murph said:

As I said earlier, his points were interesting and have some validity. What we were discussing is whether his points support his conclusion when the totality of Prince's influence is taken into consideration. Furthermore we were speculating as to whether or not this same turn of events would have come about without Prince's impact. These are perfectly reasonable questions to discuss.

Just to make it more interesting, we could discuss the impact on black music of some other artist who were big on the scene. For example, how was black music impacted when bands such as EWF and Kool and the Gang successfully went into the disco/crossover sound?

I understood his points perfectly and his points are well taken and factual, but do the examples he provided support his conclusion that "Prince did MORE to destroy black music than ANY other figure of his time"? That's the burning question.

Sorry, but Prince didn't destroy anything..
Why is it so important to put his music in a certain category into one Color ?
IMO Prince is neither Black nor White he's a pure mixture and so is his Music

Okay, my take:

First off, let's get a couple of things straight for you politically corrected social police - R&B is black music. Yes, it is. Don't even bother throwing up a couple of names of white artists that have had minor hit records doing R&B music. For the most part, IT IS BLACK MUSIC. It is referred to as black music by black people. Why? Because its what a great majority of black people listen to. How do I know? Because I can say black music in a room full of black people at any given time and they will know exactly what I am talking about. You can play semantics all day long and bitch and whine about the terms but it is what it is and there's nothing any non-black person can do to change it, so don't waste your time trying to bully people into saying what you want them to because I for one, will not. Black folks know what black music is. If you don't - tough. That's why the OP made that statement on Okayplayer and not Prince.org - because he/she was addressing a specific group of forumers.
Now, onto the Prince thing...
I agree. Prince helped usher in the wave of no-talents that rule the charts right now. Prince by way of Warner Brothers, successfully promoted the idea of the one man band to the world, but more specifically to black radio - because that's where his initial audience was pre-Purple Rain.
There have always been multi-instrumentalists. That goes without saying. What happened with Prince was part timing and part promotion. Back when MJ blew up the charts with Thriller, this was also during the earlier years of the label wars when whoever had the most popular artists had the biggest numbers. Who was more popular was much more in the hands of the fans back then than it is now. WB needed to one-up the MJ craze, so they went through their roster and used Prince as their label savior. They had been pushing Prince as this all-in-one musician who does everything by himself and his musicians in his camp were there for show. We know this was not the whole truth but at the time Prince always played the mysterious card, so people outside of the circle stayed confused. Prince also pushed the use of technology and synths.
Where the timing comes in: It just so happened that sequencers became advanced and usable enough to make music during the time Prince was rising to the top. Prince used sequencers extensively. He became one of the biggest artists in the country, thus popularizing the use of sequencers. Technology advanced and artists who were following Prince's style of production (as artists often did when there was one very popular artist in style at the moment) were all on that one-man-band kick and this really accelerated the death of black bands. LABELS caught on and fed this course of action because they could get away with paying less people. It was also during this era that the key member clauses started to appear in every record contract with bands. This was the death of big bands and since Prince had already helped make synth horns popular, they were "out of style" and thus horn players were out of work in R&B music. Synths, on the other hand, became bigger than ever. This was the beginning of the producer's era in R&B music. While rock bands remained in a hair metal phase, R&B became more of a one-man-runs-the-show situation. This was a beautiful thing to record labels because they now had to dish out less money to their R&B acts for music production. That can be directly attributed to the "blueprint" that Prince laid out and WB's promotion of him as a do-it-all-yourself artist.
So, yeah - Prince helped big time.
Rap was in a development stage and hadn't yet made an impact, so all of this happened beforehand.
His actions definitely helped pave the way for the demise of the black band.
Even though he himself always had a band, they promoted him as the "source of all" and that made people believe that no matter what they saw, it was all him.

I'm done.
[Edited 12/27/09 10:57am]

murph said:

I understood his points perfectly and his points are well taken and factual, but do the examples he provided support his conclusion that "Prince did MORE to destroy black music than ANY other figure of his time"? That's the burning question.

First off, let's get a couple of things straight for you politically corrected social police - R&B is black music. Yes, it is. Don't even bother throwing up a couple of names of white artists that have had minor hit records doing R&B music. For the most part, IT IS BLACK MUSIC. It is referred to as black music by black people. Why? Because its what a great majority of black people listen to. How do I know? Because I can say black music in a room full of black people at any given time and they will know exactly what I am talking about. You can play semantics all day long and bitch and whine about the terms but it is what it is and there's nothing any non-black person can do to change it, so don't waste your time trying to bully people into saying what you want them to because I for one, will not. Black folks know what black music is. If you don't - tough. That's why the OP made that statement on Okayplayer and not Prince.org - because he/she was addressing a specific group of forumers.
Now, onto the Prince thing...
I agree. Prince helped usher in the wave of no-talents that rule the charts right now. Prince by way of Warner Brothers, successfully promoted the idea of the one man band to the world, but more specifically to black radio - because that's where his initial audience was pre-Purple Rain.
There have always been multi-instrumentalists. That goes without saying. What happened with Prince was part timing and part promotion. Back when MJ blew up the charts with Thriller, this was also during the earlier years of the label wars when whoever had the most popular artists had the biggest numbers. Who was more popular was much more in the hands of the fans back then than it is now. WB needed to one-up the MJ craze, so they went through their roster and used Prince as their label savior. They had been pushing Prince as this all-in-one musician who does everything by himself and his musicians in his camp were there for show. We know this was not the whole truth but at the time Prince always played the mysterious card, so people outside of the circle stayed confused. Prince also pushed the use of technology and synths.
Where the timing comes in: It just so happened that sequencers became advanced and usable enough to make music during the time Prince was rising to the top. Prince used sequencers extensively. He became one of the biggest artists in the country, thus popularizing the use of sequencers. Technology advanced and artists who were following Prince's style of production (as artists often did when there was one very popular artist in style at the moment) were all on that one-man-band kick and this really accelerated the death of black bands. LABELS caught on and fed this course of action because they could get away with paying less people. It was also during this era that the key member clauses started to appear in every record contract with bands. This was the death of big bands and since Prince had already helped make synth horns popular, they were "out of style" and thus horn players were out of work in R&B music. Synths, on the other hand, became bigger than ever. This was the beginning of the producer's era in R&B music. While rock bands remained in a hair metal phase, R&B became more of a one-man-runs-the-show situation. This was a beautiful thing to record labels because they now had to dish out less money to their R&B acts for music production. That can be directly attributed to the "blueprint" that Prince laid out and WB's promotion of him as a do-it-all-yourself artist.
So, yeah - Prince helped big time.
Rap was in a development stage and hadn't yet made an impact, so all of this happened beforehand.
His actions definitely helped pave the way for the demise of the black band.
Even though he himself always had a band, they promoted him as the "source of all" and that made people believe that no matter what they saw, it was all him.

I'm done.
[Edited 12/27/09 10:57am]

He didn't need a band to create and record with because in his mind nobody could play his music as well as he could. He didn't use background singers for the most part for the same reason. Prince was the show, standing above all others and he wanted to make sure you didn't forget that. Now of course Prince wasn't the first artist to feel this way. But he was the first that had the technology to isolate himself creatively the way he did. When you have the talent and ideas Prince did at the time, this isn't a bad thing in and of itself. The problem is, it inspired less creative and original people to follow in his footsteps.

babynoz said:

Before Britney Spears,,,,there was Carmen Electra. Now we know who's to thank for that

I think Prince' motives changed after the public reaction's to Lovesexy,,,and even he made pretty damn good music, the bulk of it however(esp the released ones) were questionable.

He started 2nd guessing his actions after Lovesexy,,,,and that affected his music.
[Edited 12/27/09 13:37pm]

babynoz said:

With all due respect, Unlike yourself, it's abundantly clear that most folks didn't even get the underlining point of the post whether they agreed with it or not....

Like I said, the trouble began when folks started to turn this into a musical argument rather than staying on course with Old Pro's original 'talent and technology' point...If you were old enough to really recall that period, then it would be hard to argue against the post....I can see how someone could say that Prince's self-contained singer, songwriter, musician, producer signaled the end of the way "traditional" black music was approached...Without Prince there would be no Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis or Teddy Riley...Of course there were other producers at the time...But they usually fit the Quincy Jones mode....

It wasn't until Prince came along that producers were looked at to do "everything" from write the music, play the instruments, and sing back-up...Now JJ and Lewis and Riley were the exceptions to the rule...They had the musical chops to back it up...But folks like Georgio didn't really have enough "talent" to see it through...

So yes, I believe that timing as well as Prince's keyboard synth production, one-man-band ideology had a HUGE impact on how artists would approach R&B throughout much of the '80s, 90's and 00's....I think it was a solid, insightful post....

Although I don't believe Prince did "more" to destroy black music than any other artist, the author of the article does have a point when he said that Prince's isolation of his own musical creativity may have "... inspired less creative and original people to follow in his footsteps"
That statement pretty much answers what's lacking in the industry today as far as creativity and originality, and something the industry doesn't really seem to put at the top of their list, when looking for artists to promote.

I also agree with babynoz, that record labels saw this as "cost-effective" less money to shell-out among band members. It's like at that time, although Prince showed the industry he could be a "one-man show," he may not have realized at the time, what effect this would have on the future of black bands being replaced by machines that could produce the same sounds as a musician with an instrument.

I guess, the reason I don't like the term 'black music' isn't because I believe it to be racist (I've never been inclined towards political correctness myself), but that it's a rather limiting term and ironically ubiquitous. It's like the term "Alternative" music. Ultimately, when somebody said, "I like alternative music" I ended up having no clue what kind of music they liked as it covered so many styles (new wave, gothic, punk, grunge, synth pop, Europop, Indie College, etc. etc.), and I was left scratching my head.

Cmon Dan, bear with me here a minute.

When we say "black music" we're speaking of musical styles that originated with people of African descent throughout the diaspora. We're speaking from a cultural/historical perspective. I don't get what's confusing about that or why you would dislike the term? The author of the article is defining it a bit more narrowly as black music within the American music industry for purposes of his argument.

Many cultures have created their own indigenous sounds and genres within those sounds. There's different styles of Indian music, Chinese music, Spanish music, etc. Why would you think the term "black music" would be offensive? It doesn't mean that blacks think people from other cultures can't share or participate in it.

babynoz said:

Quite frankly, I think it is because many don't want Prince associated with black music at all, because the term itself "black" reminds them of his race, moreso, than the type of music he plays. Black music to some only means r&b, funk, rap, hip-hop. I've seen some fans go "off", when referred to Prince as a black artist, so I think some of the reasons behind associating him with black music has a lot to do with that, and that some fans think that black people are trying to "claim" him, when in fact that is ridiculous. A little research on r&b and rock would help to educate many fans about what the culture of black music is about and its roots. Maybe then many won't be so quick to "dismiss" black music if they were actually educated about it, and give it the value its worth, because quite frankly, without the culture of black music, in its various form of blues, gospel, jazz, soul rock, and r&b, there would be no "Prince" or other artists, for us to enjoy today.
[Edited 12/27/09 15:18pm]

joelmarable said:

This I disagree with. There are other ways to hear music, than the radio. With the internet, access to radio is close to global, so you can hear an endless variety.
The difference is that radio is passive, whereas seeking out music requires thought and action. Apparently that is just asking too much. The result is complaints blaming the state of the industry on suits. Their job is sales, not taste. How about just buying something never heard, or researching the type of music enjoyed and branching out from there.
Anyone has the chance to purchase what they want, they simply need to find it and not expect an uncaring industry to deliver it passively.
It's about the lowest common denominator which provides the greatest audience and greatest sales potential. It's not about quality, talent or taste.

joelmarable said:

This I disagree with. There are other ways to hear music, than the radio. With the internet, access to radio is close to global, so you can hear an endless variety.
The difference is that radio is passive, whereas seeking out music requires thought and action. Apparently that is just asking too much. The result is complaints blaming the state of the industry on suits. Their job is sales, not taste. How about just buying something never heard, or researching the type of music enjoyed and branching out from there.
Anyone has the chance to purchase what they want, they simply need to find it and not expect an uncaring industry to deliver it passively.
It's about the lowest common denominator which provides the greatest audience and greatest sales potential. It's not about quality, talent or taste.

joelmarable said:

This I disagree with. There are other ways to hear music, than the radio. With the internet, access to radio is close to global, so you can hear an endless variety.
The difference is that radio is passive, whereas seeking out music requires thought and action. Apparently that is just asking too much. The result is complaints blaming the state of the industry on suits. Their job is sales, not taste. How about just buying something never heard, or researching the type of music enjoyed and branching out from there.
Anyone has the chance to purchase what they want, they simply need to find it and not expect an uncaring industry to deliver it passively.
It's about the lowest common denominator which provides the greatest audience and greatest sales potential. It's not about quality, talent or taste.

babynoz said:

Quite frankly, I think it is because many don't want Prince associated with black music at all, because the term itself "black" reminds them of his race, moreso, than the type of music he plays. Black music to some only means r&b, funk, rap, hip-hop. I've seen some fans go "off", when referred to Prince as a black artist, so I think some of the reasons behind associating him with black music has a lot to do with that, and that some fans think that black people are trying to "claim" him, when in fact that is ridiculous. A little research on r&b and rock would help to educate many fans about what the culture of black music is about and its roots. Maybe then many won't be so quick to "dismiss" black music if they were actually educated about it, and give it the value its worth, because quite frankly, without the culture of black music, in its various form of blues, gospel, jazz, soul rock, and r&b, there would be no "Prince" or other artists, for us to enjoy today.
[Edited 12/27/09 15:18pm]

What is this?
[Edited 12/27/09 19:42pm]

muleFunk said:

Exactly. Many people are more influenced by clever marketing than they care to admit...it's a factor that can't be discounted. The constant bombardment of one type of message and the simultaneous suppression of others has an effect in everything from entertainment to politics, etc. Media and marketing people have known this for a long time and they make good use of it, especially in this age of media conglomerates.

They are creating and selling a brand and the main goal is not to nurture creativity or to invest in diversity. They use a forumula to create a cost effective business model that minimizes overhead and maximizes profit. Sadly, creating actual art is only incidental in the procedure.

2elijah said:

I read most of the comments...And there are some who truly believe that Prince didn't (unknowingly) contribute to the destruction of Black Music...These folks laid out some STRONG points (Vain being one of those folks...While I don't agree with his blind hatred for hip hop, he made some pretty interesting comments...)...

But a lot of the other comments totally missed the underlining point of the original post....That much is clear when you have folks saying that the post was alluding to Prince's musical style (the rock-funk fusion) as being the reason black music got shaky in the future, when that had nothing to do with it...

Old Pro (the original poster) spelled it out: It was Prince's ONE-MAN-BAND mantra that had other R&B artists thinking this was the way to go...Of course there were others after Prince that did the one-man-band justice (Kashif comes to mind...He really utlilized Prince's synth style and made some solid R&B)...But there were a shit load of other R&B acts that stumbled using this mindset....A lot of R&B lost a lot of its soul when it went all-Synth...But you have to keep in mind just as the post said, it wasn't Prince's fault...He was the right artist at the right time...

On the real, I like what one poster said on Okayplayer on the original thread:

"we've always alluded to it but never get in depth abt it....but Prince singelhandedly revolutionized Black music for good AND for ill...but the bad part isnt his fault....he was such a revolutionary figure that directionless, lesser talented cats couldnt help but to blindly follow and make a lot of bullshit records in the process..."

This^^^is the point that seems lost with folks....

SUPRMAN said:

yo dude.radio is like the bar it serves music.it should serve all kinds of music not just the latest flavor.variety.why should we in 2009 have to hunt 4 music.on the internet when its served all day long on everyday radio.just not many flavors so we eat what they serve.get it now.

murph said:

I read most of the comments...And there are some who truly believe that Prince didn't (unknowingly) contribute to the destruction of Black Music...These folks laid out some STRONG points (Vain being one of those folks...

While I don't agree with his blind hatred for hip hop, he made some pretty interesting comments...)...

But a lot of the other comments totally missed the underlining point of the original post....

BlaqueKnight said:

Okay, my take:

First off, let's get a couple of things straight for you politically corrected social police - R&B is black music. Yes, it is. Don't even bother throwing up a couple of names of white artists that have had minor hit records doing R&B music. For the most part, IT IS BLACK MUSIC. It is referred to as black music by black people. Why? Because its what a great majority of black people listen to. How do I know? Because I can say black music in a room full of black people at any given time and they will know exactly what I am talking about. You can play semantics all day long and bitch and whine about the terms but it is what it is and there's nothing any non-black person can do to change it, so don't waste your time trying to bully people into saying what you want them to because I for one, will not. Black folks know what black music is. If you don't - tough.

"Agree/Disagree" what the hell am I thinking?

Anyway I found this post to be very intersting, it was shared to me by a fellow org pal(who posts in Okayplayer, where he found it).

Disregard it if its a repost.

First off most people on here know I think Prince is one of the greatest artists of the past 50 years. I can't think of anyone that has made as many songs that I have enjoyed as much as I have his. If I listed my top 10 concerts ever, the 6 Prince shows I've seen would all be there. That said ..... Prince was NOT good for black music people.

I think a lot of what made him great also made him destructive. His creativity and confidence turned him into a sort of musical demigod. He didn't need a band to create and record with because in his mind nobody could play his music as well as he could. He didn't use background singers for the most part for the same reason. Prince was the show, standing above all others and he wanted to make sure you didn't forget that. Now of course Prince wasn't the first artist to feel this way. But he was the first that had the technology to isolate himself creatively the way he did. When you have the talent and ideas Prince did at the time, this isn't a bad thing in and of itself. The problem is, it inspired less creative and original people to follow in his footsteps. The end result was a parade of mediocre singer/songwriter/producer wannabes that would have been much better severed (creatively) being part of a larger collective. Just because you can make music by yourself doesn't mean you should. Of course existing bands also took note of what Prince was doing. They started cutting the "fat" and in doing so, knocked over the first domino in death of the black band.

As I said, Prince wasn't the first artist to have an ego. But he was the first to go to the lengths he did to keep from being shown up. One need to look no further than his first two side projects ... The Time and Vanity 6.... for prove of his obsessive narcissism.

Flyte Tyme by everyone's account was the baddest band in Minneapolis. So what did Prince do when he signed them? Fired their lead singer (Alexander O'Neal) and replaced them with his drummer friend Morris Day. The fact Morris couldn't sing meant nothing to Prince. As a matter of fact in his mind this was a good thing. This meant one less threat to Prince. But even this wasn't enough for him. Prince went into the studio and recorded almost all (if not all, there are various opinions on this) the music and background vocals for the first Time album. Think about this for a minute. You sign a band and then record an album under their name with your friend who you made lead singer. But that didn't matter to P. He was selling an alternate image of himself with the group. He wasn't producing in a way that would bring out the creativity in his artist, he was acting as a puppet master with his hand guiding every sight and sound associate with them. They weren't artist, they were props. Never was this truer than with his next project Vanity 6. Never before in black music history had there been a group that had this much style over substance. None of the girls could sing ...not even in a serviceable way really ... play any instruments or even dance. With Vanity Prince created the video chick before the video era even really kicked off. Once again, Prince was the star and his project was his window dressing. With Vanity 6 Prince proved you could market and sell records even though the "artist" had little to no talent. It would be foolish to think the industry didn't take note of this. This knowledge along with the emergence of the music video formed a powerful one two punch that marginalized vocal talent.

The interesting thing in all of this is how Prince slowly reverted back to more "traditional" ways as his creative tank started to run dry. Now days he loves to talk about "real music" and sing the praises of the funk and jazz stars of the past. He basks in the spotlight as the symbol of a by gone era. The last of his kind. And once again Prince is the show. And once again, Prince got exactly what he wanted.

Well?
[Edited 12/25/09 16:10pm]