Publication: The Cleveland Plain Dealer [US]
Date: September 29, 1998
Section: Entertainment
Page Number(s): 1E
Length: 281 Words
Title: "The Artist Is Currently Known As A Label Head"
Written By: David Sprague

To paraphrase the old axiom about the weather, lots of people in the music industry talk about the unfair nature of contracts, but nobody does anything about them - until the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, that is.

The potentate of Paisley Park decided to opt out of the mainstream music business at the tail end of 1996, declaring his "Emancipation" with a record of the same name and vowing never to sign his name (or symbol, as the case may be) on a recording contract ever again. Naysayers smirked and said it was only a matter of time before he came crawling back, but the Artist, who returns to Cleveland with his New Power Soul Revue for a concert tonight in the Cleveland State University Convocation Center, has yet to look over his shoulder.

"People asked me what I meant when I said that I wasn't free, and the answer is simple - I wasn't free to do as I wanted," says the Artist, who was so apoplectic about what he perceived as his indentured status that he went so far as to daub the word "slave" on his cheek for a widely seen Versace ad campaign in early 1996.

"I am able to create six or seven albums a year, and under their system, they didn't think it was viable for me to do that," he says. "And playing by their rules, it wasn't. You see, a rigid structure like theirs will fall apart if one person is allowed to step outside the rules."

The Artist has never been one to pay all that much attention to the rules. He has tweaked bluenoses with the lustful lyrics of songs like "Come," "Cream" and "Erotic City"; he has confounded executives by recording several albums (most famously, the so-called "Black Album") and then pulling them from release.