?"The Artist; Musician Tries to Resurrect Princely Career"/TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BACKGROUND="../../../images/back.gif" BGCOLOR="#6666FF" LINK="#000000" VLINK="#0000A0" ALINK="#00FFFF"> <A HREF="../../../../vault.htm"><IMG SRC="../../../images/headers/headlogo.gif" ALT="HOME" BORDER="0"></A><IMG SRC="../../../images/headers/harticle.gif" ALT="ARTICLES" BORDER="0"> <TABLE WIDTH="600" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" BORDER="0"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="27" VALIGN="TOP"></TD> <TD WIDTH="113" VALIGN="TOP"> <A HREF="../../../general/about.htm"><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/babout.gif" ALT="[ about ]" BORDER="0"></A><BR><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/bspace.gif" ALT="" BORDER="0"><BR><A HREF="../../../tourarch/tourarch.htm"><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/bconcert.gif" ALT="[ concerts ]" BORDER="0"></A><BR><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/bspace.gif" ALT="" BORDER="0"><BR><A HREF="../../../recordin/recordin.htm"><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/brecordi.gif" ALT="[ recordings ]" BORDER="0"></A><BR><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/bspace.gif" ALT="" BORDER="0"><BR><A HREF="../../../royalcou/roymain.htm"><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/broyalco.gif" ALT="[ royal court ]" BORDER="0"></A><BR><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/bspace.gif" ALT="" BORDER="0"><BR><A HREF="../../../general/online.htm"><IMG SRC="../../../images/buttons/bonline.gif" ALT="[ online ]" BORDER="0"></A><BR></TD> <TD WIDTH="460" VALIGN="TOP"> <A HREF="story97.htm"><IMG SRC="../../../images/subheade/bback.gif" ALT="back" BORDER="0"></A><IMG SRC="../../../images/subheade/hstories.gif" ALT="stories" BORDER="0"><P> <STRONG>Publication:</STRONG> The Washington Times [US] <BR><STRONG>Date:</STRONG> January 10, 1997 <BR><STRONG>Section:</STRONG> <BR><STRONG>Page Number(s):</STRONG> <BR><STRONG>Length:</STRONG> <BR><STRONG>Title:</STRONG> "The Artist; Musician Tries to Resurrect Princely Career" <BR><STRONG>Written By:</STRONG> Mensah Dean </CENTER><P> <P>The artist formerly known asPrincehas been doing an inordinate amount of socializing of late.He did the "Today" show, dressed for laughs like host Bryant Gumbel.The next week, on Tuesday, he did "Rosie O'Donnell." He invited Oprah Winfrey tointerviewhim at his 65,000-square-foot spread near Minneapolis.It was there that he also revealed his soul to an Ebony magazine writer over a dinner of "mock duck." <P>The 38-year-old performer, who appears tonight at Constitution Hall in support of his latest album, the voluminous "Emancipation," has even taken a page out of director Spike Lee's publicity book, sitting court-side at New York Knicks games. <P>All this accessibility and warmth is very much unlike the elusive-reclusive Princeof the 1980s.Back then, the closest most media types could get to him was to have their phone calls not returned. <P>Without doubt, the funk-rock pioneer's well-noted penchant for shyness had something to do with his unwillingness to talk.But probably just as significant was the fact that he didn't have to talk: His numerous gold and platinum records enunciated clearly for him. <P>But his records lately have been suffering from laryngitis, coughing up embarrassingly low sales figures.So the Artist, as he prefers to be addressed since changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, is everywhere, trying to reverse his fortunes.He had better keep schmoozing. <P>He hasn't had a gold record (sales of 500,000 units) or platinum record (sales of 1 million) since 1992, and according to information provided by Soundscan, his last eight albums combined have not sold as many copies as the 13 million posted by his 1984 masterpiece, "Purple Rain." <P>So far, "Emancipation," which has received nearly unanimous high praise since being released Nov.19, has sold a decent, but far from princely, 316,000 copies, Soundscan says. <P>The 36-song, three-compact-disc set debuted at No.11 on Billboard's album chart, then slipped to No.38 a week later.This week, "Emancipation" backslides even more, to No.72. <P>Meanwhile, the album's first single, "Betcha by Golly Wow!" a remake of the Stylistics' 1972 hit, has been on radio-station playlists for weeks but has not been released for retail sale.Thus, it won't appear on any of Billboard's singles charts. <P>At Washington's WKYS-FM (93.9), demand for the single has "been OK.It hasn't been overwhelming," says Mike Fox, assistant program director. <P>But the urban-contemporary station had no trouble giving away concert tickets."There's a lot of excitement about him," Mr.Fox says, "but I don't know how much excitement there is for his record." <P>The Artist would like there to be more, which is what smoked him out of his shell.He may no longer want his royal title, but it's clear he still covets the respect and adulation that it confers - and he wants his subjects back. <P>Those throngs from the 1980s were surpassed in numbers only by fans of Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen.Though those days are long past, the Artist is far from being deserted, a fact supported by the speed at which tickets for his Constitution Hall concert disappeared.They were gone in 14 minutes . . . all 3,200 of them.Scalpers reportedly are demanding and getting $200 for each $50 ticket. <P>The show is part of the singer's 14-city "Love 4 One Another Charities Tour 1997." All proceeds will benefit the Artist's personal charities throughout the country. <P>* * * <P>By now, most people who keep up withPrinceRogers Nelson know - like a favorite soap-opera plot - the story behind "Emancipation." The first product released on his new NPG Records label and distributed internationally by EMI, the CD represents freedom for him from Warner Bros. Records, the singer says. He had been recording for Warner Bros.since 1978 and feuding with the company since 1993. <P>At the heart of the dispute was the singer's musical output.He complained that the label was stifling him by refusing to release more than one of his albums per year.To do so, the label countered, would dilute his selling potential. <P>Also, the recording artist reportedly was angered when Warner released two of his CDs without his knowledge in 1994: "The Black Album," which to date has sold 253,000 copies, and "Come," which has tallied 288,000 in sales. <P>In protest, he began writing "slave" on his face and clammed up even more than usual. <P>Who could have foreseen such a public falling-out between the Artist and the label that gave him his break.Warner's executives were so impressed with Prince'sability to sing and play all the instruments on his demo tape that they not only signed the teen-ager, but allowed him to produce his first album. Such largess was unheard of then, as it is now. <P>Though his disco-flavored "For You" debut flopped financially, it was followed quickly in 1979 by " Prince, " which went platinum and contained his first hit single, "I Wanna Be Your Lover." <P>Within a few years, he blossomed into one of the most prolific and successful recording artists of the decade.A succession of albums - "Controversy" (1981), "1999" (1982), "Purple Rain" (1984), "Around the World in a Day," (1985), "Parade," (1986) and "Sign o' the Times" (1987) - formed the nucleus of what came to be known as the "Minneapolis sound," technofunk marked by dance rhythms and pop melodies. <P>Today, with 20 Warner albums on his resume and nearly 100 million records sold, the Artist is on his own - and has only himself to blame if his three-CDs-in-a-package offering doesn't take off.It sells for $25 to $35, depending on the retailer. <P>"He's turning over a new leaf, and he knows that he has to do something different to try to get people's attention," says Jon Bream, pop-music critic for the singer's hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. <P>The Artist has indeed put his best high-heeled foot forward on "Emancipation." He successfully traverses various genres, from techno pop to rock/soul to light jazz and then some. <P>For the first time in his career, the Artist also has recorded covers. Along with the first single, the remakes are "Can't Make You Love Me," recorded several years ago by Bonnie Raitt; the Delfonics' "La, La, La Means I Love You"; and the Joan Osborne song "One of Us." <P>During a press conference in Minneapolis several weeks ago, he explained that he chose to cover "Betcha By Golly" and "La, La, La" because he grew up listening to those songs.As for the Raitt number, he said he is a fan of the singer's. "One of Us," he said, is a song that people of all races should perform, noting that it speaks to an important spiritual message. <P>"I think it's by far his most ambitious record, maybe one of the most ambitious records in the history of popular music," says Mr.Bream, who has known the singer since 1975, three years before he signed his first record deal. <P>"The most striking thing about it is its consistency," he says."There aren't any real turkeys on it.The peaks are not as high as some of the peaks that he's achieved in the past, but there aren't any lows in there. It's pretty even in terms of its quality, and I'm impressed by that." <P>Among the original songs are "Friend, Lover, Sister, Mother/Wife" and "Let's Have a Baby," both of which no doubt were inspired by his recent marriage to one of his dancers,Mayte,23, and the birth of their first child. <P>(Since the child's birth in mid-October, rumors that the baby died of birth defects have been reported as fact by numerous press and media outlets.The Artist, reverting to his mysterious ways, has fueled the speculation by being evasive or giving nonanswers when asked about his child's health.) <P>* * * <P>When the 5-foot-3-inch music giant takes to Constitution Hall's stage this evening, he's scheduled to introduce the next two singles from "Emancipation": "The Holy River" and "Somebody's Somebody." <P>"The Holy River" will be released soon to Top 40 and rock stations, and "Somebody's Somebody" will be released to urban-contemporary stations, an EMI spokeswoman says. <P>This bit of unorthodox marketing is something the Artist couldn't do when his name wasPrinceand he worked for Warner Bros. <P>But it is possible that his emancipation may have come a little too late to salvage his profitability.Already in many people's minds, he has ceased being a hit maker and is now a legend, along the lines of Bob Dylan and Miles Davis, Mr.Bream says. <P>Jay Stevens, program director at urban-contemporary WPGC-FM (95.5), also sees the dichotomy between the public's response to the singer's persona and his music. <P>"It's really strange, people lovePrince.Like for example, when he was on "Oprah," every woman in this office was glued to a TV set to watch him. People are fascinated by him and really like him a lot," Mr.Stevens says. <P>"As far as actual music-selling, he has not had a hit record in several years.The last album he had ["Chaos and Disorder"] was a major flop.So it's odd; he's much bigger than his record sales represent." The Observer [UK] - November 24, 1996<BR> <STRONG><FONT SIZE="+1">"Mini-Interview: Prince and God Are Happy to Annouce the Birth of a New Album"</FONT></STRONG><BR> Written By - Jon Pareles <P>In Paisley Park, the Minneapolis music complex built byPrince,workmenrolling white paint on to 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.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 working on?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. <P>The 38-year-old musician who now writes his name as was gearing up for the release last week of Emancipation, a three-CD, 36-song, three-hour effort intended to return him to superstardom. Emancipation (see review, left) is a make-or-break album.It inaugurates a new recording deal with a gambit that may turn out to be bold and innovative or utterly foolhardy; will the three-CD set be received as an act of generosity or a glut of material? 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. <P>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.' His day's project is to direct the video for the first single from the album, a remake of the Stylistics' 1972 hit 'Betcha by Golly, Wow', which is released on 2 December. At the same time, he's making last-minute marketing decisions and doing this rareinterview.Ever the clotheshorse, he's wearing a long grey and black sweater and a shirt over 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. <P>For all the music he has put out since the firstPrincealbum in 1978, he has remained an intensely private person. The songs on Emancipation take up his usual topics sex, salvation, partying all night long along with new ones such as cruising the Internet. But few have hints of the personal. On Valentine's Day he marriedMayteGarcia, who had been a backing singer and dancer in his band. A few months ago, he announced that she was pregnant. Since then, despite press reports that the baby was born in mid-October, four weeks premature and badly brain-damaged, he has refused further comment. 'I'm never going to release details about the children,' he says. 'They'll probably name themselves.' On the album, he proposes marriage in 'The Holy River', and later, a sparse, tender piano ballad begs, 'Let's Have a Baby'. Asked about that song, he talks about the couple's wedding night. 'I carried her across the threshold and gave her many presents,' he says. 'The last one was a crib. And we both cried. She got down on her knees in that gown, and I did next to her, and we thanked God that we could be alive for this moment.' 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, big-band two-beat Latin-jazz jams, and dissonant electronic dance tracks. Keys change and rhythms metamorphose at whim. '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.' Nearly all the instruments are played by the songwriter himself. The toil of constructing songs track by track is worth it, he says, for the unanimity it brings. 'Because I do all the instruments, I'm injecting the joy I feel into all those 'players'. The same exuberant soul speaks through all the instruments. <P>'I always wanted to make a three-record set,' he adds.'Sign o' the Times was originally supposed to be a triple album, but it ended up as a double. For this one, I started with the blueprint of three CDs, one hour each, with peaks and valleys in the right places. I just filled in the blueprint.' While most songwriters are hard-pressed to come up with enough worthwhile material for an album a year, he has never had that problem. He can't stop writing music; his backlog includes at least 1,000 unreleased songs and compositions, and new ones are constantly pouring out, all mapped in his head. <P>'You hear it done,' he says. 'You see the dancing; you hear the singing. When you hear it, you either argue with that voice or you don't. That's when you seek God. Sometimes ideas are coming so fast that I have to stop doing one song to get another.But I don't forget the first one. If it works, it will always be there. It's like the truth: it will find you and lift you up. And if it ain't right, it will dissolve like sand on the beach.' 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 Brothers. He had been making albums for the label since 1978 and sold millions of copies in the 1980s; the soundtrack for his 1984 movie, Purple Rain, sold more than 10 million copies. <P>But once Warner Brothers had committed such a large investment, the label 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 Warner Brothers over control of his career. <P>'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.' 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 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.' Under the new arrangement, he finances all his albums and videos and puts them out when he wishes. He pays EMI to manufacture and distribute the albums, and the company provides its overseas marketing clout.He describes EMI as 'hired hands, like calling a florist to deliver some flowers to my wife'. (Other NPG albums, including his ballet score, 'Kamasutra', andMayte'sdebut album, are for sale through a website: www.thedawn.com.) Once he has explained his business arrangements, he shows me through Paisley Park, which is the size of a small shopping mall. Paisley Park was once painted white, inside and out. Now there are carpets with inset zodiac signs, a mural of a tropical waterfall, walls of purple, gold and red and a smiley face inMayte'soffice. Six guitars are lined up in the studio, each with specific qualities: the leopard-patterned one is 'good for funk'; the glyph-shaped one is 'the most passionate'. <P>Past a birdcage holding two white doves named Divinity and Majesty is his own 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?' </TD></TR></TABLE> </BODY> </HTML>