Was there ever an explanation for that subliminal in the Alphabet St. video?

What was that about?

Honestly I was expecting a evil, nasty and explicit funk record. I thought it was pretty tame for even him back then. It's an OK record but nothing to write home about....Wasn't this around the time he (supposedly) experimented with ecstacy?

controversy99 said:

He was sorry for recording such a dark album. So he didn't release it, and he didn't want people to buy it. Instead people should by the uplifting Lovesexy album that replaced. At least that's my understanding.

About right i think too

SPYZFAN1 said:

Honestly I was expecting a evil, nasty and explicit funk record. I thought it was pretty tame for even him back then. It's an OK record but nothing to write home about....Wasn't this around the time he (supposedly) experimented with ecstacy?

Wasted Kisses is far more chilling than anything on the Black Album. Makes me wonder what else he has like that locked away in the vault...

Guitarhero said:

controversy99 said:

He was sorry for recording such a dark album. So he didn't release it, and he didn't want people to buy it. Instead people should by the uplifting Lovesexy album that replaced. At least that's my understanding.

About right i think too

That was my understanding as well.

I have always enjoyed the "funk bible" aka The Black Album..

Lot's of great tracks, actually the only song not fitting in is "When 2 R In Love", such a beautiful masterpiece of a Prince-ballad - this song fits a lot better in on the fine Lovesexy album...

To me the Black Album continues where the Sign "O" The Times album left, those 2 albums Black & SOTT, they are like brother and sister to me, both are excellent...

The Black Album is a 9.5/10 near-masterpiece album imo....

BIG, big love from me...

An explanation (of sorts) was included in the LoveSexy Tour Program:

.

Time upon a once
There was a boy named Camille
Now this boy named Camille
didn't know how 2 feel.
Sometimes he was lonely
sometimes he was sad
but most times he just took 4 granted
all the nice things that he had.
.
Some people said they loved him but Camille said "Contempt!

Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall,love is no good unless it's felt by all"
.
So, naive & terrifically in need
Camille started looking for answers
His paintbrush the questioner,
his canvas the arena,
Camille set out to silence his critics.
"No longer daring" - his enemies laughed.
"No longer glam, his funk is half-assed...
one leg is much shorter than the other one is weak.
His strokes are tepid, his colors are meek."
.
So Camille found a new color.
The color black: strongest hue of them all.
He painted a picture called Le Grind -- hittin' so tall.
And then Cindy C -- THE vogue fantasy.
Horns & vocals 2 die 4. Lollipops -- in yours!
Stroke after stroke callin' all others a joke.
Superfunkycalifragisexi.
.
Camille rocked hard in a funky place.
Stuck his long funk in competition's face.
Tuesday came. Blue Tuesday.
His canvas full, and lying on the table, Camille mustered all the hate that he was able.
Hate 4 the ones who ever doubted his game.
Hate 4 the ones who ever doubted his name.
"Tis nobody funkier -- let the Black Album fly."
Spooky Electric was talking, Camille started 2 cry.
.
Tricked. A fool he had been. In the lowest utmostest.
He had allowed the dark side of him 2 create something evil.
2 Nigs United 4 West Compton. Camille and his ego. Bob George. Why?
Spooky Electric must die.
Die in the hearts of all who want love.
Die in the hearts of men who want change.
Die in the bodies of women who want babies that will grow up
with a New Power Soul.
Love Life, Lovesexy -- the feeling u get when u fall in love,
not with a girl or boy but with the heavens above.
Lovesexy -- endorphin.
Camille figured out what 2 feel.
Glam Slam Escape -- the Sexuality Real.
Tonight we make love with only words. Girls first.
This feeling's so good in every single way.
God is alive! Let Him touch u and He will quench every thirst.
Let him touch u and an aura of peace will adorn u.
God is alive!
Let Him touch u and your own Lovesexy will be born.
Let Him touch u, let Him touch u, and Heaven is yours.
Welcome 2 the New Power Generation.

^ thanks Geetee71, for typing this.

Right.

If he didn't want anyone to buy it he would not mention it and fewer people would know about it. Withholding the Black Album and allowing it to become a legendary bootleg was a genius move by Prince. Having already cemented his superstardom, the Black Album helped him reclaim his underground status simultaneously.

"Don't buy the Black Album"... Okay....

I don't buy the whole Black Album thing. i mean he recorded it, pressed it for release, at the 11 hour pulled it, knowing it would fall into some hands. then saying sorry, only to play 3 songs from it in the following tour. it was planned that way. to get it's legendary status. getting music out there without actually releasing it.

purplethunder3121 said:

SPYZFAN1 said:

Honestly I was expecting a evil, nasty and explicit funk record. I thought it was pretty tame for even him back then. It's an OK record but nothing to write home about....Wasn't this around the time he (supposedly) experimented with ecstacy?

Wasted Kisses is far more chilling than anything on the Black Album. Makes me wonder what else he has like that locked away in the vault...

Indeed, listening this album, do not understand the "so dark" side of this album. Bob George and Rockhard In a Funky Place are great.

SPYZFAN1 said:

Honestly I was expecting a evil, nasty and explicit funk record. I thought it was pretty tame for even him back then. It's an OK record but nothing to write home about....Wasn't this around the time he (supposedly) experimented with ecstacy?

.

i get that it may have been a dark period for prince, and thats what it and the songs were about for him, but the music not so much to anyone else. i really think that reputation it got came from people hearing about it without ever having heard it and it just grew and got to mythical porportions as people passed the story on.

[Edited 3/14/16 3:49am]

Don't buy Phase One, I'm sorry!

purplethunder3121 said:

SPYZFAN1 said:

Honestly I was expecting a evil, nasty and explicit funk record. I thought it was pretty tame for even him back then. It's an OK record but nothing to write home about....Wasn't this around the time he (supposedly) experimented with ecstacy?

Wasted Kisses is far more chilling than anything on the Black Album. Makes me wonder what else he has like that locked away in the vault...

The cassette copy of the Black Album I had back in the early 90s had Old Friends 4 Sale after Rockhard in a Funky Place, seemingly closing the album. I knew the story of the Black Album being 'dark', and I remember thinking, "Yeah, I see why he pulled it. This is darker than anything I've heard him do" - in the sense that it was a bleak and despairing side of himself that he was revealing; and it seemed (misleadingly) that that was the note he'd chosen to end the album on. (My cassette ended there, without even having In All My Dreams coming to 'rescue' the mood.) Only a few years later, with the 1994 release of TBA, did I find out that OF4S wasn't even part of the project.

Later, I learned about songs like Wally, which would seem to have been similarly dark. Shame he doesn't like to open himself up like that. Despite its bleakness - in fact, because it sounds so raw and wounded - Old Friends 4 Sale is one of my favourites.

[Edited 3/14/16 14:21pm]

TheDigitalGardener said:

Don't buy Phase One, I'm sorry!

deebee said:

djThunderfunk said:

Right.

If he didn't want anyone to buy it he would not mention it and fewer people would know about it. Withholding the Black Album and allowing it to become a legendary bootleg was a genius move by Prince. Having already cemented his superstardom, the Black Album helped him reclaim his underground status simultaneously.

"Don't buy the Black Album"... Okay....

I hadn't considered whether Prince's recording then withholding the release of the Black Album was a surreptitious effort to market a new image to the public, but if so, that was a stroke of marketing genius! I thought that the subliminal message that flashed on the "Alphabet St." video was his apology for having to ask his fans not to buy the referred product that he knew would be getting out to them since he recorded it and prepared it for distribution, and remorse for the recording, itself. He did seem to make a pretty big deal about it though, as another here has said! I mean, it did figure pretty large in telling the story of Lovesexy's genesis. Maybe the inspiration for the scenario was a marketing ploy or the artist's self-guilt for wanting to be more positively inspirational to the public--who knows? I guess that the legend will live on in perpetuity for those who care.

>

Listening to the Black Album version published by WB, I always felt that the song "When 2 R in Love" stuck in the middle was a misfit. After I had earlier heard the song "Scarlett Pussy" (on the B-Side to the "Eye Wish U Heaven" 12-inch single) and later heard the Black Album, it seemed to me that that song should have gone into that slot. Its sonics are different from the rest of the record, but the subject tone seens pitch perfect.

>

For the deep-digging behind-the-scenes investigators, I wonder if anybody might unearth what the original song lineup could have been for the Black Album project. Maybe the knowlegde lurks only in Prince's mind!

TheDigitalGardener said:

I don't believe Prince really had a problem with anything on the Black album. I think he was simply more into the idea of his next album being about the time he got high as a mothafonka with Ingrid Chavez.

SPYZFAN1 said:

Honestly I was expecting a evil, nasty and explicit funk record. I thought it was pretty tame for even him back then.

I felt the same way when I finally obtained a bootleg copy of the album in 1988! For months I had been reading all these critics who were proclaiming that it is a funk masterpiece.A few even said it's a throwback to Dirty Mind.So I was expecting something really nasty,evil and outrageous.I like the album but I don't think it's as edgy and as groundbreaking as some say it is.

"A few even said it's a throwback to 'Dirty Mind.'.........Yup!!! Those were the comparisons I heard too. That made me even more anxious to hear it.

i really like it. funks pretty hard to me (in an '87 drum machine princely way). rock hard is the most trad funk though.

police....its was just to be controversial

bigd74 said:

I don't buy the whole Black Album thing. i mean he recorded it, pressed it for release, at the 11 hour pulled it, knowing it would fall into some hands. then saying sorry, only to play 3 songs from it in the following tour. it was planned that way. to get it's legendary status. getting music out there without actually releasing it.

.

Oh for crying out loud, that shit cost him MILLIONS. Stop posting this absurd nonsense.

Germanegro said:

I hadn't considered whether Prince's recording then withholding the release of the Black Album was a surreptitious effort to market a new image to the public, but if so, that was a stroke of marketing genius!

.

Oh for crying out loud, no it wasn't. Dude was already percieved as a weirdo, and this just made him look more weird. By then he'd already pulled a truckload of stupid stunts (like not touring SOTT in the US) and this was just another item on the heap.

BartVanHemelen said: