A R T S / M U S I C
Ready for His New Evolution
After a decade spent tending almost only to his faithful, Prince has had a revelation. He's supposed to be a rock-'n'-roll star
By JOSH TYRANGIEL

http://www.time.com/time/...25,00.html

Monday, Apr. 12, 2004
Shortly after he signed a $60 million contract with Warner Bros. in 1992, Prince scrawled the word slave on his face, changed his name to a symbol and announced that he was retiring from recorded music. The problem was that he had a backlog of 450 songs he felt the world wanted to hear, and Warner Bros. simply refused to flood the market with that much product. Commercial suicide, the company said. In one of his last public acts before locking himself away in Paisley Park, his hermitage just west of Minneapolis, Minn., Prince stood before an awards-show audience and prophesied in his little whisper, "Perhaps one day, all the powers that are will realize that it is better to let a man be all that he can be than to try to limit his output to just what they can handle."

A decade later, Warner Bros. and the other record-industry giants are flat-lining, and Prince is doing a happy dance that would make Snoopy look like a depressive. In the past two months, he has opened the Grammy Awards with Beyonce Knowles, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, launched a sold-out arena tour, opened an iTunes-ish music-download store to go along with his successful, subscription-based NPG Music Club and released Musicology, his best album in an age.

It's tempting to call this resurgence a victory lap for free-spirited artists over the big, bad corporations, but that would be giving Prince too much — and too little — credit. He may have briefly adopted the language of artistic brotherhood in his fight with Warner, but Prince didn't pick up the face pencil to fight for the Hoobastanks and Josh Grobans of the world. The principle at stake was never creative Utopianism: it was narcissism. Prince believed that he was a genius and that his tiniest musical doodle merited commercial attention. (He even declined to do phone interviews, saying he didn't want his voice recorded by anyone else.)

He has spent most of his time in seclusion proving his point. Since 2000, the NPG Music Club has signed up around 400,000 members, who pay a $25 initiation fee for access to countless Prince songs (and many less enjoyable Prince songlike things) as well as unreleased videos, specially reserved concert tickets and after-parties. It is a highly profitable model of music distribution utterly dependent on the fact that many people will pay to listen to even Prince's worst ideas.

But it's clearly not enough, at least not for Prince. Why else would he have launched his Musicology download store, an iTunes rip-off that makes his music available to the agnostic, non-NPG fan for 99¢ a song? Why would he be touring with the come-on — aimed at all those slow-dancing Purple Rain thirtysomethings — that this may be the last time he will play the hits? Why would he have released Musicology both on his website and in record stores (on April 20) through a distribution deal with megacorp Sony?

Perhaps because having established that he is a genius, Prince has decided he would rather be a rock star. And Musicology reminds you he is still capable of being the world's greatest. As a Jehovah's Witness, Prince has said he will try to abstain from getting too dirty, and give the man credit: he manages to hold out for an entire song. But by the time the second track, Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance, comes on, he's pushing the throttle with some funk four-four and singing about a gigolo and his old bag of a client. "Ugly! So ugly, the bitch beyond compare/Dropped a couple hundred thousand dollars on a silver whip just to match the color of her hair."

The best and sexiest song on the album, On the Couch, is a slow jam that has Prince begging from the living room. It starts with a "Come on, baaaaaby," proceeds to a line about how "it's undignified to sleep alone" and reaches its climax — yeah, yeah — with a grand moment when the backup singers go "bip-bip-a-bip-a-dee-dip," the horns wail away and Prince slides down the begging scale from falsetto to a great big rumbling roar. It's the best James Brown song in years.

There are wit and sex all over Musicology, but Prince at 45 is not trying to imitate Prince at 25. A surprising number of songs (A Million Days, Call My Name, The Marrying Kind) are about monogamy, and it's a testament to his confidence that none of them feel corny. He falters a bit when he tries to address the war in Iraq on Cinnamon Girl and inner-city woes on the Marvin Gaye-ish Dear Mr. Man, but then he never was at his best discussing public policy. No, with that voice and one of the best backing bands he has ever assembled, Prince's place is in the bedroom. Everybody's bedroom.

From the Apr. 12, 2004 issue of TIME magazine

The bitch beyond compare???? Not what I hear.

TampaPurple said:

Me either! Let's try Rich

Yes, please, let's try "rich beyond compare''.
And Dear. Mr. Man is a highlight of the album. Don't get it twisted! lol

Wasn't this same story posted weeks ago I could have swore I read this before today.
[This message was edited Wed Apr 14 12:13:21 2004 by intha916]

The best and sexiest song on the album, On the Couch, is a slow jam that has Prince begging from the living room. It starts with a "Come on, baaaaaby," proceeds to a line about how "it's undignified to sleep alone" and reaches its climax — yeah, yeah — with a grand moment when the backup singers go "bip-bip-a-bip-a-dee-dip," the horns wail away and Prince slides down the begging scale from falsetto to a great big rumbling roar. It's the best James Brown song in years.


Somehow, that doesn't sit right with me.
Perhaps the underlined was intended for the title track???

BUT, the first sentence works just fine!

Well, Time Magazine ain't too bad. In the press. Prince is Prince. I did not read it all.
I hope the article said some good things. lol. At least there is an article in Time Magazine. It's cool.

RE: Shortly after he signed a $60 million contract with Warner Bros. in 1992, Prince scrawled the word slave on his face.


I wouldn't describe Prince's enscription of the word "SLAVE" on his face as "shortly after" his 1992 contract with Warner. Didn't he do this on his Emancipation album? Wasn't that SEVERAL years after the 1992 contract? Some of these journalists are so CLUELESS sometimes when they write about Prince.

The club has 400,000 members?! Does anyone know if that number is accurate??

A really good article, even if the writer botched the ICPC lyrics. Some pointed (and accurate, IMHO) constructive criticism, and plenty of lavish praise too. As for "...the fact that many people will pay to listen to even Prince's worst ideas," well, maybe it's because they were better/more interesting than a lot of the other music out there?

KidStevie said:

"Shortly after he signed a $60 million contract with Warner Bros. in 1992, Prince scrawled the word slave on his face, changed his name to a symbol and announced that he was retiring from recorded music."


Prince signed a $100 million contract with WB in September of 1992.
Annouced he was retiring from studio recording in April of 1993.
He changed his name June 7th 1993 to .
He began writing SLaVE on his face in December of 1994.

$100 million dollar edit
[This message was edited Wed Apr 14 18:08:42 2004 by July]

blackwell1 said:

The only track I skip over. The beat is strong but the lyrics, eh...

Josh said:

Am I the only one who thinks this writer is a bit of an arse?? It's not a total crap article, but he gives him more of a skewering than he deserves in spots. "I-Tunes rip off" - PLEEZE! How many music download stores are there now? Come on...

here comes the purple nitwit cavalry, armed to pick nits

2 me it always appeared that "Slave" was written by P on his face during TGE era, which would hardly make it 1992, which the Time article implies. This would have gone on to Emanicipation. It is safe 2 assume that the whole "slave" thing came about during 1995.....definitely not around 1992.

If i were to write an article for Time or any other publication, about anything at all, I would bloody make sure I did a thorough investigation about the matter at hand. I am tired of these so called, "journalists", fucking up the facts.

agentmonday said:

He started writing Slave on his face in 1994 at the beginning of the Chaos and Disorder Album promotion.
It was one of the albums required to complete his WB contract.


Slave edit
[This message was edited Wed Apr 14 22:22:24 2004 by July]

agentmonday said:

Of course.

July said:

Glad 2 know i was right. Hardly 1992 bullshit.

This is the worst article I've read in quite awhile. It is filled with so many factual inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions that it is still making my head spin.....the stupid mf'er who wrote this should be ashamed, but I guess he or she is probably a hack who knows no shame.
[This message was edited Thu Apr 15 1:04:27 2004 by RupertZ]

RupertZ said:

JOSH TYRANGIEL I am pretty sure Josh is a male name.

www.time.com

on the couch is not like a james brown song, not even his ballads really.

wtf.... "shortly" after 1992.... if he started it in 1994/1995, i'd call that "shortly" in the grand scheme of things, and even in the chronology of Prince's career. why don't you all go whine and cry about something important

THE NPGMUSICCLUB'S DOWNLOAD SERVICE IS AN I-TUNES RIPOFF, REALLY, I BELIEVE PRINCE HAD MUSIC DOWNLOADS AVAILABLE IN LATE 2000, I-TUNES HAS BEEN AROUND FOR WHAT MAYBE A YEAR, YEAR AND A HALF, ONE WOULD THINK A TIMES WRITER WOULD HAVE BETTER INFO, WELL IT WONT BE THE LAST TIME PRINCE IS MISREPRESENTED IN THE MEDIA

LET ME SAY THIS " PAY TO LISTEN TO PRINCE'S WORST IDEAS.
PRINCE NEVER HAS BAD IDEA. PEOPLE TRY TO KEEP HOLD ON PRINCE SONGS BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHEN HE GETS THEM HE'LL JUST UNLEASH THAT GREATNESS TO THE WORLD BUT OLD RECORD COMPANIES WANT MAKE MONEY OFF IT. PRINCE COULD CARE LESS ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY IT MAKES JUST AS LONG AS PEOPLE GET THE EXPRESION OF THE RECORD IN THE TIME FRAME IT WAS MADE

SOME PEOPLE JUST DONT KNOW ANTHING ABOUT CULTURE AND GREAT MUSIC
WAKE UP AND STOP AND LISTEN 2 THE PRINCE MUSIC
PEACE AND BE WILD.
LIFE IS DEATH WITHOUT ADVENTURE.

oh boy

400,000 NPGMC members? Dude is loaded with cash if that's true. And no wonder the NPGMC tickets sell out so damn fast...

GrayKing said:

I guess I'll claim to be part of that cavalry today because if you are going to write about someone, the least you can do is check your facts. Plus, I see the article as a negative piece of crap. They try to make it out as if Prince is just some horny guy when anyone who has actually listened to a few Prince albums would know it's never just been about sex. They owe Prince a retraction.

TheOrgerFormerlyKnownAs said:

not just about sex. but mostly.

but anyway, i've seen several factually incorrect articles in the last few weeks that were positive, and no one jumped up the journalists' asses for getting things wrong as long as they were kissing Prince's ass.

GrayKing said:

I hear ya. I usually don't care one way or the other. Most of the positive stuff written on Prince is bandwagon shit that's not objective. I kinda feel if these people were fans of the man, they would have interviewed him or done stories in the 'lean times'. These days, Prince is not mostly about sex, so I think he deserves not to have that stigma attached to him right now.

TheOrgerFormerlyKnownAs said:

you reap what you sow, i guess. let that be a lesson to the younger artists of today. don't sing about sex for 20 years, and then get all indignant when someone brings it up, just because the cult you're paying dues to that particular year doesn't like it.

as for doing interviews or stories in the lean times.... well, they were the lean times, because there wasn't all that much to write about. i mean, i've been on the Princeternet for a long time, and hell, I think even WE all ran out of things to say about Prince sometime around late 1998.

and he's notorious for turning down interviews or being difficult or making crazy demands during them, so what would be the point in even asking?