Has anyone on prince.org discussed the possibility that Prince since quite a few years might quite consciosuly be seeking to alienate hardcore fans, having recognized that he's still a household name to be reckoned with for the broader, mainstream audience. His 2004 tour did extremely well and his new albums continue to sell quite impressively. I'm quite sure he no longer feels the need to do things that please his most loyal, hardcore fanbase, as they constitute a very small part of his audience. Any thoughts on this? I tend to think he has a very negative impression of many "fanatics", which probably started a long time ago.

The P

I don't agree with this. He got the mainstream in 2004 and wanted to build on it afterwards like any other artist with any kind of success from a project. I don't think he went into a project like 3121 thinking "How am I gonna alienate my hardcore fans with this one?!" when he recorded the tracks. That sounds kinda crazy and bizarre to me.

Not at all. He has to reach out to mainstream in order to continue to turn a profit.

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[Edited 4/9/10 16:47pm]

U really think Prince seeks to alienate his fans that have been with him for all those yrs?
Do u feel rejected because he's stuck in Hollywood alot recently?

Fanatic is never a good thing imo
And I do think he gets fed up sometimes of seeing the same faces first row time and time again...

btw dont think he hates the hardcore. Setlists of late and also the Indigo shows are proof to me he know what we (consider myself hardcore too) want
[Edited 4/16/09 9:57am]

JayJai said:

Some people here need to hurry up and say Yes.

Prince caters to neither the fan base or the mainstream. He knows a good pop song when he has it in him ("Cream" was a good example after his career had started to take a slight downward turn). He doesn't know how to promote anything correctly.

If Prince catered to the fanbase, we'd have Crystal Ball 3 by now. We'd have a Revolution reunion, even a one off television performance, or a PPV. We'd have a lot of things that we're all still bitchin' about. haha But he hasn't.

If he catered to the mainstream, he'd have #1 albums for more than a week. He'd have #1 or Top 5 singles every 3 months. He'd be popping out videos like Nadia Suleman pops out babies. He'd be signing CDs in stores, touring Europe and Japan, and the US, he'd be doing TV specials. But he hasn't.

He pisses on, and off, his fans, and has for quite a while. He demotes us to being thieves, swine, and "fanatics", yet it's those of us who have tolerated his idiocy, his genius, his foolishness, his funkiness, his illusiveness, his sporadic charity, his slams of us in songs over and over, his alleged "love 4 one another", and his bollocky Princebonics who have put him exactly where he's at. Living large, suckin' on the ebony dancers in between these dirty posts,
spittin' out the aftertaste of a fan who might not call again.

pernil said:

Keep dreamin' you must be new

Dayclear said:

I think has def. been trying to bring in the mainstream audience for the past 5 years but i'm hoping he's gonna head back to alienating the mainstream again. It's wonderful after the 3 shows in LA to see so many people pissed off that he didn't play any hits in the last 2 shows.