Prince (artist)
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Prince (born June 7, 1958), full name Prince Rogers Nelson, is a popular musician. His music draws on a bevy of styles including funk, rhythm and blues, psychedelia and rock and roll. Prince is generally considered an excellent guitarist, songwriter and composer, though he is also a capable pianist, record producer, film director and actor.
Uptown - Early Years
He was born in Minneapolis to John Nelson and Mattie Shaw, both jazz musicians. Prince was named Prince Rogers Nelson after the Prince Rogers Trio, his father's jazz band. As a boy, he was called Skipper. Prince's parents separated and he had a troubled relationship with his stepfather causing him to run away from home. He lived briefly with his father who brought him his first guitar. Later, he was adopted by the Andersons and he became friends with their son Andre Anderson later Andre Cymone.
Prince and Anderson joined Anderson's cousin Charles Smith in a band called Grand Central formed in junior high school. By the time, Prince had entered high school Grand Central evolved into Champagne and started playing playing original music already drawing on a range of influences including Sun Ra, Sly Stone, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Joni Mitchell.
Prince became a central figure of "Uptown" a 1970s underground funk scene in Minneapolis which also included Flyte Time, Jellybean Johnson, Terry Lewis and Alexander O'Neal. In 1976, he started working on a demo with producer Chris Moon in a Minneapolis studio. He also had the patronage of Owen Husney who Moon introduced him too allowing him to produce an excellent quality demo. Husney started contacting major labels and ran a clever campaign promoting Prince as a star of the future, resulting in a bidding war eventually won by Warner Bros who offered him a longterm contract.
"Controversy" - early career 1978-83
In 1978, Prince made his first solo album called For You. Since then he has released about one album each year. He spent twice his advance on recording the first album which sold modestly reaching the bottom reaches of the Billboard 200 but the single "Soft And Wet" performed well on the R&B charts.
By 1979, Prince had recruited his first backing band with Cymone on bass, Gayle Chapman and Matt Fink on keyboards, Bobby Z on drums and Dez Dickerson on guitar. This lineup recruited a self-titled album which made the top 40 of the US album charts and contained two r&b hits in "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover" Ambitious, talented and hardworking, if sometimes overstretched, Prince brought modern ideas and attitudes into pop music and put on a great show besides. He first attracted attention with his spacy soulful sound topped with screaming guitar, not to mention the colorful clothes he put on his 5 ft 3 in (1.6 m) frame. In his early years, he liked to dress in a suspender belt and lacy women's lingerie.
In 1980, Prince released the Dirty Mind album which established him as a critical favourite. Lisa Coleman replaced Chapman in the band with Andre Cymone also leaving the band for a solo career. Dirty Mind also was notable for its sexually explicit material for the time such as the song "head". Tipper Gore would form the Parents Music Resource Center in 1984 after hearing the sexually explicit Darling Nikki from the Purple Rain record. This would eventually result in Parental Advisory stickers on record covers.
Prince supported Rick James in a 1980 tour with the label "punk funk" being applied to both artists although it didn't sit comfortably with Prince who did not consider that there was a significant punk influence in his music. He released the album Controversy along the lines of Dirty Mind with the single from the album making international charts for the first time.
Prince also wrote produced the debut album for the Time containing members of Flyte Time. They would be the first of the proteges who Prince would assist in the next decade including Vanity 6, Appollonia and Sheila E. He would also write hits for artists such as Sheena Easton and The Bangles and his songs would be covered in hit versionsby artists as diverse as Tom Jones with The Art of Noise and Sinead O'Connor.
Purple Reign -chart success
He was backed in the 80s by The Revolution, and in the 90s by The New Power Generation. His players were always good musicians; Prince has gained attention for hiring and recording with women considered attractive or sexy, including Sheena Easton amongst others. He also worked on different occasions with famous Jazz and funk musicians, such as Miles Davis, Larry Graham and Maceo Parker. Prince has also recorded with Ani DiFranco.
Many critics consider Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain and Sign o' The Times to be his four best albums; which are found in many Top 100 lists of the greatest albums ever.
His first hit "Little Red Corvette" made him part of the first wave of black artists on MTV. Other hits include "1999," "When Doves Cry," "Let's Go Crazy," "Purple Rain," exhibiting both versatility and feeling. Prince is allied with the tradition of Marvin Gaye in mixing spirituality and sensuality, "I Would Die 4 U," for instance, which can be compared to Gaye's "Sexual Healing," with its not so subtle reference to Jesus Christ. In contrast to Gaye, however, his songs often had more overt and direct sexual content, such as "Jack U Off" and "Sexy MF." In addition to recording his own music, he has written for many artists, including Chaka Khan and The Bangles. He has been a tireless promoter of new artists, among them, Morris Day and the Time, Apollonia, Sheila E and Vanity. Prince is also composer of Sinead OīConnorīs first hit "Nothing compares 2 u".
In 1987 Prince recorded The Black Album, a funky album whose erotically-charged lyrics were considered so blatant, Prince decided not to officially release it. The album circulated through the bootleg underground music world until it was finally given an official release in 1994.
He has starred in three movies, Purple Rain (1984), Under The Cherry Moon (1987) and Graffiti Bridge (1990), the last two of which he also directed. Of these films only Purple Rain was a commercial success.
In 1987 a movie was shot of the Sign '0' the Times Tour in Rotterdam and Antwerp.
Prince is regarded as one of top live acts in the music business, often performing not only in large arenas, but also late at night in small clubs for a selected audience.
He was one of the first artists to sell his music directly to his fans through the Internet, bypassing record labels.
My Name Was Prince - relationship with name
He was born June 7, 1958, and given the name Prince Rogers Nelson after the Prince Rogers Trio, his father's jazz band. As a boy, he was called Skipper, but he recorded under the name Prince. On his 35th birthday, June 7, 1993, he said he would no longer answer to the name Prince and would hence be known by an unpronounceable glyph. On December 31, 1999 he reclaimed the name Prince, although, typically, he did not announce the reclamation until some time later.
He had refused to use the name Prince while publishing rights remained with his old record company Warner Brothers. He said he felt like he was their slave. He did not want to advertise for that company, so he didn't use the name. As soon as they were out of the picture, the name was back.
By that time, he was also known as The Artist, short for The Artist Formerly Known as Prince (as he was anointed by a British journalist) or even the acronym TAFKAP. People loved to talk about it, some were amused, some were annoyed. Whatever else it was, it was deft publicity that kept his name and career alive separate from his legal entanglements with his record company. Other names used as 'pronunciation' for the glyph were The Symbol and Love Symbol. MTV, which had aired his videos and contributed to Prince's fame, did not embrace the glyph, however; in a humorous fashion, they took to playing a sound effect resembling a puff of hot air whenever his name was mentioned on the music video channel.
According to a Prince fan site, the glyph incorporates the male and female signs along with the alchemy symbol for soapstone.[1] They give the ASCII representation of the symbol as:
- O(+>
The New York Times reported in concert coverage in 1994:
- Since Prince has changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph, tickets for his two-night stand at the Palladium were billed as "Art. Frmly Knwn as Prince." Calling for encores, the crowd chanted "We want" followed by two high whoops.
Some nicknames Prince has been known as are The Purple One and His Royal Badness.
2004 Comeback
In 2003, Prince's lawyer, Londell Macmillan, confirmed his client had joined the Jehovah's Witnesses and that the star was "very committed" to them.
On March 15, 2004, Prince was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Prince's most recently released album is Musicology (album). It was released on April 20.
Musicology - Recording History
Filmography
External links
- All Music Guide, complete Prince discography and more information
- NPG Music Club, Prince's official site where he sells music and other articles
- the best known Prince fan site