Publication: Austin American-Statesman [US]
Date: November 19, 1996
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Title: "Prince Takes Charge, the Artist's New Album Wrests His 'Emancipation' From Former Label"
Interviewed By: Jon Pareles

Paisley Park, the studio complexPrincebuilt in this Minneapolis suburb, is abuzz. On a 10,000-square-foot sound stage, workmen are rolling white paint onto a huge runway of a set, preparing it for a video shoot later in the day.

In a mirrored studio down the hall, two dozen dancers are rehearsing. Upstairs, Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes is trying on a wispy lavender costume. A sound engineer is editing a promotional CD; a graphics artist is putting the final touches on a logo.

Through it all strolls the man in charge, attentive to every detail. A hole in the gymnast's leotard? A bit of choreography that needs broadening? As songwriter, video director and record-company head, he takes responsibility for everything, makes all the final decisions and couldn't be happier about it.

The 38-year-old musician who now writes his name as a glyph is gearing up for the release today of "Emancipation," a three-CD, 36-song, three-hour album intended to return him to superstardom. Over a recording career that stretches nearly two decades, the musician who was bornPrinceRogers Nelson earned a reputation for unorthodox behavior long before he dropped his name.

Just in time for the music-video explosion, he invented himself as a larger-than-life figure: a doe-eyed all-purpose seducer for whom the erotic and the sacred were never far apart. Outlandish clothes, sculptured hair and see-through pants madePrincea vivid presence, but behind the costumes was one of the most influential songwriters of the 1980s.

His music pulled together rock and funk, gospel and jazz, pop ballads and 12-bar blues. His most distinctive rhythm -- a choppy, keyboard-driven funk -- has permeated pop, hip-hop and dance music, while his ballad style echoes in hits like TLC's "Waterfalls."

His only guide seemed to be a musicianship that drew admiration from many camps. Peter Sellars, the revisionist opera director, once comparedPrinceto Mozart for his abundant creativity. Yet for much of the 1990s, the quality of his output has sagged -- a result, he says, of his deteriorating relationship with his longtime record company, Warner Bros.

"He's one of the greatest ones," says George Clinton, himself an architect of modern funk.

"Emancipation" is a make-or-break album. For a major performer in the 1990s, releasing a three-CD set of new material is unprecedented; even double albums are rare and commercially risky. And "Emancipation" is financed and marketed by the songwriter himself.

"All the stakes are higher," he says as he picks a few berries from a plate of zabaglione in the Paisley Park kitchen. "But I'm in a situation where I can do anything I want."

Directing a video

His day's project is to direct the video for the first single from "Emancipation," a remake of the Stylistics' 1972 hit "Betcha by Golly, Wow." At the same time, he's making last-minute marketing decisions and doing a rare interview.

Ever the clotheshorse, he's wearing a long, nubby gray-and-black sweater and a shirt with lace tights. A chevron is shaved into his hair next to one ear, with glitter applied to it. Clear-eyed and serious, he speaks in a low voice, in a conversation that veers between hard-headed practicality, flashes of eccentricity and professions of faith in God.

For all the music he has put out since the firstPrincealbum in 1978, he has remained private. The songs on "Emancipation" take up his usual topics -- sex, salvation, partying all night long -- along with new ones like cruising the Internet.

But a few have hints of the personal. On Valentine's Day he marriedMayte Garcia, who had been a backup singer and dancer in his band. A few months ago, he announced that she was pregnant and that the child was due in November. Since then he has refused further comment. "I'm never going to release details about children," he says. "They'll probably name themselves."

Marrying Garcia, he says, seemed inevitable. Her middle name is Jannelle; his father is John L. Her mother's name was Nell; he was bornPrinceRogers Nelson: "Nell's son," he says. "Am I going to argue with all these coincidences?" he asks, at least half-seriously. Like a man in love, he adds: "She really makes my soul feel complete. I feel powerful with her around. And she makes it easier to talk to God."

"Emancipation" includes shimmering ballads and fuzz-edged rockers, bump-and-grind bass grooves and a big-band two-beat, Latin-jazz jams, and dissonant electronic dance tracks.

"People will say it's sprawling and it's all over the place," he says. "That's fine. I play a lot of styles. This is not arrogance; this is the truth. Because anything you do all day long, you're going to master after a while."

Commercially, "Emancipation" hedges its bets. There are straightforward groove songs and lush slow-dance tunes alongside the more idiosyncratic cuts, and there are remakes of other people's hits, including "One of Us" from Joan Osborne and "La, La (Means I Love You)" from the Delfonics.

"Emancipation," produced by the performer's own label, NPG Records, is his first album to be distributed by EMI. The album title is a pointed reference to the end of the reported six-album deal, potentially worth $100 million, that he made in 1992 with Warner Bros.

Once Warners had committed such a large investment, thelabel wanted to apply proven hit-making strategies: putting out just one album a year, packing it with potential singles, issuing various trendy remixes of songs and following the advice of in-house experts on promotion and marketing. Rationing and editing his work grated onPrince,and he began wrangling with Warners Bros. over control of his career.

"The music, for me, doesn't come on a schedule," he says. "I don't know when it's going to come, and when it does, I want it out. Music was created to uplift the soul and to help people make the best of a bad situation. When you sit down to write something, there should be no guidelines. The main idea is not supposed to be, 'How many different ways can we sell it?' That's so far away from the true spirit of what music is. Music starts free, with just a spark of inspiration. When limits are set by another party that walks into the ball game afterward, that's fighting inspiration.

"The big deal we had made together wasn't working," he says of Warners. "They are what they are, and I am what I am, and eventually I realized that those two systems aren't going to work together. The deeper you get into that well, the darker it becomes."

JUST THE ARTIST

In 1993, he adopted an unpronounceable glyph as his name, ignoring warnings that he was jettisoning the equivalent of a well-known trademark. His associates now refer to him as the Artist, a merciful shortening of the Artist Formerly Known asPrince.He began performing with the word "slave" written on his cheek. He knows the name change caused confusion and amusement, and he doesn't care.

"When the lights go down and the microphone goes on," he says, "it doesn't matter what your name is."

'We never were angry; we were puzzled," says Bob Merlis, senior vice president of Warner Bros. Records. "He evinced great unhappiness at being here. He wanted to release more albums than his contract called for; he wanted a different contract, which ran contrary to good business practices. Eventually, we agreed that his vision and ours didn't coincide on how to release his output."

People familiar with the Warners contract say that it called for Warners to pay an advance for each album submitted and that speeding upthe schedule and submitting more albums meant more payments in a shorter time.

There were rumors of bankruptcy in Paisley Park, that the entertainment empire (which for a short time also included a Minneapolis nightclub, Glam Slam) was too expensive to maintain. Eventually, Warners agreedto end the contract.

Warners still has rights to one album of previously unreleased material, and it owns the master recordings of thePrinceback catalogue, a situation that rankles the performer. "If you don't own your masters," he says, "your master owns you."

Once he explains his business arrangements, he shows a visitor through Paisley Park, which is the size of a small shopping mall. In the recording studio, a half-dozen guitars are lined up, each with specific qualities: the leopard-patterned one is "good for funk"; the glyph-shaped one is "the most passionate."

Past a birdcage holding two white doves named Divinity and Majesty is his office. A photograph of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker is by his desk. He shows the visitor an inch-thick worldwide marketing plan, with sales targets and promotion strategies, just like an executive. But as he plays the album, he gets caught up in the music.

"Sometimes I stand in awe of what I do myself," he says. "I feel like a regular person, but I listen to this and wonder, where did it come from? I believe definitely in the higher power that gave me this talent. If you could go in the studio alone and come out with that, you'd do it every day, wouldn't you?"

"It's a curse," he concludes. "And it's a blessing."