Is is just pure coincedence that Rick James' "Street Songs" was also released today, April 7, 1981??

[Edited 4/7/11 10:20am]

I think it's probably purely coincidence, yeah.

Bulldog said:

For You is Prince's debut album. Released on April 7, 1978 (two months shy of his 20th birthday) and bearing the soon-to-be classic tag"Produced, arranged, composed, and performed by Prince," the album is generally regarded as a promising but somewhat insubstantial early effort. The album peaked at #163 on the US Pop Charts (#21 R&B), and would go on to sell 430,000 copies domestically (983,000 copies worldwide).

Thanks a lot!

Hadn't you said that, we would've never known!!

The beginning of the beautiful musical journey of a genius...recorded in The Bay Area no less! (Sausalito)

[img:$uid]http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j247/pandadub/Prince_For_You2.jpg[/img:$uid]

[Edited 4/7/11 11:38am]

I love the early era of Prince life/career pre For U-Dirty Mind, those years closed the gap so quickly

And the music/lyrical writing is so similar on most of the music

versiongirl said:

The beginning of the beautiful musical journey of a genius...recorded in The Bay Area no less! (Sausalito)

[img:$uid]http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j247/pandadub/Prince_For_You2.jpg[/img:$uid]

[Edited 4/7/11 11:38am]

Rick James also recorded Street Songs at the same studio (The Reccord Plant) and didn't he use Prince's keybords??

Bulldog said:

Rick James also recorded Street Songs at the same studio (The Reccord Plant) and didn't he use Prince's keybords??

According to Teena Marie, Rick "stole" Princes equipment...

http://mrberre.posterous.com/teena-marie-on-prince-and-rick-james

[Rick] James’s charisma was matched only by his audacity and Teena [Marie] was able to see these sides of the King of Punk Funk both on-stage and off. In 1980, Prince opened for James on the Fire It Up tour. James complained that Prince stole his stage moves and according to Marie, Rick paid Prince back by stealing his gear. “Back then people weren’t really programming their own synthesizers,” says Teena. “Prince - you know – he’s a genius... he was one of the only one’s who could really do that – probably him and Stevie [Wonder] were the only one’s really doing it…[Prince] was programming all his synthesizers and setting the presets with his own sound and …at the end of the tour [Rick] took [Prince’s] synthesizers.” Teena cannot help but chuckle as she recounts the story. “He took them to Sausalito and he actually used them on the Street Songs album and then he sent them back to [Prince] with a thank you card. He was a piece of work…and a brilliant genius, too!”

Teena later found herself wedged between the two future legends when she went on the road with Prince. “We were on the Dirty Mind tour together… [Prince and I] never had a problem. We would kick it…neither one of us drank so after the concerts we’d go and sit and have our little orange juice or whatever. He had a lot of respect for me. There were some nights that I would come on stage and I would kick his butt, you know, and [afterwards] he’d walk by me and go “Whew! I have to work hard tonight’ and there were some nights that he would come by and say ‘I whooped you! I whooped you tonight!’ so it was really awesome and he’s always been really wonderful to me.”

For James, however, it was a different story. “I don’t think Rick really liked the fact that [Prince and I] were friends but you know….The rivalry to me as I look back on it - it was really Rick. It wasn’t really Prince. It was more Rick than anything. I never really saw Prince feeding into it too much. It really actually saddened me because I think the two of them would have made some amazing music together. It would have been ridiculous…but you know…it was what it was…I’m not really sure why it started. Rick always said it was because Prince snubbed his mother.” Indeed, James claimed that Prince had insulted his mother at the 1982 American Music Awards by refusing to give her an autograph. The mood should have been celebratory - Teena was nominated for Favorite Soul R&B Female Artist and Rick won Best Soul/R&B Album for Street Songs - but Rick was having none of it. Backstage, Prince’s manager at the time (the late Steve Fargnoli) hastily arranged for Prince to apologize but James ignored him. Even today, Teena views the story skeptically. “I really find that hard to believe and if it did happen, I don’t think it was intentional because Prince just isn’t that kind of guy. So it could have just been unintentional where she was around and he didn’t see her, you know what I’m saying? And Rick really knew how to take stuff and run with it…but from everything that I know [Rick] really, really did like [Prince’s] music….” Laughing, Teena adds one more caveat: “Although he would never admit to it. He would never admit to that.”

I REALLY MISS THAT KIND OF CREATIVE RIVALRY! Artists trying to out do each other, and we were able reap the benefits of their outburts!

Today, you just get beat down, stabbed or shot!

[Edited 4/7/11 12:09pm]

Rick stole a lot of things from Prince IMO

The ruffled shirt

[img:$uid]http://cache.gettyimages.com/comp/51007299.jpg?x=x&dasite=MS_GINS&ef=2&ev=1&dareq=E2399169AC85D6DE7F9CD95D11365232B7E4CBC57022DA20621B2AC3A62513D3[/img:$uid]

The curly hair and pouty lip

[img:$uid]http://www.soulwalking.co.uk/%A5Artist%20GIF%20Images/Rick-James-99.jpg[/img:$uid]

Ahh but what's a little friendly competion among music rivals?

[img:$uid]http://personales.ya.com/nvg_studios/princeRickJames.gif[/img:$uid]

WoW ... It seems like a lot of the albums are starting to run into one another. Parade was released this week too ...

Time flies when you're having an eargasm.

Genesia said:

Time flies when you're having an eargasm.

Rick James always finds a way to infiltrate a thread when you least expect it.

For You is a spunky little thing, but I prefer the follow up.

While an argument could be made that For You is his "worst" album I think each song is at least decent and I would love to hear him play more of them live.

It's a good album but Prince was a big improvement and Dirty Mind was a big improvement over Prince, it's easy to see why For You is largely ignored and forgotten about.

Hmm, interesting, I always thought For You was released in the fall of 1978 when Prince was 20. A couple of google searches gave contradictory info:

http://www.amazon.com/For...B00123HJS0

30 Sept 1978

http://www.princevault.co...m:_For_You

7 April 1978

http://www.vh1.com/artist...umId=72159

1 October 1978

Which is it?

^^ 7th April '78.