| Prince Artist Page |
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With a career spanning from the late 70s to the new millennium, Prince continually defied the laws of music production by consistently creating albums that break his own artistic molds. By seamlessly weaving together pop, funk, soul,blues and rock, the genre-bending Prince is one of the few, if not the only, musical artists that can span four decades and continue to create music that is fresh and, in some cases, unidentifiable as his own. Born June 7, 1958 in Minneapolis, MN, Prince created his first album first few albums from his bedroom studio. 1978's For You and 1979's self-titled set were soulful funk-pop gems, with the latter featuring the classics "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?," and the original "I Feel for You," which would be remade later by one of Prince's idols Chaka Kahn. 1980's ultra funky Dirty Mind featured the funkily salacious single of the same name. By this time, Prince had built a name for himself not only as a one-man tour de force, playing almost all the instruments on his albums as well as doing all the writing, but also as a shockingly sexual, funk-driven mad man, tackling topics that nobody else who dream, such as incest, orgasms and oral sex. The 1981 follow-up, Controversy, featured the classic baby-making tune "Do Me" and continued in the same vein of new wave-tinged funk as its predecessor, it was '83's double album called 1999 that established Prince as a true genius. The album sold over three million copies, and opened the door for 1984's supreme classic Purple Rain. Purple Rain (and its accompanying semi-autobiographical movie of the same name starring the purple wonder) made Prince a global superstar. The album sold over ten million copies in the U.S. and spent 24 weeks at No. 1. Partially recorded with his touring band the Revolution, the album leaned heavily on pop-oriented music. Not to be one to rest on his laurels, though, Prince again went off into un-chartered territory with the eclectic Around the World in a Day (1985), which featured "Pop Life" and "Raspberry Beret" and sold over two million copies. In 1986, he released the even more eclectic, and ambitious, Parade, which featured the brilliant spare funk of "Kiss," functioned as the soundtrack to his second film, "Under the Cherry Moon." By 1987, Prince's genre-defying creativity was expanding exponentially. The masterpiece Sign o' the Times (featuring the classic title track, the highly erotic "Adore," the funky as-hell "Housequake," and the classic "If I Was Your Girlfriend") became his next awe-inspiring signature album. 1988's hastily assembled Lovesexy was a commercial disaster and a disappointment in terms of craft. 1989's Batman soundtrack returned Prince to the top of the charts and the following year he released Graffiti Bridge, the soundtrack to the poorly fated movie of the same name. Although the movie bombed at the box-office, the album featured a slew of guest artists including The Time, Mavis Staples and a then-unknown child performer by the name of Tevin Campbell. In 1991, Prince formed the New Power Generation, and their first album, Diamonds and Pearls, became his biggest hit since 1985. The album reconnected him with his R&B and Soul fan base and displayed his mastery of the Soul art form with the slept on masterpiece "Money Don't Matter 2 Night" (accompanied by an amazing video directed by Spike Lee). Other hits included the funk-jazzy "Willing and Able," "Strollin'," the slamming dance-floor jam "Gett Off," the sexy-smooth "Cream." The following year, he released his 12th album, which was titled with a cryptic symbol that would later become his unpronounceable name. The album, however, was a new kind of hot featuring one of the tightest dance tracks Prince ever produced, "Sexy M.F.," along with "Damn U," "And God Created Woman," "7," and the bizarre rock opera "3 Chains O' Gold." In 1993, Prince legally changed his name to the symbol. In 1994, after becoming embroiled in contract disagreements with Warner Bros., he independently released the 1994 single "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," became one of his most commercially successful hits in years and heralded his efforts to break from the music industry business model and distribute his music independently. As a comeback, later that summer, Warner released the throwaway set Come under the name of Prince but the album, produced only to fulfill contractual obligations, was a moderate success. In November 1994, also as part of a contractual obligation, Prince agreed to the official release of The Black Album. In early 1995, he fought another legal battle with Warner, and wrote the word "slave" across his cheek in protest of his unfair contract with the music giant. He also refused to deliver his new record, The Gold Experience, for release. Eventually, embarrassed by the artist-sympathetic public spectacle, Warner negotiated a compromise which guaranteed the album's release, plus one final record for the label. The Gold Experience was issued in the fall, under Prince's new symbol name. Although it received good reviews and included dazzling tracks, it didn't do well commercially, in part due to fan backlash that refused to support the label. In the summer of 1996, Prince released another throw-away set, Chaos & Disorder, which freed him to become an independent artist. Setting up his own label, NPG (which was distributed by EMI), he resurfaced later in 1996 with the three-disc Emancipation, which was designed as a magnum opus that would spin off singles for several years and be supported with several tours. Despite a mega amount of publicity surrounding his new marriage, and even an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey which brought viewers into his home and Paisley Park studio, However, Emancipation wasn't the commercial blockbuster it was meant to be. A long-awaited collection of outtakes and unreleased material called Crystal Ball followed in 1998. Just three months after that, he then released a new one-man album, New Power Soul, which many people missed due to almost no promotion. A year later, with "1999" predictably the end-of-the-millennium anthem, Prince issued the remix collection 1999 (The New Master). Trying to capitalize on the success of 1999, Warner released a collection of Warner Bros.-era leftovers, Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale, that summer. In the fall Prince returned on Arista with the all-star Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, featuring collaborations with rocker Gwen Stephani from No Doubt and rap artist Eve. Only die-hard Prince fans could remember 2001's The Rainbow Children (originally only available on the Internet, it follows his conversion to the Jehovah's Witnesses) because by this time many people had lost track of the music though all the major label drama, comebacks, and sheer mutations over the last several years. The 36-track concert album One Nite Alone...Live! followed in 2002, followed the next year by the experimental (even for Prince) four track instrumental album N.E.W.S. 2004 saw Prince make his biggest comeback with Musicology, and sold-out nation-wide supporting concerts which included a legendary three-night stint at New York's Madison Square Garden and saw Prince performing his best known songs for what he claimed was the last time. In a marketing move the wreaked of genius, the inclusion of a free copy of Musicology with the purchase of a concert ticket, boosted the chart presence of the album to the Top 10 of the Billboard 100.
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