The post has some interesting points regarding the negative effects of the rise of the 'solo artist/producer' in the 1980s. But I don't really see the connection between how he detroyed 'black' music, specifically. Just about all forms of popular music (however you choose to define them) went more in the 'solo artist' direction in the 1980s. Prince was a leader of course, but he wasn't the only one.

People always put too much emphasis on what a particular artist did to 'change' the face of music and forget that it's always a two-way exchange between the artist and the audience. "Cometh the hour, cometh the man", so the saying goes. In other words, once the world was ready to accept the artistic validity of the solo artist/producer, then people like Prince came to the fore.

What any of this has to do with Prince destroying black music though I don't know...

vainandy said:

That's exactly what I mean. The record companies will not sign them. There's a lot of good, independent artists, but these days, the record companies want manufactured artists, aka "Artists with no real talent". As long as you shake your booty, dress half-naked, gyrate your pelvis, you're in. Well, I don't mean that literally, but it sure isn't far from what I see record execs promoting these days.

I love post #86.

vainandy said:

I knew you would

What trips me out, is they shake and pop those asses 90 miles an hour to a beat that's only 20 miles an hour.

vainandy said:

It's ridiculous. It's like if you don't gyrate, your music career won't escalate.

They put those women in those videos to give themselves a thrill. Well, how about giving me a thrill by speeding the music up to match the speed of their ass popping? Those heffers are dancing so fast you would think they were dancing to something as fast as "Planet Rock" but the music they are dancing to is as slow as "Between The Sheets". It just don't match.

vainandy said:

And thats why "slow motion" is a BIG thing among videos

This post really didn't support the premise of the destruction of any musical genre.The black/white/rock/hip hop question issue really isn't all that relevant here. It seemed more to me about the creative and professional choices that Prince made.

Firing and not hiring talented people and morphing his proteges into clones of himself just proves what we've all known for years:Prince was/is a brilliant little Svengali that really didn't have a firm belief in the power of his own talent.

If he did, he wouldn't need to consistently play Dr. Frankenstein.

And the pause button also. I have the original video of this one and I wore the pause button out on the VCR.....



And when I got a DVD recorder, I recorded the video onto a DVD and zoomed in on MC Hammer's swimsuit. That zoom button is great.

Harlepolis said:

Oh okay.

SUPRMAN said:

co-sign

I don't know a whole lot about new music because I'm very happy with listening to Music that already exists by many artists.

I believe that Prince is his own path in the music business and phenomenal first. Secondly, sometimes Music and entertainment is just and only that..."Music and Entertainment," For Somebody.

I think it is alright if someone is "Not," at some musical pinnacle to please the hearts of music listeners. How music has shaped itself from Widespread minds is a life of it's own.

All singers, songwriters, and musicians, are a part of that Industry that has drawn from History and will contribute to History.

I don't see how Prince being a One -man show destroy Black Music.

prince is like a multifaceted black diamond. he has many surfaces regarding his talent as a musician.
the way he has transmitted his musical genius and creativity is really no different then the way ray charles (who intertwined blues & gospel, blues and country and rhythm and blues) intruduced new sounds in music. on some of ray's early recordings he sang the back ground parts, thanks to the newly discovered eight track recording systems of the times.
the funky horn arrangements and shrieks that define many a prince song came from the genius of james brown.
the flamboyant dress style and piano persona prince has (in the past) brought to the stage was heavily influenced by little richard
not even to mention sly stone who brought together a new sound with his boldness in bringing together a mixed-race vagabond family rendered boundaries superfluous, amping up psychedelia with a sweaty basement bass, screaming guitars, gospel allusions, redefined as "funk." itt was spirit music for the world. who has been more funky than prince on any given night of his live performances?

prince has been influenced by the best. his gift of musical genius allowed him to emulate and then recreate. it may seem a bit selfish, but it's almost like being a great chef. why get someone else to consummate the dish if you can do it better by yourself.

prince's ego-tinged style of music is pure genius at it's best. he has studied and been influenced by some of the best. it is just too bad he was not provided with a script at birth so he could do his thing to everyone's liking and or approval.

it just goes to show you one man's great gifts to the world can be comprehended and over-analyzed by others as a scourge.

there are many black artists that are far more deserving of this title.

MJ actually comes to mind. could he play an instrument/write his own stuff? (by that i mean fully produce his own recordings? - no.).

he was as much a product of the music industry as Milli Vanilli really - he was told what to do when and where - unlike prince who i believe has been in control of his own musical destiny.

Prince has also given a lot of other musical people a big helping hand up the ladder. MJ hasn't. except his own family LOL.

Conclusion - MJ destroyed black music.


....

2elijah said:

Preach !

The rap music destroyed Black music not Prince.

vainandy said:

Good God !

Please tell it again !

I turned on a station yesterday that was a so called "Urban" station and heard just God awful rap. Not good rap from people like KRS-1,80's Cool J,Eric B and Rakim, Tupac type rappers but somebody who made up some horrible sounds and put them on tape and this is played all over the country.

How is this possible when like some of you are saying that real Black singers and musicians can't get played but you pull this bullshit out and put it on the radio?

Then even more incredible is the fact that some Blacks like certain family members listen to this crap and not complain.

It's like that scene in Malcolm X where Elijah Muhammad pours a glass of water and dumps ink into it and asks Malcolm would he drink it. Malcolm answers with a "No." Muhammad then tells him that "You would drink it if that's all you had to drink."

Someone somewhere is forcing us to drink bad water and dammit I am not drinking.

I can't be arsed to read the whole of the thread, but the author of the article had somehow failed to notice that there had been manufactured talentless "image" bands around for donkey's years before Prince ever came along (the Monkees anyone?). Moreover, Prince wasn't the first African-American producer to try to create a hit-factory either (Berry Gordy beat him to that one). Admittedly, Motown artists could all sing, but the vast majority of them had little or no creative input and just turned up at the studio to lay their vocals over a backing track.

I think there aren't too many black bands around today because the record industry isn't interested in signing them, and perhaps, that might be because the kids are not interested in hearing them. The reason for that is because hip-hop and its offshoots have been massively successful and has succeeded in more or less cornering the market in black music to the virtual exclusion of anything with real instruments. Whether that is because hip hop is giving the kids what they want, or, more cynically, because the record industry has been very successful indeed in shaping the youth (both black and white) to be receptive to those messages; (ie: they have created a movement and/or demand, which the companies then feed), is a bigger question.

Nevertheless, the point is that Prince was from the funk band tradition arising out of the 60s and 70s, and so was an outsider to the rap/hip hop movement of the early 80s (IIRC, he did, on occasion, criticise rappers' lack of talent). That musical style required only a mic and 2 turntables and/or a sampler, and it is therefore rap and hip/ hop and not Prince and his proteges that is responsible for the destruction of real (as in played with real instruments) black music.

IDontBelieveYouHeardMe said:

i second that!

prince destroyed his own music ... there are plenty of black musicians that still stand as talented and respectable ... prince was only as good as his collaborators any way .. dirty mind, soft and wet ... even back that far ... he played better off of other talent than he did on his own ... he just didnt want to give credit ... prince post talent colab out put shows he would not have had such success without the people who nudged him in the right directions ... left to his own devices and technology he self destructs ...

That same old tired arguement does not hold water.

How many of his proteges are in the Hall Of Fame ?

Answer : ZERO.

IDontBelieveYouHeardMe said:

(bolded part) Excellent point. I cannot see for the life of me how the author of that article can claim Prince destroyed Black music. Here we have an artist who dared to challenge the music industry at a time they marketed black artists basically in one category, and sold their music to the public in that way. Prince came out and showed them there was more to a black artist's creativity than what the record labels assumed or expected of them, and Prince showed them that you just can't limit an artist's creativity. He proved that a black musician/artist's creativity in music has no limits and cannot be forced to classified in one particular or "expected" category because one is Black, and he apparently proved that. His longstanding career speaks for itself.
[Edited 12/26/09 7:35am]

TrevorAyer said:

How did he destroy his own music? Should he play what's "expected" of him or where his creative forces lead him? This is why he managed to be respected as an artist for so long, because he dared to take risks, and not allow anyone to label or limit him to one category of music. That's the thing with Prince, you never know what you're going to get next. It's hard to classify him as far as the type of music he puts out. Obviously there no limits to what type of music he chooses to play.
[Edited 12/26/09 12:51pm]

So...Prince is somehow responsible for the entirety of "black" music?

Genesia said:

I think when we are saying black music here we really mean to say hip hop and rap... am I right? True. Come to think of it, I can't think of any mainstream black bands.
Come to think of it, all hip sounds a whole lot a like, not very much true talent in it, well seems to me.
Also come to think of it, rock bands don't have a whole lot of talent in them either. I think the last guitar swingers I have seen with any true token of talent was Alien Ant Farm, and they haven't done anything good in about 5 years.

We can't blame Prince though.
We can't even blame the preformers.
Even if there are a lot of no talent performers out there, if they sale, it all rest with the consumer. They are ultimatley to blame.

hollywooddove said:

No. The time when Prince was coming up and at his most innovative pre-dates most rap - and certainly pre-dates hip-hop.

hollywooddove said:

No, not at all. Rap and Hip-hop does not define "black music". It's just one form that was born out of the black community. Black musicians have been playing many forms of music for years, from blues, jazz, gospel, boogie-woogie, swing, rock, rhythm and blues, etc. Most of the mainstream black bands, were visible in the 60s/70s era. R&B is usually associated with Black Artists,especially from the 60s and 70s; The Delfonics, Smokey Robinson, Temptations, The Ohio Players, Stylistics, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, just to name a few, had their own styles and were usually classified as R&B artists. In the late part of the 70s and 80s, you had artists like Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Boys to Men, etc., moving more towards a crossover audience, and their music was pretty much typed as R&B/pop. In the late 60s plus the Jackson 5, and then MJ with his solo career, was pretty much "Pop or mainstream. But then again, people tend to forget that the "Last Poets" were the first rappers, but at least they did it with dignity. Some also say "Gil Scott Heron" was the first rapper, because of his social/political messages in his songs during the early 70s. Anyway, today, I don't even think I can name one group of all black band, promoted by the record industry.

You can check out this link of a thread I did on some artists of the past. You'll get an idea of some forms of music played by some early black artists.
http://prince.org/msg/8/325472
[Edited 12/26/09 8:50am]

That's why whoever wrote the post that started this thread thinks that Prince (unknowingly) may have contributed a lot to the decline of black music....because he came before shit hop. Prince could do everything all by himself without the help of anyone else. Shit hoppers can do the same thing. The difference is, Prince did everything himself with instruments and the shit hoppers can do everything by themselves by punching buttons on a computer.

I think a lot of folks around here get bent out of shape because they think it's a personal attack on Prince. I don't see it that way at all but see it simply as the poster's observation. For instance, if you come to work and one of your co-workers quits, their work is going to be thrown on you until the boss hires someone else. The smart thing to do would be to do some of the work but purposely let some of it remain unfinished. If you complete all the work, the boss is going to notice that and he's not going to reward you with two salaries. Instead, he's not going to hire someone else and expect you to do the work of two people on the salary of one person. Then, all those tasks that you are doing are going to be considered the norm in your job and if you ever quit, the person they hire in your place will be expected to do all those duties also. Then the person that comes after you may complete all those duties but may cut corners and take shortcuts to complete them by using cheaper supplies or things needed to complete them. This will eventually lead to a shitty product but as long as the customers don't complain, the boss is happy because he has got all the work he can get out of someone at the cheapest cost possible for the biggest profit.

The technology was already being invented so even if Prince had never done everything himself, some shit hopper would still have found a way to do their little thing all by themselves so the decline still would have happened.
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.
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[Edited 12/26/09 8:53am]

What a bunch of bullshit

It could be (at best) seen as a writer complaining about not being satisfied where Princes career went. Nothing more.

It has really nothing to do with the state of 'black' music, whatever that might be.
[Edited 12/26/09 8:54am]