Publication: Right On! [US]
Date: Winter 1983
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Title: "Prince Builds His Kingdom"
Written By: Frank Schwartz

As the mystery in Minneapolis grows wider, more and more wonder who's really doing what to earn those gold records which are accumulating among Prince's entourage.

He wears his sexuality just above the knees, where his uni-sex leg-warmers end and his fleshy thighs begin. His multi-racial politics dart in and out of darkens and light between religious doom-saying and party-hearty platitudes. Born with a dirty mind, he's learned the music au natural, with no guidance, no lessons, no waiting.

Genious, prodigy, boy wonder, those kind of words used to be the expressions to describe a phenomenon like Prince, now it's just called Killer Crossover Potential. And even though it might get booed off the stage at Rolling Stones concerts in L.A. and is unwisely deemed too steamy for the nations pale-faced airwaves, Prince's powers are undeniably responsible for some of the hardest-hitting music ever aimed below the belt at the feet and above the bedroom eyes at the brain.

Prince's five albums tell only part of his story. But on all of them, he's engineered, produced, arranged written all the songs and played all the instruments by himself. Usually skeptical and jaded critics both here and abroad have jumped on his funk-wagon .Fans, "Black, White, Puerto Rican"- have marched to his drum and bit on his beat. Outraged parents have scroffed at his lusty calls to freedom through "dance, music, sex, romance." Those keeping score count on Prince to fill the holes left by such '60s casualties as Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. Meantime, his brilliant synthesizer lines continue to replace the worn horn charts of R&B's old school. And his live performance-somewhere between a claddy strip tease act and a space age show of new wave tricks-readily recalls all that was ever raw, risqué or just plain 'ol exciting about rock-n-roll, from Godfather Brown to Pelvic Presley, from Millie Jackson's mouth to Mick Jaggers sass.

Self described as "his mother's favorite freak," Prince has a grand chance at becoming a King. But to those who first plucked him from obscurity in north Minneapolis at age 17, he's a "very thorny rose," a five-foot-two Napoleon in drag. He's also super secret. And at 23 years, the handsome kid in his Frederics of Hollywood underwear and Humphery Bogart's (studded) trenchcoat is quickly becoming the most talked about, least understood mystery musicmaker on the block. Here in Minneapolis-St. Paul (America's Twin Cities located in the quiet, and often cold, north country), we simply call him "His Royal Badness," founding father of The Time, master designer behind Vanity 6. The man-child behind the curtain. Sometimes he plays unannounced with his band in our bars.

There're a couple million stories in the naked cities and a bunch of them are about Prince. The area is small enough so that tall tales are about him, true or false, eventually rise to the top of the rumor mill. Someday even the demo tapes that he wrote, produced and played on for Sue Ann Carwell (another of Minnesota's soul siblings who had a minor hit last year with "Let Me Let You Rock Me") will surface and add to his royal mystique. At the moment, Prince is the baddest northern brother on the street, and anyone hungry for a piece of musical action knows the kid in high heels can provide it. Those in the power positions here, however, seem less interested. Radio in his own hometown has steadfastly refused to spin his records until the release of latest single, "1999."

Ironic as it is, that sad situation may prove to be the ideal environment for the one-man sex and music machine. Prince still makes his home here, out of one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, 20 minutes from the cities. His family, including his divorced father, who leads a musical life of his own, and one of his sisters, who sings in a local Black gospel choir is scattered across the Twin Cities. One of nine children, Prince Rogers Nelson can go about his business, recording in his private studio, the one located "somewhere in uptown." Or he can hang out at the First Avenue club where he has often tested out his latest jams on an unsuspecting dance crowd. Nobody bothers him much, even when he's in the cool company of his good pal Morris Day from The Time, or Vanity from Vanity 6. If he feels claustrophobic, he can commute to Los Angeles or New York. Being famous insures a smooth getaway.

In the beginning, prior to his first record, For You, in 1978, Prince kept quiet, out of sight. He played in teenage bands with André Cymone who later became his bass player and subsequently the first Prince sideman to leave the crimson court for his own solo career. The split was not amicable, even though Prince lived with the Cymone family prior to his precedent-setting Warner Brothers record contract, "the biggest record deal of 1977," claims his former manager Owen Husney. Upon the release of Cymone's album, Living In The New Wave, Prince sent one of his gold records to his old friend, but he didn't deliver it in person.

Since his Royal Badness has yet to come out and met the press, his personal and professional life continue to be colored by the kind of gossip you hear at record shops and gas stations (the best one I've heard lately is that Prince stole "Controversy" from Cymone and that's why relations broke off). But no one's talking. Not about life with Prince, not about his ribald jams or the album credits that consistently and literally thank God. So far, mum has been the first and last word about his lyrics that bulge with double-talk all about "the second coming." Musically, Prince has already gone beyond being "the next big thing" in Black funk and White rock. He's blasted the color line with more credible street sense than a dozen Rick James come-ons. He warns parents not to let their children watch TV until they know how to read, but in the next minute, he can be singing praises of blow jobs in the bedroom or inciting everybody to party up "cuz "everybody's got the bomb" and the selective service has got your number.

One thing, though is certain - Prince is busy building his Kingdom. In 1980, he took a floundering local R&B band called Flyte Tyme (one of its former lead singers was Cynthia Johnson of Lipps, Inc. "Funkytown" fame), redressed its players, realigned its musical grooves and some of its members and created The Time. Depending on whom you talk to, The Time is either a bad-assed brainchild of Morris Day, a former drummer turned slick Romeo, a Little Richard look-alike and the group's lead singer and showman. Or The Time is a complete front for Prince, the workaholic wonderkid, who some say wrote, produced, played and arranged everything on The Time's first album. Son Of A Dirty Mind cried privileged insiders here in the Twin Cities when the band turned out its first flag-raising anthem, "Get It Up," or dancefloor showpiece and anthem called "Cool," By the time The Time got around to album number two, What Time Is It?, few local critic and record moguls believed that the baggy-trousered funksters weren't just spewing back a Princely script complete with smooth moves and a more accessible Black pop sound than his own.

Ask Alexander O'Neil about the royal court, another Flyte Tyme singer who didn't make the team or didn't want to keep Time under Prince's decrees, and he'd all but tell you, Morris and the fellas are being kept by you know who. Jamie Starr, a name that's appeared on Prince's albums as well The Time's, could settle the controversy surrounding the Prince connection. Bur finding Jamie Starr is like trying to cop a dip from the invisible man. He doesn't exist. Jamie Starr is Prince's nowhere man. O'Neil would no doubt love to see that Starr name at the bottom of his own current recording project. It's magical; it moves records, it opens big doors at major record labels, especially Warner Brothers.

Enter Vanity 6, stage left. Vanity 6 is Prince's female alter ego, three pinup peculiar princesses in lingerie who peddle excessive street eroticism that borders on soft-core porn. On their debut record ( another Warner Bros. product, by the way), the nasty girls work through a blue testament series of sex scenarios that covers the familiar turf of "Wet Dreams" and dull boyfriends. Unlike The Time, these daughters of controversy aren't from Minnesota's backwoods or alleys. Susan's from the Caribbean, Brenda's from Boston and the beautiful Vanity is a Canadian export from Toronto. How all three came to be Prince's V- girls is a case Kojak might consider.

The babes in lingerie share neither The Time's hit-hopping party funk or their home addresses. Instead, His Royal Badness has hung a more British brand of syntho-pop behind the album's best cuts, while snatching a JB lick for workouts like "Nasty Girls." In a live setting, The Time backs Vanity, with you know who looking over their shoulders. You see, it's family affair. And it's becoming so solidified that even Prince has begun dropping joke lines about Jamie Starr and his too wild and loose offspring. "Jamie Starr's a thief," he says on the new 1999 album. "The Time will fix your clock," and "Vanity 6 is so sweet" he mugs during "Dance,Music,Sex,Romance." So what if Prince is indeed the mystery man pulling the wool over our eyes? He's pitting people to work and giving the rest of the general population a proven formula for outrageousness in this year's unending depression. And so far, Prince's potent prescriptions have proven to be the most satisfying lethal doses of fun any listener on the rock or soul front lines, could ask for. Besides, his low profile, high octane output and pet projects give people here in the Twin Cities bars something to talk about all winter other than the cold. Did you think Prince wore those leg-warmers just for show.