ChocolateBox3121 said:

Emancipation's promotion was cut short because the record label EMI folded right in the middle of it's promotional run.

.

By that time Emancipation was dead as a dodo. This was five months after its release. Prince had been touring and barely played anything from the album.

Vannormal said:

2. Serious ? Not reading 'properly'? I would first and formost fire my incapable lawyers for that matter. Prince possibly did not read his own contract, and so what, if he did, he (or his lawyers) did make a mistake, only if they knew that Prince wanted to negotiate his masters, but that came later after he signed the contrat i believe.

.

Sweet jebuus, are people still misrepresenting the 1992 contract? That was ALL Prince's doing. He wanted the biggest ever contract because he was jealous of Michael Jackson and Madonna et al., and immediately put out a press release boasting about it being the biggest ever, which caused Warners people to talk to Billboard et al and point out that a lot of the numbers shouldn't be added together, but that they came with plenty of provisions. https://musicfans.stackex...m/a/89/129

.

And then his next album kinda bombed because as per usual Prince didn't put in all the effort he put into D&P (e.g. worldwide tour, massive promotion, etc. which still only helped him sell 5 million copies which was the minimum he needed to sell for the "$10 million advance for the next record" clause) and Prince blamed Warners and sought a stick to hit a dog and suddenly became interested in owning the rights to his master recordings (which he never gave a shit about before) and whined a lot and never did anything to actually renegotiate his contract. (BTW at that same time the likes of REM and Metallica were both signed to other WEA companies and renegociated their contracts to get control of their master recording rights. But these artists had power because these artists sold significant amounts of albums.)

.

See also https://musicfans.stackex...a/2171/129 .

The 90's were an interesting time for Prince. I really hope this era gets it's own book.

I feel since this was a time when Prince was not at his peak artistically that it might be glossed over, but I think there is a fascinating story to tell about an artist not being in sync with the times, and had previously never cared about trends and commercialism, was now desperately trying to pander to it.

.

Diamonds and Pearls is so cringeworthy but for Gett Off, which feels like an anomaly on that putrid record.

[Edited 2/19/21 4:17am]

v10letblues said:

The 90's were an interesting time for Prince. I really hope this era gets it's own book.

I feel since this was a time when Prince was not at his peak artistically that it might be glossed over, but I think there is a fascinating story to tell about an artist not being in sync with the times, and had previously never cared about trends and commercialism, was now desperately trying to pander to it.

.

Diamonds and Pearls is so cringeworthy but for Gett Off, which feels like an anomaly on that putrid record.

[Edited 2/19/21 4:17am]

The three big singles and Willing and Able are 5/5 for me, and there's a few 4/5 tracks as well. I mean, it's not the most consistent album but there's some serious classics on there imho

coldcoffeeandcocacola said:

95-00 the name change damaged his rep. It was cool to laugh at P. Then as someone said the religious focus. Post religious focus,, World has become darker, look at the type of people enjoying success. P was a warm and wholesome presence. Its no longer cool to get joy from a song. The industry is increasingly soulless and bad forces are at play. For all his eccentricities, P was good. He didn't fit. He knew what was going on. Just my feeling. [Edited 1/29/21 21:11pm]

True say. These times are less innocent. More bad behavior than ever, and no improvement evident since corona.

Eminem writes a song called 'Kim' and suddenly all his male fans want to kill their girlfriends/bitches. He then tells them he's joking so they all put their knives back in the drawer.
Donald Trump tells the world you can possibly defeat coronavirus by injecting yourself with disinfectant. Half his fans believe him so he quickly has to correct them, saying he was only being sarcastic.

We're living in the age of alternative facts, to quote one of his loyal supporters. Prince for all his faults was into truth and um on that he was right, apart from of course biblical truths.

jaawwnn said:

v10letblues said:

The 90's were an interesting time for Prince. I really hope this era gets it's own book.

I feel since this was a time when Prince was not at his peak artistically that it might be glossed over, but I think there is a fascinating story to tell about an artist not being in sync with the times, and had previously never cared about trends and commercialism, was now desperately trying to pander to it.

.

Diamonds and Pearls is so cringeworthy but for Gett Off, which feels like an anomaly on that putrid record.

[Edited 2/19/21 4:17am]

The three big singles and Willing and Able are 5/5 for me, and there's a few 4/5 tracks as well. I mean, it's not the most consistent album but there's some serious classics on there imho

I think this album is mostly grotesque.

93-95 was an artistic peak that rivals the best of the 80s

Prince felt taking his own life was the right thing to do. For the reason that he cared more about his legacy than his life.

fortuneandserendipity said:

Prince felt taking his own life was the right thing to do. For the reason that he cared more about his legacy than his life.

Uh....what?

Don't think I've seen it mentioned yet, but thinking back to my kid years, people are aware of how old pop stars are. Thinking back to the 90s, there was definitely a stereotype of "ew, that's old" when a song by someone who wasn't in their 20s came on. Prince just got old.

lustmealways said:

93-95 was an artistic peak that rivals the best of the 80s

yeah no

lustmealways said:

93-95 was an artistic peak that rivals the best of the 80s

I love this era too. So many great songs and performances. Is it an artistic peak though? Maybe, maybe not. It's all very subjective.

But 80s Prince or 90s Prince? He was the same guy but different in the 90s. A bit more mature, more confident, more driven, more jaded and certainly A LOT more ego.

.

[Edited 2/23/21 19:55pm]

Milty2 said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

Prince felt taking his own life was the right thing to do. For the reason that he cared more about his legacy than his life.

Uh....what?

BartVanHemelen said:

Vannormal said:

2. Serious ? Not reading 'properly'? I would first and formost fire my incapable lawyers for that matter. Prince possibly did not read his own contract, and so what, if he did, he (or his lawyers) did make a mistake, only if they knew that Prince wanted to negotiate his masters, but that came later after he signed the contrat i believe.

.

Sweet jebuus, are people still misrepresenting the 1992 contract? That was ALL Prince's doing. He wanted the biggest ever contract because he was jealous of Michael Jackson and Madonna et al., and immediately put out a press release boasting about it being the biggest ever, which caused Warners people to talk to Billboard et al and point out that a lot of the numbers shouldn't be added together, but that they came with plenty of provisions. https://musicfans.stackex...m/a/89/129

.

And then his next album kinda bombed because as per usual Prince didn't put in all the effort he put into D&P (e.g. worldwide tour, massive promotion, etc. which still only helped him sell 5 million copies which was the minimum he needed to sell for the "$10 million advance for the next record" clause) and Prince blamed Warners and sought a stick to hit a dog and suddenly became interested in owning the rights to his master recordings (which he never gave a shit about before) and whined a lot and never did anything to actually renegotiate his contract. (BTW at that same time the likes of REM and Metallica were both signed to other WEA companies and renegociated their contracts to get control of their master recording rights. But these artists had power because these artists sold significant amounts of albums.)

.

See also https://musicfans.stackex...a/2171/129 .

-

Wow... that is one well detailed article.

I never had the chance to read this kind of chronological documented information plus all the references. Truely interesting.

It explaines well how the whole circus actyually went on.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

-

Indeed REM and Metalica were actually pioneers for this matter and not Prince,

as often is refered to.

He did the preaching though. And now all this info shines another light on the preaching.

And,

Interesting website by the way (https://musicfans.stackexchange.com/)

Never heard of that. Merci.

-

Prince was a very private person. We don't know what he was really thinking, but the pieces fit relative to the circumstances. I find his last tweet so profound and to the last he was enigmatic: you can almost hear the words from his mouth, same as Beethoven used, "I Shall Hear in Heaven".

Anyway, about his inability to have a hit after 1995. I think more collaborations would've borne fruit. You see that a lot in the R'n'B world and singles really take off. So Far So Pleased could well have reached number 1 with the right marketing, promotion.

fortuneandserendipity said:

Prince was a very private person. We don't know what he was really thinking, but the pieces fit relative to the circumstances. I find his last tweet so profound and to the last he was enigmatic: you can almost hear the words from his mouth, same as Beethoven used, "I Shall Hear in Heaven".

Anyway, about his inability to have a hit after 1995. I think more collaborations would've borne fruit. You see that a lot in the R'n'B world and singles really take off. So Far So Pleased could well have reached number 1 with the right marketing, promotion.

He had hits after 1995 just not number ones.

Musze said:

Dance 4 Me was SUCH a missed opportunity in that regard.

No. It's shit.

Funk'n'Roll (AOA Version) could have done well with some label promotion.

purplethunder3121 said:

While many Prince fans and other music fans were moving on to other sounds of the day--which will happen to long-career artists--I rather dug his Rave album. These collabos. weren't designed to duet with Prince, but rather compliment his songs with their rapping, background vocalizations and instrumental accompanyment to enhance those Prince compositions in the way he saw fit--pretty much in the way he had operated throughout his career of "Prince" recordings and even continue to proceed among his selections of cover recordings, I think. The desperation mode doesn't seem to be a factor to me in this but more of the usual creative experiment, IMHO.

>

One of the songs I like that I read a lot of people comment here that is weak is "Every Day Is a Winding Road." I like his take on the song as well as Cheryl Crowe's original. In "Emancipation," even, I felt that his use of Chante Moore on the Delphonics's "La La La Means I Love You" was a delicious texture on that maybe a lot of people didn't care about, but I did and still do. It was effective for me!

>

I can't hardly surmise what went down over the "Rave" project's creative negotiations, but what happened benind those doors happened and we got the result. The zietgeist hadn't been struck nor had innovation been tapped with those songs so they kind of fell flat in the POP MARKET, hence our present talking of flopping vs striking a hit!

>

The position of chasing numbers might have given Prince pains (but he kept at it, tho'!) and I can say I feel for him at that career stage, 'cause wanting to be a pop artist and simultaneously follow your own path is a pretty hard thing to do if not impossible. In the world an artist gets about one chance to make a kind of big splash and lightning flash in pop culture--Prince did and worked really hard to stretch it out. One should think that any subsequent similar success would be a result of either pure dumb luck, or dogged cunning and you done sold out (in ways brilliant or cheap). For me, I think that Prince is just exhibiting his humanity in Rave, and that is no foul by me.

>

I'll just end to say that the people who enjoy all the idiosyncracities and quirks of the older Prince have and do stick around to enjoy it all, and that kind of thing is the spark what keeps the older artists feeling vital and energized to produce, gain the dollar support and inspire. The sales charts can illustrate success or failure within the large field but does largely miss all the nuances of the artists creativity that people enjoy albeit in lesser numbers and perhaps may latently influence new fans. In the end, instead of thinking about the inability to make hits I think it would be more interesting to learn about the development of Prince's sessions with the people contrubuting to the Rave project.

>

zobilamouche said:

RODSERLING said:

The problem with So far, so pleased, was that you can't hear neither Prince nor Gwen Stefani distinctly. The same mistake he did with releasing Take Me With You instead of the Beautiful Ones. So it would have flopped, anyway. [Edited 1/28/21 20:10pm]

Indeed, that's what I tried to mention on another post. If you didn't know or read that there were "collaborations" on this album you wouldn't spot them with a magnifying glass. I'm quite sure they convinced him to do these collaborations but in the end he pollished it to what he wanted, mostly taking out what would identify the presence of another artist.

There were challenges inherent to Prince's independent stance that all indie artists must navigate, and he was experimenting with every iteration that he could find possible to do--not a bad thing to innovate and play with the logistics of moving your product.

>

Prince's record label invested millions $ into his career development, but didn't he earn them much more in return as a result of the excercise?

>

I wish Prince would have stuck with a website model for his products. Other artists seem to have worked out their own reasonable and effective designs as such. With the wealth of material Prince had to offer at the start of his independent enterprise he could have done smashingly well with archived materials alone. I notice that a misfiling of copyright for the "NPG" name was the excuse to end that music club and was probably the tip of the iceberg of its operation challenges, though. It's unfortunate that his other sites were weaker designs-- 3121/Planet Earth being more a bulletin board and Lotusflow3r the abandoned white elephant it turned out to be. The tedium of his own web system maintenance plus not being able to command it all by himself could have been a huge putoff enough to launch him to the checkerboard one-off distribution deals with labels for his new projects. I don't think Prince was going to go back to the plantation-model of working with the companies to make them more money than he himself would ever see, no matter how lucrative such arrangments might have been for him. He would lose too much in the value of those things! But yeah, they wanted him. They always do want guys and gals that can create like that, LOL.

>
I guess Prince was behind the curve in obtaining the ownership and clearance that would allow him to independently sell his own recordings and with the given circumstances had to wait to buy or earn those rights--what sent him back to Warner Bros. for those remastering and distribution renegotiations!

>

Yeah, his original knowledge of the major labels' contract arrangements exacting the corporate ownership of works clearly was incomplete. Flew over his head. I guess his then-management and the company executives involved didn't care to explain those things to him, which could have been outside of their own immediate interests! His WB dealings post-92 was something people didn't care to see and it did disrupt his popularity. I'm really glad that he caught on to that issue though. The hits, whether natural-born or A&R-bred, will bring you the popularity but they don't always bring you a payout.

>

zobilamouche said:

skywalker said:

It had little to do with Prince's music and more to do with the promotion/selling of his music. Prince wasn't really "working" with WB anymore in this regard. He uncoupled himself from the machine. Thus, he didn't get all the perks that go with being one of WB darlings. Record companies didn't invest enormous amounts of $$$$$ into him like they used to, thus....no "hits". Prince stopped playing the game by the rules and so he wasn't rewarded accordingly.

Well, if you first sign a x-million dollar contract, boast about it and then in no time change your mind... then proceed to publicly vilify the company that offered him that contract, again; which he willingly signed, you position yourself as untrustworthy and a loose canon. Even with all that talent, nobody is going to be eager to offer him another contract or even work with him.

He won his case but it meant that form now on he was on his own and I'm sure he vastly underestimated the logistics around doing it all himself.

skywalker said:

It had little to do with Prince's music and more to do with the promotion/selling of his music. Prince wasn't really "working" with WB anymore in this regard. He uncoupled himself from the machine. Thus, he didn't get all the perks that go with being one of WB darlings. Record companies didn't invest enormous amounts of $$$$$ into him like they used to, thus....no "hits". Prince stopped playing the game by the rules and so he wasn't rewarded accordingly.

Several things happened at WB from 92-96.

One was the departure of long time Prince supporters in the WB managemment. This was major because they helped Prince get that contract but then they quickly dropped out of the company.

Two was this was also the era of Media Consolidation i.e. the Bean Counters. Around this time period a genius thought they could thrown Prince into the R&B division of WB. This was a major event and is what caused Slave written on his face. I knew people who worked in WB Nashville and the were shocked and surprised at this happening because it cut 75% of his market promotion in America because he was being promoted only to Black radio and BET.

So when Skywalker tells you it's about the promotion and selling this is what he means. The R&B division gets way less in Marketing and Promotion than the Rock/Pop division.

Think about Taylor Swift. She's a Country Artist that is getting Rock/Pop promotion.

What would happen is she was put back into Country status?

That's what happened to Prince.

^^^ 2 skywalker and muleFunk

This is also true. WB staff changed along with corparation consolidation and that makes a BIG difference in the interest that is paid to artists. The conversion of managements styles into business accounting and away from talent management looms large in the scenario.

>

Prince wasn't recording Dirty Mind II or Purple Rain II that would be a natural crossover sell to the mass markets. His band menbers became an overall darker shade. Sheila bounced, Fink was finally gone and their replacements were Black folks plus you had the addition of the Game Boyz dancers and accompanyists. It was a slamduk for the corporate beancounters to switch Prince's account into the R&B division. This is the way the music markets work in the United States without the force of major pushback by strong executive support. This is America, folks!

>

The R&B market is a smaller one for the US music companies and their budgets are less. Given Prince's turdy new contract he was bound not to meet the sales conditions to merit his $100 million payout, which obviously made him pay attention to the turdy overall conditions of the WB contract even beyond what his advisors had warned him about during that negotioation. Ego led Prince down a bad road and led him to sound like a spoiled brat, change his name, and holler about his publishing restrictions, but there is more to the story that the general public never cared about.

>

So next, lots of folks, even RESENTFUL fans fabricate the notion that "OMG the quality of the music went down I mean look at the tanking sales." So here we go with Prince's inability to have a hit after 1995. I'm glad that he kept working at his craft despite all the naysaying and found his bliss along the way.

Dude, get a life. Prince's child had DIED. He was in a deep psychological struggle after having produced an album that in part was celebrating all of the great new family changes that were coming and were tragically altered. He was a man U probably forget not an automaton manufactured device that u wind up and push out the door.

>

U just live up to your reputation.

INCREDIBLE

BartVanHemelen said:

ChocolateBox3121 said:

Emancipation's promotion was cut short because the record label EMI folded right in the middle of it's promotional run.

.

By that time Emancipation was dead as a dodo. This was five months after its release. Prince had been touring and barely played anything from the album.

RODSERLING said:

since rnb was what it sold most in the US music industry at the time, and surely to this day.

In the USA, it's hip hop that's currently the most popular genre, then maybe country. The R&B chart in Billboard is even called R&B/Hip Hop and has been so for many years. There's an adult R&B chart for like veteran acts like Charlie Wilson. Adult R&B a separate radio format, but they play some hip hop too, mostly oldies from the 1980s to the early 2000s. But I have heard the Cardi B/Bruno Mars duets on there.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Every artist falls out of sync with the mass audience after a while Only way he could have regained it is is someone else wrote and produced him But we know that was never happening Prince had hit tours in later years. That's where he had hits. Also the idea that him being too rnb put off white ppl is wrong as princes issue was he could no longer cross back over that well (ie he was older) and the pop audience had moved on to more modern rnb artists. Which is what pop audiences always do. But he was never comfortable ageing, and just following his own path, not even in the 00s, as he was soon trying to write wannabe hits like fall in love 2nite. It's the curse of most artists who hit the big time. [Edited 2/24/21 21:53pm] [Edited 2/24/21 22:00pm]

I partially agree. There's literally white people that think Adore is a bad song lol that tells me all i need to know. The blacker his bands got, the more he incorporated black musical styles (following trends or not), the more he spoke out on black issues the more he lost that crossover fanbase he gained in 84. They blame it on tony m, polished music, not doing snythesizer and guitar music, not having the revolution, etc but we know what it really is. and that's ok. Folks love a black artist long as they can see themselves in him. the band and the style of music he was making made him easily digestible...that didn't last forever clearly

Germanegro said:

^^^ 2 skywalker and muleFunk

This is also true. WB staff changed along with corparation consolidation and that makes a BIG difference in the interest that is paid to artists. The conversion of managements styles into business accounting and away from talent management looms large in the scenario.

>

Prince wasn't recording Dirty Mind II or Purple Rain II that would be a natural crossover sell to the mass markets. His band menbers became an overall darker shade. Sheila bounced, Fink was finally gone and their replacements were Black folks plus you had the addition of the Game Boyz dancers and accompanyists. It was a slamduk for the corporate beancounters to switch Prince's account into the R&B division. This is the way the music markets work in the United States without the force of major pushback by strong executive support. This is America, folks!

>

The R&B market is a smaller one for the US music companies and their budgets are less. Given Prince's turdy new contract he was bound not to meet the sales conditions to merit his $100 million payout, which obviously made him pay attention to the turdy overall conditions of the WB contract even beyond what his advisors had warned him about during that negotioation. Ego led Prince down a bad road and led him to sound like a spoiled brat, change his name, and holler about his publishing restrictions, but there is more to the story that the general public never cared about.

>

So next, lots of folks, even RESENTFUL fans fabricate the notion that "OMG the quality of the music went down I mean look at the tanking sales." So here we go with Prince's inability to have a hit after 1995. I'm glad that he kept working at his craft despite all the naysaying and found his bliss along the way.

all of this!