xplnyrslf said:

Whatever bitterness Prince has towards the past, he is clear with his description of "whites" and "black music", he has no problem, driving off current Caucasion fans. Would he give this same speech to Rolling Stone?

If I knew his perspective in the first place, I would have never given him the time of day, much less travel to his concerts, along with ticket, hotel, plane fare, time off work, etc.

This interview was unbelievable poor judgement on his part.

Although, I'd rather know his true character.

Addendum: I was raised with religion/Jesus as a kid. Mass, formal instruction, etc. Since when, does an adult, need another adult, to hold his/her hand regarding religious practice??

Prince has "ex-druggie" written all over.

Remaining "fresh"? The "box office" has been his gauge, was Prince's response. What happened to the art of making music, whether fans like it or not? I'm a little bit confused about the businessman, JW convert, and whatever the heck he is......including loony.

[Edited 7/3/10 19:50pm]

Interesting post.

It is an honour for Prince to be featured in African-American orientated magazines,

as it was for him to receive the award from BET. For many years, even though his

music audience transcended all ethnic groups, it appeared as if Prince alientated

himself from the "black" community. His choice of females in his videos, his deliberate

pushing forth a "non-racial" or trans-racial identity as opposed to notions of black

consciousness. But it appears as if he is returning to his roots, while musically

still staying true to his own sound. It's cool the Black community is embracing him

as one of "their own." Deep in his heart, he wanted this and I see nothing wrong

with this.

"Returning to his roots"? Not to sound argumentative but when did he leave them? He always had music that is stereotypically "black" anyways (R&B, soul, funk, etc.)

As for him being on EBONY, he was on it last year, I don't know if he got the cover for it but he was on it nonetheless.

Maybe there was a point where he was "away" because he wanted a crossover audience (and he still has fans of all races at his concerts) but I never thought he fully escaped them.

[Edited 7/7/10 16:21pm]

Spinlight said:

Thanks for the interview with Ebony, P. No, really. We needed another dissertation on black poverty and how black people are/were/will be/can be/should be/would be from the mouth of someone who can give away a half assed album for free with a newspaper and still make 2 million dollars while the US government forecloses on the houses of artists like T-Boz (you know, your favorite band, right?) and others.

WELL DAMN!

I have the issue, I just skim through it but I will read it and give my thought on it. Do any of y'all have the JET issue? Well apparently the whole Prince article wasn't even an interview, it was a praise speech lol

I'm reading the beginning of the article and this is how it started:

Entering Prince's world feels kinda like slipping into the altered reality of The Matrix. Time and space shift. Here's the tale of what happened on the other side.

EBONY: Though 52 (come June 7), you appear ageless. To what do you attribute that? How long have you been vegan? What else do you do to stay healthy? We noticed that the beverage at dinner was water. Do you not drink alcohol?

PRINCE: Study of the solar system tells us that the time it takes 4 the Earth 2 orbit around the sun equals one year. By processing time with a much longer orbit we can slow the perception of time. In Scripture, one day is like 1,000 years 2 Jehovah God.

----

I know how Prince is but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

This "innerview" is quite interesting.

OK, I've read this short interview and it seems like Prince's intention was to throw the interviewer off and bring up some stuff that didn't even relate to questions and also to get people talking. I'm assuming this is what happened with the Mirror interview and other interviews. THEN AGAIN, Prince has always been like this.

Ask him how hot it is outside and he'll go on about how we need to cleanse our spirits with Avian water.

[Edited 7/7/10 17:53pm]

Good 4 Prince

Hope is 4 happiness.

Timmy84 said:

I have the issue, I just skim through it but I will read it and give my thought on it. Do any of y'all have the JET issue? Well apparently the whole Prince article wasn't even an interview, it was a praise speech lol

I have the JET issue. It wasn't a one-on-one interview with Prince. Just the writer's take on Prince throughout his career to present day, but mentions a bit of what was mentioned in the Ebony issue.

[Edited 7/7/10 20:24pm]

Timmy84 said:

"Returning to his roots"? Not to sound argumentative but when did he leave them? He always had music that is stereotypically "black" anyways (R&B, soul, funk, etc.)

As for him being on EBONY, he was on it last year, I don't know if he got the cover for it but he was on it nonetheless.

Maybe there was a point where he was "away" because he wanted a crossover audience (and he still has fans of all races at his concerts) but I never thought he fully escaped them.

[Edited 7/7/10 16:21pm]

I agree. He never left it. The Jet article gives a good take on the early part of his career. I, like many others believe he just wanted a crossover audience altogether, instead of being pigeonholed like other black artists back in the day, with their music by record execs. Prince wasn't having it. That sort of thing limits an artist, and it seems many record execs, labeled all black artists as r&b artists, back in the day, expecting them to produce one form of music, and that pretty much limited their creative skills, whereas Prince was smart enough to not be pigeonholed, and found various ways to attract the type of fans he sought out to attract. He pretty much helped to educate the music industry, that black artists were beyond just creating r&b type music. Prince helped to open the doors for other black artists down the road as well.

JustErin said:

Spinlight said:

Prince can liken himself to Ike Turner all he wants. Ike Turner was, amongst many things, a talented man whose troubles surmounted his creativity and his business savvy - thus ruining not only his music career, but his marriages. Do we, as fans with a bit of insight into Prince, consider him of the same troubled calibre? Maybe. He's spiritually conflicted, to say the least, but whether or not his spiritual eccentricities owe to his malformed vision of slavery and CONtracts is - i guess - interpreted by the reader. Thus, some people will excuse him for his outlandish claims and take them as gospel because... Why? He's black and has been repeatedly shunned from the music industry either by the companies themselves or the music buying public (who just doesn't want his current music)?

Prince was given multiple opportunities to rule the music industry with an iron fist and every single time he was given this opportunity, he squandered it in greed, naivete, and professional onanism. He could not bear the burden of really contributing to artists under his control because his ego and his deranged sense of entitlement is extremely off-putting. Humility is something decades-lost on Prince. It is because of this arrogance that has many people have succumbed to the Bizarro World Midas Touch (aka, when he touches their career, it dies). It is also because of this that he has suffered so much in the music industry.

Exec after exec has come forward, producers, engineers, agents, bandmembers, dancers, and other people attached to his entourage at one time or another have all said the same thing. Prince is a genius when it comes to crafting songs, but he is willfully negligent when it comes to his own career and the interests of those he employs, much less his posterity or his dreadfully loyal fanbase.

Stop giving him excuses to rely on. His assertion that Yes Men are toxic is laughable at best. In fact, he has surrounded himself with nothing but Yes Men for the better part of 20 years now and it has slowly eroded his legacy. He will, eventually (if not already) dissipate into the annals of rock history as a genius-gone-wrong who had the world in his hands for a good 10 years and proceeded to pluck the petals away one by one until there was nothing left but his own distorted kingdom of sand.

You can praise him for his humble status at the moment all you want. He isn't humble, though. His spirituality is vanity. His studies of history and henceforth his retelling of it is ironic and hollow. For someone who recites black history like a copy editor at News of the World, he certainly raked in the cash hand over fist while those White Men Who Enslaved Him bent over backwards to accommodate his greedy demands and outlandish threats.

All the while, in his house he lays dreaming of being a paragon of black enterprise as his back catalog rots in antiquity. A fresh, rejuvenated SOTT? Never. A deluxe edition of LoveSexy? Not on his watch. Without his superfluous and insipid remixes and remakes of his torch songs, Prince will have nothing to do with those albums... That is, unless he can entice you to go to his concerts (which become more and more vaudeville as the years go by), by saying this is the last time he will perform them. Or he will hum, plink on the piano, or strum a few bars of a song that is entirely incongruous with his current "religion" just so the hair on your arms stand up in anticipation before chugging into a full version of "Pass the Peas" or "The Christ".... Barf.

Thanks for the interview with Ebony, P. No, really. We needed another dissertation on black poverty and how black people are/were/will be/can be/should be/would be from the mouth of someone who can give away a half assed album for free with a newspaper and still make 2 million dollars while the US government forecloses on the houses of artists like T-Boz (you know, your favorite band, right?) and others.

Physician, heal thyself.

This post is amazing.

Prince wants the truth? Well, here it is.

this IS the best post EVER

'dre