that brief period staring at some point after graffiti bridge, encompassing all of diamonds and pearls, and ending at some point after
and before the sacrifice of victor...

when he started to rap
when he danced with tony m & those guys
when he wore those awful outfits
when his USA record sales started to decline

granted, the early 90s was an awkward time in general, but prince usually goes beyond that with his own grace and style.

what happened?

ps. i watched the Diamonds & Pearls video last night for the first time in about 4 years. cheers to "strollin'!"

It started with Batman and ended with Act II, if you ask me.

As for what happened, I think that after his disappointment over sales of Lovesexy, he felt desperate to get back on the top of the hit lists.
And rather than have faith in his own abilities, he tried to cash in on popular trends.

scififilmnerd said:

True.

I also think a very awkward period was the name change and "Slave" - my friends think he shudda been locked up 4 that.

It's really embarrasing

Spookymuffin said:

I think this period became an excessively defiant time in his career. He was extremely stubborn and seemed to be in denial about his decline in popularity.

At what point does his ego become more detrimental and less endearing?

MrWhatever said:

Diamonds and Pearls is one of my all time favorite videos... One of his last truely beautiful, well done videos... as a matter of fact, I can't think of one since...

kendogg said:

Superb video. The performance of willing and able is much better than the album version, IMO.

Still think the Undertaker is better tho...

MrWhatever said:

That is an excellent question. Because there's no denying that it's been quite endearing to most of us, but there is definitely a fine line there, which he's been walking for two decades. Sometimes he stays on the highwire, sometimes he falls into the detrimental side. Must be hard to balance in the heels.

Like a phoenix from the flames...

There is a big misconception about Prince's sales and that is that they started slipping arounf the early 90's. Truth be told they they started slipping with "Parade."

skywalker said:

Great point. After purple rain, everything looked like a failure. around the world in a day sold about 2 or 3 million copies and I think parade went platinum. He also took a critical shellacking after those two albums, whatever their good points were. ATWD had it's moments but comes off as rushed and not fully thought out. Parade, was brilliant in spite of what anyone said. Many said he betrayed his funk roots beginning with purple rain, but if you listen, he got blacker and blacker, and for a time, better and better. I think his peak moment artistically was Sign Of the Times. It's not true though that the early 90's was a washout for him. He sold about 5 or 6 million albums of Diamonds and Pearls and had some hits off of it too. Probably more than he has had from 90 percent of his albums. D&P also persuaded WB to give Prince that phony 100 million dollar contract which he would later somewhat justly defy.

skywalker said:

They spiked back up with Batman, though.

cheers to willing and able.

MrWhatever said:

i think there was a LOT of great material in the 90's. The Gold Experience / Come era is among my favorite stuff of his career.

If it weren't for the name change, the 90's could have been his most successful decade. It started out strong commercially with D&P. After that it all went downhill with the name change.