Beginning in the 1990s, that bullshit destroyed all the funk artists' careers, not just Prince's. I taste vomit in my throat every time I think about it.

MickyDolenz said:

funkman88 said:

As Prince finished the 80s he was the 3rd biggest artist of the decade behind Michael & Madonna. Then in the 90s he wasn't even a top 20 artist by 2000! Do u think the rise in popularity of rap caused the historic fall?

The biggest selling act of the 1990s is Garth Brooks who is neither hip hop or grunge. Garth has 9 diamond albums which nobody else has, not the Beatles, Michael Jackson, or Eagles.

Uhm, who the hell is Garth Brooks ?

Honestly I barely know his name and thought he was some kind of obscure country singer.

(...though never heard a song of him (over here in Europe) in my life I think...)

Didn't know how he even looked like.

So I googled the guy, and he sold a damn 170 mln albums! More than 50 platinum, 9 diamond, etc, 77 singles?! Wow, Respect.

Need to listen to some country then to get to know the guy this sold 156 mln albums in the USA alone. Incredible. :-O (...but he is second only to the Beatles in total album sales overall.)

Feel free to attack me if you think I'm an ignorant music connoisseur.

And he sang at the inauguration of Joe Biden...(how well was that received by republicans voters. But I preferably stay out of that toxic debate.)

But WTF, Prince surely can't match this (in the USA alone).

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skywalker said:

Nope. Prince's career always was full of commerical peaks and valleys. After Purple Rain, Prince didn't really have a "blockbuster" selling album until Batman.

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Sure, ATWIAD, Parade, SOTT, and Lovesexy are genius albums for all time. Some of the best music ever recorded...yet look at the sales of those albums compared to Def Leppard, Whitney Houston, and Phil Collins.

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Prince was (as usual) moving too fast for the general commercial audience.

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Hip hop, if anything, was a boon to Prince's music. Diamonds and Peals dripped with hip hop stylings and it was one of Prince's best selling albums ever.

Thus,

quality transcends always quantity,

and quantity rarely never equals (supreme good) quality.

Numbers are just numbers, and can make a difference in money in the end, that's all.

Is that why people always want someone to be super popular?

I found peace in the fact that Prince still managed to stay more than relevant in whatever choices he made during his lifetime. And I surely don't agree with most he did, believe me.

But, no matter what a fan like me thinks, he was highly respected.

Nothing else matters for any artist in the end than just that, right ?

I do wonder how many rappers will end up with the same recognition ?

Kanye ? Eminem? Jay Z? Drake ? I'm not judging, just wondering.

We'll see that in the future. And sure there is damn good quality hip hop and rap out there today.

vainandy said:

Beginning in the 1990s, that bullshit destroyed all the funk artists' careers, not just Prince's. I taste vomit in my throat every time I think about it.

That has nothing much to do with hip hop in itself. Top 40 mainstream radio has always mainly been targeted towards teens & young adults (also female listeners). In general, they don't want to listen to their parents or grandparents music. They want their own music artists. That 1970s disco era music you like so much hurt the careers of many veteran soul singers who wouldn't or couldn't adapt. In the late 1950s teens chose Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, & doo wop over their parents Peggy Lee & Frank Sinatra records.

MickyDolenz said:

vainandy said:

Beginning in the 1990s, that bullshit destroyed all the funk artists' careers, not just Prince's. I taste vomit in my throat every time I think about it.

That has nothing much to do with hip hop in itself. Top 40 mainstream radio has always mainly been targeted towards teens & young adults (also female listeners). In general, they don't want to listen to their parents or grandparents music. They want their own music artists. That 1970s disco era music you like so much hurt the careers of many veteran soul singers who wouldn't or couldn't adapt. In the late 1950s teens chose Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, & doo wop over their parents Peggy Lee & Frank Sinatra records.

Oh really? Well, we loved the hell out disco but who the hell do you think was partying in the actual discos in the 1970s? It was grown people because kids and teens were too young to get inside of discos. We partied to disco music in the skating rinks and the adults partied in the discos. The same stuff the skating rink was playing was the exact some stuff that was playing in the clubs where my mama partied.

vainandy said:

Oh really? Well, we loved the hell out disco but who the hell do you think was partying in the actual discos in the 1970s? It was grown people because kids and teens were too young to get inside of discos. We partied to disco music in the skating rinks and the adults partied in the discos. The same stuff the skating rink was playing was the exact some stuff that was playing in the clubs where my mama partied.

Was Z.Z. Hill, Brook Benton, B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, or Wilson Pickett getting played at the skating rink? That's why some of them had to go to Malaco Records which had not much marketing reach or get the same radio airplay as newer disco & funk artists on the major labels.

Very hard to stay on top especially pre-2000.

Its hard to appreciate how fast music and fashion used to change. Every year was very differnent in pop culture. 82 was nothing like 84 and nothing like 87. Same in the 60s (just look how different the beatles looked and sounded during their short career). Ditto for the 70s. (1973 is VERY differnt from 1979).

Meanwhile you hear or see somthing from 2006 or 2011 or 2016 and its not much differnt what what you can see today. Maybe I'm just too old to decern the differneces but I feel that we've been culturally in a rut for at least 15 years if not longer.

MickyDolenz said:

vainandy said:

Oh really? Well, we loved the hell out disco but who the hell do you think was partying in the actual discos in the 1970s? It was grown people because kids and teens were too young to get inside of discos. We partied to disco music in the skating rinks and the adults partied in the discos. The same stuff the skating rink was playing was the exact some stuff that was playing in the clubs where my mama partied.

Was Z.Z. Hill, Brook Benton, B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, or Wilson Pickett getting played at the skating rink? That's why some of them had to go to Malaco Records which had not much marketing reach or get the same radio airplay as newer disco & funk artists on the major labels.

ZZ Hill sure was played in the skating rink when his music was new. Not as much as the funk though because the DJ was mixing and blues would not blend and flow into the segues between most of the songs well. But yeah, he played several ZZ Hill tunes, mainly on times when he would go into a "couples only skate" break. Current blues was also played on all three of the R&B stations in the early 1980s. One of the AM stations in the early 80s, played a lot of stuff from the 70s and sometimes the 60s on a regular basis, right alongside the current stuff at the time. That station also played so much blues, they had a "Blues Workshop" hour every Saturday morning. This was the days before monopoly radio and stations played a lot more variety. And you forget, as far as Malaco Records is concerned, I live in the city where it's located so yeah, it was heavily marketed and promoted here. They even had two funk bands on the label, Freedom and Sho-Nuff, that were played big time down here. Around 1985, that's when so much current blues was being made that a station that played blues from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. came on the scene and that's when people my mama's age started gravitating towards it and getting into mostly blues. Prior to that, it was was either listen to it inbetween disco or funk, or not hear any blues at all.

Vannormal said:

Uhm, who the hell is Garth Brooks ?

Honestly I barely know his name and thought he was some kind of obscure country singer.

(...though never heard a song of him (over here in Europe) in my life I think...)

Didn't know how he even looked like.

So I googled the guy, and he sold a damn 170 mln albums! More than 50 platinum, 9 diamond, etc, 77 singles?! Wow, Respect.

Need to listen to some country then to get to know the guy this sold 156 mln albums in the USA alone. Incredible. :-O (...but he is second only to the Beatles in total album sales overall.)

Feel free to attack me if you think I'm an ignorant music connoisseur.

And he sang at the inauguration of Joe Biden...(how well was that received by republicans voters. But I preferably stay out of that toxic debate.)

But WTF, Prince surely can't match this (in the USA alone).

Country music has 2 or 3 different award shows that are broadcast on TV every year on the major networks (CBS, ABC, NBC) in the USA. No other genre has that, only the general music awards like Grammys & AMAs. Others like awards for R&B/hip hop are on BET, a cable network. Not everybody has cable or satellite.

NO artist really has a long lasting career as Princes even at 10 years let alone 40. That said, at the time it dampered his music inspirations for a while. Funk was 'dead' and he looked onto rock for a while.

paisleypark4 said:

NO artist really has a long lasting career as Princes even at 10 years let alone 40. That said, at the time it dampered his music inspirations for a while. Funk was 'dead' and he looked onto rock for a while.

Today rock n roll is dead, at least for mainstream audiences. Billboard recently put out their biggest 200 albums of 2021 and no new rock albums were on it. Only a few old catalog albums like Rumours by Fleetwood Mac & Journey's Greatest Hits were on it. That's probably because Rumours reentered the chart when Dreams was in a TikTok video that went viral. That's 200 albums not 10 or 20. Rock has turned into the new jazz & blues, something for niche audiences. So that means the only rock that still has some popularity is classic rock. Well classic rock is generally what young people make reaction videos about. They don't generally make reaction videos about new rock songs, but they do with new Megan Thee Stallion, Adele, & Silk Sonic songs.

Hip Hop / Rap got more & more mainstream as the 90's begun. Prince had already incorporated most Black music into his own already (Funk. RnB, Jazz, Soul) so probably thought Rap was just another string to his bow. Problem is, Rap music mostly comes from the ghetto, and (at its best) is political, social commentary. Some would argue, not musical either. A guy who couldn't sing a note, or play an instrument could be a successful Rap star.

So....with the above in mind, Prince incoroporating Rap into Diamonds & Pearls just felt a little....forced. None of his music ever felt forced before.

It didn't help his career, how about that?

A one-off here and there like Gett Off, Sexy MF or My Name Is Prince would have been quite enough.

But instead, he used them extensively for many years, even including Tony M. in the actual NPG lineup.

MickyDolenz said:

paisleypark4 said:

NO artist really has a long lasting career as Princes even at 10 years let alone 40. That said, at the time it dampered his music inspirations for a while. Funk was 'dead' and he looked onto rock for a while.

Today rock n roll is dead, at least for mainstream audiences. Billboard recently put out their biggest 200 albums of 2021 and no new rock albums were on it. Only a few old catalog albums like Rumours by Fleetwood Mac & Journey's Greatest Hits were on it. That's probably because Rumours reentered the chart when Dreams was in a TikTok video that went viral. That's 200 albums not 10 or 20. Rock has turned into the new jazz & blues, something for niche audiences. So that means the only rock that still has some popularity is classic rock. Well classic rock is generally what young people make reaction videos about. They don't generally make reaction videos about new rock songs, but they do with new Megan Thee Stallion, Adele, & Silk Sonic songs.

Yeah its sad that there is no real variety in sound on the radio. Rock fell by way of pop and hip hop. 20 years ago..here were the top 10 hits. I never thought rock would dissappear.
1. Family Affair - Mary J

2. U Got It Bad - Usher

3. How You Remind Me - Nickelback

4. Hero - Enrique Iglesias

5. Turn Off The Light - Nelly Furtado

6. Livin' It Up - Ja Rule

7. I'm Real - JLO

8. Diffrences - Ginuwine

9. Get The Party Started P!nk

10. Fallin' Alicia Keys

Now all of these artists are struggling to stay on the charts despite still making decent tunes. The mess that is hot right now. Child. Thank these kids for all their streaming clicks.

paisleypark4 said:

Yeah its sad that there is no real variety in sound on the radio. Rock fell by way of pop and hip hop. 20 years ago..here were the top 10 hits. I never thought rock would dissappear.

1. Family Affair - Mary J

2. U Got It Bad - Usher

3. How You Remind Me - Nickelback

4. Hero - Enrique Iglesias

5. Turn Off The Light - Nelly Furtado

6. Livin' It Up - Ja Rule

7. I'm Real - JLO

8. Diffrences - Ginuwine

9. Get The Party Started P!nk

10. Fallin' Alicia Keys

Now all of these artists are struggling to stay on the charts despite still making decent tunes. The mess that is hot right now. Child. Thank these kids for all their streaming clicks.

The only rock act here is Nickleback and don't people make fun of them and Creed today? Mary J, Jennifer Lopez, & Usher are still kinda popular today. Maybe P!nk too. The popularity of most of the rest has fallen off. Unfortunately it seems the Biggie/Tupac thing is happening all the time now. Currently popular rappers getting killed regularly.

No, in some way he had 3 top ten hits around Europe with rap songs at that time.

DJdirtymind said:

Rap didn't hurt his career. Releasing around the world in a day, and Parade pretty much dwindled the fanbase he had gained from Purple Rain.

Around The World In A Day or Parade didn't ruin his career. His career went on regardless. We are judging "career" with sales, charts, or whatever. Having a career is a constant. Success is a variable.

That "Fan base" were what I call top-40 listeners. Most of those people didn't know Prince before that, although "1999" and "Little Red Corvette" was probably in their wider perview. The same 3-4M who were buying his albums before Purple Rain were buying them after. His sales varied, but he maintained that median number for most of his records. It's the same people who loved Thriller, but barely gave a shit about Off The Wall or Bad (which was 5 years later and in a very different section of the 1980s).

In a way, Purple Rain, was like Thriller or Born in the USA. It was that one album that will alway stand out from all the rest. It was a weird cog in the wheel of their career. Put their name on the map in a much bigger way, but it is what it is. It was for that time, and that time only, it seems.

That doesn't takw away from his career, but it keeps it in perspective.

DJdirtymind said:

Rap didn't hurt his career. Releasing around the world in a day, and Parade pretty much dwindled the fanbase he had gained from Purple Rain.

True, partly.

DJdirtymind said:

Rap didn't hurt his career. Releasing around the world in a day, and Parade pretty much dwindled the fanbase he had gained from Purple Rain.

It might have image wise. Particularly with the rise of gangsta rap in the early 1990s. Notice that when gangsta became a thing, the popularity of the more flashy dressing rappers like MC Hammer & Kid n Play started to decline. Vanilla Ice & MC Hammer attempted to get a harder sound and dress in street style, but failed. The androgynous look of the 1980s was not in, which is what the 1980s glam metal & new wave bands had. Maybe a few got away with it like Andre 3000 from OutKast. Look at Babyface in The Deele, he had eyeliner & makeup. He didn't in the 1990s. Grunge was mostly plain ordinary clothes too. The singing groups of the 1990s generally didn't wear the glitter clothing either. A lot of the girl acts had a tomboy look like TLC, Aaliyah, Xscape, Y-Nvee, Jade, Tracy Chapman, even Janet Jackson. They probably would be considered butch if they wore that stuff now.

TrivialPursuit said:

DJdirtymind said:

Rap didn't hurt his career. Releasing around the world in a day, and Parade pretty much dwindled the fanbase he had gained from Purple Rain.

Around The World In A Day or Parade didn't ruin his career. His career went on regardless. We are judging "career" with sales, charts, or whatever. Having a career is a constant. Success is a variable.

That "Fan base" were what I call top-40 listeners. Most of those people didn't know Prince before that, although "1999" and "Little Red Corvette" was probably in their wider perview. The same 3-4M who were buying his albums before Purple Rain were buying them after. His sales varied, but he maintained that median number for most of his records. It's the same people who loved Thriller, but barely gave a shit about Off The Wall or Bad (which was 5 years later and in a very different section of the 1980s).

In a way, Purple Rain, was like Thriller or Born in the USA. It was that one album that will alway stand out from all the rest. It was a weird cog in the wheel of their career. Put their name on the map in a much bigger way, but it is what it is. It was for that time, and that time only, it seems.

That doesn't takw away from his career, but it keeps it in perspective.

Actually, that's only partly true also. The majority of the white pop/rock world never heard of Prince until "Little Red Corvette". Yeah, he had previously crossed over before at the tail end of the disco era with "I Wanna Be Your Lover" but most of them didn't remember that because a disco backlash began and very few black artists were played on white radio except for some of the safer "tamer" artists like Lionel Richie, The Pointer Sisters, Diana Ross, etc. Prince continued being extremely popular though on black R&B radio during the "Dirty Mind" and "Controversy" eras. He was so popular that everyone was having Prince vs. Rick James battles....Rick was the other top badass on R&B radio at the time and each year it was like.... "Who is going to kick who's ass this year? Is Prince"s album going to be badder than Rick's or is Rick's going to be badder than Prince's? Even before white radio picked up "Little Red Corvette", black radio had already been thumping many cuts on the "1999" album. Hell, a lot of people were even predicting "DMSR" or "Lady Cab Driver" to be the second single because those two were being played and loved so much.

.

A large chunk of those longtime R&B fans were not pleased with "Around The World In A Day" and "Parade" and never bought every album faithfully like they previously had. They weren't casual listners that jumped on the bandwagon with "Little Red Corvette" and "Purple Rain" though. Those were the pop/rock fans....many of of which also dropped him. But he was well known and loved by R&B fans long before "Little Red Corvette". Prince picked up a lot of Europeans after "Purple Rain" which helped him have a much larger and diverse fanbase worldwide which helped him to remain a huge act for the rest of his life. Changing his style after "Purple Rain" didn't bring him down and take him out of the mainstream spotlight though. Shit hop taking over everything beginning in the 1990s is what brought him down and not just Prince, but ALL the funk artists.

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[Edited 12/15/21 10:53am]

MickyDolenz said:

DJdirtymind said:

Rap didn't hurt his career. Releasing around the world in a day, and Parade pretty much dwindled the fanbase he had gained from Purple Rain.

yeah,I think Parade especially is where he really lost the Purple Rain crowd.

SoulAlive said:

DJdirtymind said:

Rap didn't hurt his career. Releasing around the world in a day, and Parade pretty much dwindled the fanbase he had gained from Purple Rain.

yeah,I think Parade especially is where he really lost the Purple Rain crowd.

and not touring Europe with Purple Rain was clearly not a smart move

MickyDolenz said:

funkman88 said:

SoulAlive said:

yeah, I think Parade especially is where he really lost the Purple Rain crowd.

and not touring Europe with Purple Rain was clearly not a smart move

And honestly, not touring Sign O The Times in the US to get some of the fans back with a double album and killer show was just as big of a mistake.

SantanaMaitreya said:

Yep. And that's why Prince tried to copy some of that macho/gangsta image in the videos of My Name Is Prince and Sexy MF. It didn't really work.

Maybe Prince should have went for the dance rap audience (C+C Music Factory, 2 Unlimited, Technotronic, Snap!). The other singers/bands who did rap collabos worked with actual rappers that the general audience knew already. Pretty much Mariah Carey's entire career is based on doing songs with whatever rapper is popular at the moment and she was commercially successful at it. You couldn't do a Vanity 6 in hip hop back then, just get some no-name person and stick them out there like a Tony M, TC Ellis, or Carmen Electra and expecting them to sell because he's Prince. Even Vanilla Ice was doing rap battles in clubs before he got a record deal, he built up a name.

Prince wasn't a Dr Dre, Marley Marl, Teddy Riley, or DJ Quik. Hip hop fans wasn't checking for Prince beats. The problem wasn't Tony per se, it was the music. The songs Tony was rapping on don't sound like the other rap songs that were popular at the time whether it was gangsta (Geto Boys), hippie (PM Dawn), R&B (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Salt n Pepa), jazz (A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets), dance (Betty Boo), alternative (Arrested Development, Beastie Boys), southern (Kris Kross, OutKast), New Jack Swing (Heavy D & The Boyz, Kool Moe Dee), Miami Bass (2 Live Crew), and so on. Something like Call The Law might appeal to hardcore Prince fans, but not really the general audience. I can't picture LL Cool J rapping over that track. It says something when Blondie & Wham! had hit songs with rapping. The difference is they did it when hip hop was still mostly underground and didn't just try it after it blew up to mainstream audiences. Rapture & Wham! Rap also sounded like the early rap records which were mainly party songs with funk, disco, & R&B music under it.

MickyDolenz said:

SantanaMaitreya said:

Yep. And that's why Prince tried to copy some of that macho/gangsta image in the videos of My Name Is Prince and Sexy MF. It didn't really work.

Maybe Prince should have went for the dance rap audience (C+C Music Factory, 2 Unlimited, Technotronic, Snap!). The other singers/bands who did rap collabos worked with actual rappers that the general audience knew already. Pretty much Mariah Carey's entire career is based on doing songs with whatever rapper is popular at the moment and she was commercially successful at it. You couldn't do a Vanity 6 in hip hop back then, just get some no-name person and stick them out there like a Tony M, TC Ellis, or Carmen Electra and expecting them to sell because he's Prince. Even Vanilla Ice was doing rap battles in clubs before he got a record deal, he built up a name.

Prince wasn't a Dr Dre, Marley Marl, Teddy Riley, or DJ Quik. Hip hop fans wasn't checking for Prince beats. The problem wasn't Tony per se, it was the music. The songs Tony was rapping on don't sound like the other rap songs that were popular at the time whether it was gangsta (Geto Boys), hippie (PM Dawn), R&B (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Salt n Pepa), jazz (A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets), dance (Betty Boo), alternative (Arrested Development, Beastie Boys), southern (Kris Kross, OutKast), New Jack Swing (Heavy D & The Boyz, Kool Moe Dee), Miami Bass (2 Live Crew), and so on. Something like Call The Law might appeal to hardcore Prince fans, but not really the general audience. I can't picture LL Cool J rapping over that track. It says something when Blondie & Wham! had hit songs with rapping. The difference is they did it when hip hop was still mostly underground and didn't just try it after it blew up to mainstream audiences. Rapture & Wham! Rap also sounded like the early rap records which were mainly party songs with funk, disco, & R&B music under it.

The dance music you explain here stood so far from Prince's funk and rock.

I remember that i hated it, and could not stand it on the radio.

I thought it was mainstream low-profile easy pop somewhat made by record companies...

Now I can digest it a lil better.

-

Prince's songs indeed were weak then.

''Call the law'' again is more funk (and rock) orientated than rap orientated imho.

Blondie's track still is awesome - hard to explain why, but Debbie's rappin' is more than rap... It's higher than the forementioned rap standerads to me.

Wham!'s rap is just a teenage popular tune and in the same category of light pop with an efford to rap. Not a rap song to me. There are many songs form the seventies soul where this knd of rap/talk was used as well.

I like your view on things. Great!

Vannormal said:

''Call the law'' again is more funk (and rock) orientated than rap orientated imho.

Brand New Heavies put out a rap collabo album called Heavy Rhyme Experience Vol. 1. The Heavies music already sounded more like the type of 1970s music that was often sampled in rap songs. So it worked better than what Prince was doing. Post-Run-DMC hip hop became more about the beat, it found it's own sound and the songs became shorter. Most early rap records were 7-16 minute songs usually with a band replaying some other R&B/disco song. They were only released as 12" maxi singles and very few rap acts of the time released an album. That was the Sugarhill Records formula. R&B stations at the time would play longer songs, but Top 40 radio wouldn't.

Call The Law might have worked in 1981, but not in the 1990s. As Kurtis Blow said in Christmas Rappin' "That is played out". Jam & Lewis sound of the time was more hip hop than Prince and they were New Jack Swing. Jam & Lewis had the right beats and they also sampled old records which was a part of hip hop. There's a difference between This Time Around by Michael Jackson & Notorious B.I.G. and Willing And Able/Push. One sounds like a hip hop song and the others sound like Prince songs with rapping on it. Madonna's Secret & I'd Rather Be Your Lover also had hip hop beats. The latter song was originally a collabo with Tupac. That version was never released. Mike & Madonna worked with producers in the hip hop field like Dallas Austin & Dave "Jam" Hall, so it was more authentic. Hall was one of Mary J. Blige's producers and she's known as the "Queen Of Hip Hop Soul". Hall also worked with Brownstone who was signed to Michael Jackson's label MJJ.