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Thread started 10/21/23 7:19pm

laytonian

Diamonds & Pearls "Oral History" (BBC)

Welcome to "the org", laytonian… come bathe with me.
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Reply #1 posted 10/21/23 11:47pm

bwaaatch
Mix of new and old quotes, but nicely done. Tommy speaks in such a melancholy way about Prince. So sad how Prince treated him later on.
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Reply #2 posted 10/22/23 1:44am

funkbabyandthe
babysitters

cool piece. i like oral histories like this.

but the stuff about prince and rap misses the point that like with most things, he was totally contradictory.

Chris Poole: "At first, Prince completely rejected rap and said it wasn't valid."

Chuck D [rapper, Public Enemy]: "With Prince, it's easy to be down on hip-hop. He probably said, 'This is basic, what's coming through the mainstream'. But then he started to get deeper and deeper into what was done behind the scenes. That's when Prince's understanding of rap and hip-hop started to become a little different."

sorry but no, prince had sheila e and cat rap on his songs. he then had tc ellis and released a WHOLE ALBUM from tc ellis on his own label.

does that sound like someone who didnt want anything to do with rap? (whether prince had any good taste or idea about rap and what kinda rappers work well with his music is another matter... cat and sheila were a better fit than tony IMO, but even then they were used sparingly rather than spread across entire albums). all that aside, listening to the D&P beginnings set, you can hear that prince was doing a lot of rapping himself already, which probably would have fitted better, but either way, he was obv thinking about hip hop a lot already during this period. you cant really get rid of it.

[Edited 10/22/23 2:20am]

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Reply #3 posted 10/22/23 6:00am

JorisE73

Prince wasn't down with 'Gangsta Rap'.
back in mid to late 80s Ice-T and the like came on with there (awesome) records about pimps and gangsta shit and street life, by that time the likes of N.W.A. and Public Enemy and the likes came up etc.
Prince was obviously more into the Euro house/rap and acid scene from those mid to late 80s days than the much needed angry and violent but necessary real life street scenes the US rappers were describing to us.
While those rappers were reporting on there hard innercity lives Prince was more into reporting on what he read in the newpapers (SOTT etc)

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Reply #4 posted 10/22/23 6:02am

funkbabyandthe
babysitters

true and fair enough, but he hired the game boyz cos they were playing around doing digital undergrounds humpty dance, so he must have known there were other types of rap out there. anyway, it doesnt matter. he (as with tc ellis) wanted a rapper with a big daddy kane kind of voice, ie big, boomy, commanding, not like cat or sheila (and not feminine). and well thats what he got!

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Reply #5 posted 10/22/23 2:33pm

rap

bwaaatch said:

Mix of new and old quotes, but nicely done. Tommy speaks in such a melancholy way about Prince. So sad how Prince treated him later on.

How did he treat him later on?

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Reply #6 posted 10/22/23 8:40pm

andrewm7new

Thank you for the interesting read. The quotes are excellent! I wonder where the BBC got the 300 copies of the Gett off JUN7 promo number from though. They usually check facts and that number seems light...

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