who have a sex change and keep their reproductive organs so as an outward man they can still carry a baby.... then heavens forbid, you are a bigot and someone to be shunned. We are not allowed to say if we really feel one way or another on an obviously emotive subject. So many ppl jump on bandwagons and in private feel the complete opposite.

I'm just saying; if Prince said that, then that's his opinion, one he should have kept to himself for sure. Does it make me change how I feel about him. Absolutely not. Should I be lambasted for feeling this way.. I think not.

Home Visit
Soup With Prince
by Claire Hoffman
November 24, 2008



The thirty-thousand-square-foot Italianate villa, built this century by Vanna White’s ex-husband, looks like many of the other houses in Beverly Park, a gated community in L.A., except for the bright-purple carpet that spills down the front steps to announce its new tenant: Prince. One afternoon just before the election, Prince invited a visitor over. Inside, the place was done up in a generic Mediterranean style, although there were personal flourishes here and there—a Lucite grand piano with a gold-colored “Artist Formerly Known as Prince” symbol suspended over it, purple paisley pillows on a couch. Candles scented the air, and New Age music played in the living room, where a TV screen showed images of bearded men playing flutes. Prince padded into the kitchen, a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants and a big sweater, wearing platform flip-flops over white socks, like a geisha.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked, sidling up to the counter. Prince’s voice was surprisingly deep, like that of a much larger man. He picked up a copy of “21 Nights,” a glossy volume of photographs that he had just released. It is his first published book, a collection of highly stylized photographs of him taken during a series of gigs in London last year. “I’m really proud of this,” he said. Short original poems and a CD accompany the photographs. (Sample verse: “Who eye really am only time will tell/ 2 the almighty life 4ce that grows stronger with every chorus/ Yes give praise, lest ye b among . . . the guilty ones.”)

Limping slightly, Prince set off on a walk around his new bachelor pad. Glass doors opened onto acres of back yard, and a hot tub bubbled in the sunlight. “I have a lot of parties,” he explained. In the living room, he’d installed purple thrones on either side of a fireplace, and, nearby, along a hallway, he had hung photographs of himself, in a Moroccan villa, in various states of undress. At the end of the hall, a gauzy curtain fluttered in a doorway. “My room,” he said. “It’s private.”

Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring, after spending years in Minneapolis, holding court in a complex called Paisley Park, where he made thousands of songs, far away from the big labels. Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He said that he had moved to L.A. so that he could understand the hearts and minds of the music moguls. “I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,” he said. “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.”

Prince had his change of faith, he said, after a two-year-long debate with a musician friend, Larry Graham. “I don’t see it really as a conversion,” he said. “More, you know, it’s a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix.’ ” He attends meetings at a local Kingdom Hall, and, like his fellow-witnesses, he leaves his gated community from time to time to knock on doors and proselytize. “Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re really cool about it,” he said.

Recently, Prince hosted an executive who works for Philip Anschutz, the Christian businessman whose company owns the Staples Center. “We started talking red and blue,” Prince said. “People with money—money like that—are not affected by the stock market, and they’re not freaking out over anything. They’re just watching. So here’s how it is: you’ve got the Republicans, and basically they want to live according to this.” He pointed to a Bible. “But there’s the problem of interpretation, and you’ve got some churches, some people, basically doing things and saying it comes from here, but it doesn’t. And then on the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got blue, you’ve got the Democrats, and they’re, like, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ Gay marriage, whatever. But neither of them is right.”

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

Later, in the dining room, eating a bowl of carrot soup, he talked about an encounter that he described as a “teaching moment.” “There was this woman. She used to come to Paisley Park and just sit outside on the swings,” he said. “So I went out there one day and I was, like, ‘Hey, all my friends in there say you’re a stalker. And that I should call the police. But I don’t want to do that, so why don’t you tell me what you want to happen. Why are you here? How do you want this to end?’ And she didn’t really have an answer for that. In the end, all she wanted was to be seen, for me to look at her. And she left and didn’t come back.” ♦

ILLUSTRATION: Tom Bachtell

To get more of The New Yorker's signature mix of politics, culture and the arts: Subscribe Now

http://www.newyorker.com/...lk_hoffman

baby knows his stuff..... if anyone acts funny around me in anyway....the best thing to do is to come right up to them and ask them..."did you have something you wanted to say to me?".... they're answer is always "no" and you say "ok, just checking".... they will be gone... they had their chance to speak their mind and since they said they had nothing to say..... it's over..... nice work Prince.....things can be handle so much easier when you can come from a certain place.....and diffuse a situation, just like that!!!

marcia204 said:

i'm not sure if you're being cynical or not here but let me just say
that i'm absolutely not intending to lambast you for how you feel. hell, i
think it's only right that every single person on this thread stands up and
says/writes what they feel.

ummm okay,are people mad that Prince doesnt agree with gay marriage?
Or was it the actual "sticking it wherever" comment that created this explosion?
The quote was kind of uhhh harsh but if he doesnt agree with gay marriage...so what, thats his opinion and beliefs.Stone me if youd like

PleasurePrinciple said:

Well the 'sticking it wherever' comment ain't nice and not agreeing with gay marriage isn't the wisest comment to blurt out when you have an element of gay people who buy your products and have spent years enjoying your previous philosophy of loving everyone regardless of colour, sexuality etc.

Any wise person who's trying to sell stuff (and that's what Prince does with every release) should have the sense to keep quiet on controversial issues that they know might affect sales.

Out of interest, would you buy any Gary Glitter music if you liked it?

There's an interview with the writer Claire Hoffman:

November 17, 2008
Behind the Scenes: Glamorous Life

This week, in Talk of the Town, Claire Hoffman visits the home of Prince, a thirty-thousand-square foot Italiante villa, built by Vanna White’s ex-husband. She talks about what it was like to meet Prince, and shares a couple of prints from his new book, “21 Nights,” a collection of stylized portraits taken while Prince was in London last year.

You had some colorful descriptions of Prince’s home: Bright-purple carpets, a Lucite grand piano, bearded men playing flutes. Is this how you imagined Prince’s home to be?

I think I imagined everything about Prince would be more bizarre, dare I even say celestial. I’ve been listening to Prince ever since I started listening to music so he’s less an artist to me and more a sort of galactic overlord. So to show up at his house and have it smell like a Pottery Barn showroom and hear Yanni on the TV was sort of shocking.

In his defense, Prince hasn’t lived there long. I got the sense that he had a sort of make-a-home-for-Prince suitcase that someone else had unpacked—a little purple velvet there, a statue here, and voila!

In your interview, Prince said the following about gay marriage: “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was like, ‘Enough.’” Did you two have a more In-depth conversation about this?

I was a little surprised when he said it, because he has always seemed so unrestricted sexually.

We were having a larger conversation about his belief system and his politics. He told me he didn’t have a horse in the November election and that he didn’t believe in getting involved with these kind of earthly contests. I had asked him if the fact that Obama was black didn’t compel him to get involved.

He said, “Why?”

And I said, Well, because you’re black.

And he said “Am I?” and held up his wrist next to my ruddy one. Indeed his skin was lighter, and he cracked up.

Anyway, he walked me into his library and opened a Bible up to the Sermon on the Mount, and that’s when he got to talking about trying to live Biblically. For what it’s worth, the way he said it wasn’t hateful so much as sad and resigned. Prince is a true believer, and I think that’s important to keep in mind in hearing his viewpoint.

We’re showing our readers some of the photographs from “21 Nights.” Are they like the photographs he has hanging in his house in, as you put it, “various states of undress”?

I interviewed the photographer, Randee St. Nicholas, who has photographed and made videos of practically every big-name celebrity. The thing she said about Prince that stuck with me was that he sees women in a way that most men don’t. He looks right at them. I felt that—he’s strangely considerate. In person, I found Prince humble and down to earth—if you closed your eyes you could imagine he was your fat old uncle and you were on the way to a (vegetarian) BBQ.

Finally, did you have any of that carrot soup?

I didn’t. I should have.

http://www.newyorker.com/...-scen.html

Haystack said:

I can see how that would definitely hurt his sales from this thread alone
It may have not been the wisest things to say...especialy right now. But in the end I see people who are mad at him for having an opinion. So,its like somebody wants to be free to marry whoever they choose to but Prince cant be free to have a differing opinion?I think the "sticking" comment was out of line but his opinion and beliefs theyre his...
Prince is a JW and I am not. He has many views I dont agree with but Im not mad at him for it.But I can so see how he said it and the fact that he even chose to say that knowing much of his fanbase is homosexual would anger people.

PleasurePrinciple said:

Of course he's entitled to his opinion and I hope that it really isn't his opinion and it's a horrible mis-quote. But you can only take the 'seperating the man and his music' ideal so far, hence my final question to you in my previous post.

If he'd said that rape was cool and it was okay to beat up your wife, would you still be okay with his opinions?

Haystack said:

how do you compare advocating a violent act to having an opinion?

Haystack said:

I can see how that would definitely hurt his sales from this thread alone
It may have not been the wisest things to say...especialy right now. But in the end I see people who are mad at him for having an opinion. So,its like somebody wants to be free to marry whoever they choose to but Prince cant be free to have a differing opinion?I think the "sticking" comment was out of line but his opinion and beliefs theyre his...
Prince is a JW and I am not. He has many views I dont agree with but Im not mad at him for it.But I can so see how he said it and the fact that he even chose to say that knowing much of his fanbase is homosexual would anger people.

And I said, Well, because you’re black.

And he said “Am I?” and held up his wrist next to my ruddy one. Indeed his skin was lighter, and he cracked up.

PleasurePrinciple said:

Of course he's entitled to his opinion and I hope that it really isn't his opinion and it's a horrible mis-quote. But you can only take the 'seperating the man and his music' ideal so far, hence my final question to you in my previous post.

If he'd said that rape was cool and it was okay to beat up your wife, would you still be okay with his opinions?

wonder505 said:

Because that so-called opinion is based on nothing more than fear and ignorance.