musician; singer
Personal Information
Born Prince Rogers Nelson, June 7, 1958, in Minneapolis; son of John Nelson (a jazz musician and electronics worker) and Mattie Shaw (a vocalist). Married Mayte Garcia, 1996; divorced, August 2000; married Manuela Testolini, December 31, 2001.
Career
Recording and performing artist, late 1970s-present. Released album For You, 1978; released double-platinum album 1999, 1982; starred in film Purple Rain and wrote soundtrack songs, 1984; formed Paisley Park label, 1987; changed name to an unpronounceable symbol, 1993, and came to be called The Artist; released collection The Hits, 1993; released Emancipation, 1996; signed distribution deal with EMI, 1996; released Crystal Ball, 1998; reversed change of name to given name of Prince Rogers Nelson, May 2000; established a digital subscription service on the Internet, to publish his work at npgmusicclub.com; signed with Columbia Records, 2004; released Musicology, 2004.
Life's Work
"Everybody knows what song is going to be played on New Year's Eve 1999," filmmaker Spike Lee remarked to the Artist Formerly Known as Prince as the two conversed for a feature in Interview magazine. The Artist by the late 1990s had indeed become a classic figure of American music, with not only "1999" but also many other songs having become common musical coin for the nation and the world. An all-around musician with top-notch talents as vocalist, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, he offered music that was his own creation from start to finish. He was perhaps popular music's greatest auteur--a distinctive icon of individual creativity and individual control over the final artistic product.
As only a great artiste can do, the Artist looked backward, forward, and all around with equal sensitivity. He synthesized the soul, funk, and rock music he grew up with in a way that no one had before. In its raw expression of sexuality, his music perfectly fit with the spirit of his prime hit-making years in the 1980s. And perhaps he looked forward to a musical future not strictly divided by black and white; in the 1990s he took control of his musical creations in ways that might anticipate new forms of musical production and distribution.
The Artist was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis on June 7, 1958. His parents were both musical, and he was named after his father's jazz combo, the Prince Rogers Trio. After his parents' divorce, Nelson's home life was difficult; he lived sometimes with his mother and stepfather, sometimes with his father, and sometimes with family friends. By the time he was a teenager, the years of being passed (or running) from home to home had taken an emotional toll. He withdrew into music, mastering by some accounts a dozen instruments by ear, and also into pornographic writings. The young musician was "a volcano of emotion boiling under the surface," a friend of his said in People.
In high school he played in a band with other musicians--Morris Day (later of The Time) and Andre Cymone--who were to become his creative associates. But his talent outstripped them all, and by 18 he was already a star waiting to be discovered. Collaborating on a song one day with Minneapolis studio owner Chris Moon, Nelson recorded guitar and vocal tracks, then offered to play keyboards, and continued to work on his single-handed recording by adding bass guitar and drum tracks as an astonished Moon looked on. Word spread quickly about the young musician's wizardry. He soon acquired a manager, advertising executive Owen Husney, who suggested shortening his name to the mysterious single word "Prince."
Working with Moon, Nelson assembled a demo tape on which he himself sang and played all the instruments. This feature intrigued executives at the Warner Brothers label, who not only signed him to a lucrative recording contract in 1977 but also granted him near-total creative control in the studio, an almost unprecedented situation for a freshly minted entertainer in an industry where careers are usually closely managed and marketed. Writing and producing all the music as he would continue to do throughout his career, Nelson released For You in 1978. The album sold only moderately well, but Warner did not have to wait long before its faith in its new prodigy was dramatically justified.
Nelson's next three albums, Prince, Dirty Mind, and Controversy all went gold, with sales of over 500,000 copies each. For You, despite the title of its lead single "Soft and Wet," had been only moderately suggestive, but he soon moved into sexual territory that was unprecedented even by the libertine standards of the 1980s. Dirty Mind, which included songs about oral sex and incest, inspired some protests and would likely have caused wider outrage had not Nelson still found his primary base of popularity among young, musically progressive urban listeners.
The sexual element never overwhelmed other facets of Nelson's music--he was equally adept with romantic ballads, simple party songs, and even political pieces--but Nelson always carefully managed this segment of his output so as to attract maximum attention, posing nearly nude on the covers of several album releases. According to Rolling Stone, Husney had advised Nelson that "Controversy is press," at the beginning of his career, and he took the idea to heart. However, in the few interviews Nelson has given, he has seemed sincere in his belief in the redemptive power of sexual experience, and his lyrics have often fused sexual and religious elements.
Nelson's commercial breakthrough came with the double album, 1999, released in 1982. Its several hit singles, including the enduring title track with its cheerful exhortation to party in the face of imminent millennial apocalypse, could not have disturbed any censor. The music on 1999 displayed the mature style that made Nelson a consistent hit-maker throughout the 1980s: high, intense, almost whispered vocals that could carry the sexual message effectively, startling falsettos, sinuous backup vocal lines (often performed by Nelson himself), rock guitar, and always interesting funk percussion parts. As a producer he was capable of bold, unforgettable strokes, like the pure vocals-and-bass combination, eliminating any instrumental melody parts on "When Doves Cry," released in 1984 on the Purple Rain LP.
Purple Rain, the soundtrack album for his successful and largely autobiographical film, earned Nelson an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. Nelson, operating with total creative freedom in his Minneapolis studio Paisley Park, was a star in his own right, and lent his prolific songwriting and producing energies to such artists as Sheena Easton, Chaka Khan, Sheila E., and Sinead O'Connor, in addition to the stable of Minneapolis musicians whose careers he had birthed--The Time, Andre Cymone, Vanity (of Vanity 6), and others.
Nelson continued to reach top chart levels and to grab the spotlight through the 1980s and early 1990s, causing a particular stir with the Lovesexy album of 1988, whose androgynous nude cover caused 1100-store Wal-Mart chain to refuse to sell the LP. An even more controversial collection, the Black Album, with themes of violence and sadism, was pulled from release, although it remained widely available in bootlegged copies. Warner Brothers finally released the work in the middle 1990s, when the excesses of the gangsta' rap style had overtaken even Nelson's level of explicitness.
Nelson wrapped up his relationship with Warner Brothers in 1993 with a massive greatest-hits collection (the label continued for some years to release works from a vast stockpile of Nelson recordings), and seemed in the next few years to embark on a new phase of his career. He dropped the Prince name in favor of an unpronounceable glyph that combined the universal male and female symbols; the music press soon dubbed him the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, or simply The Artist. He severed his ties completely with Warner Brothers in 1996 (in his last public appearances while still with the label he could be seen with the word "slave" scrawled across his cheek), and announced plans to distribute his music on his own through such unorthodox venues as Internet sales. "[Y]ou have to ask yourself, is this artist the kind of mercurial crazy some people say, or is he the wise one who understands where he fits in at the start of a new century?" one industry insider mused in Forbes magazine. Such young entertainers as Ani DiFranco were pursuing similar strategies.
Nelson married his backup singer and dancer, Mayte Garcia, in 1996 and released a three-CD set of new material, called Emancipation, which--despite its stiff price and the plethora of new musical styles that had appeared since Nelson first came on the scene--sold several million copies. Nelson retreated somewhat from his independent stance, working out a distribution arrangement with the large Capitol/EMI conglomerate, but stuck by his goal of flooding the market with the products of his prolific creativity, releasing another massive compendium, Crystal Ball, in 1998; the collection included stockpiled material, new all-acoustic songs, and improvisational jams.
Despite the widely reported death of his first child from a rare birth defect (he refused to confirm or even discuss the event), Nelson entered a period of relative contentment in the late 1990s. As the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, he granted interviews, speaking with such diverse outlets as Forbes and Vegetarian Times--Nelson and his wife both became vegetarians--about his music, business strategies, and home life. In 2000 he released Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic on Arista, along with a video/DVD concert performance by the same name, which was recorded live at his New Year's Eve performance in 1999. His place in musical history was secure; his creativity completely untrammeled. Rivaled perhaps only by Michael Jackson, Nelson had come to be regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.
In May of 2000, Nelson changed his name again, reassuming his given name of Prince Rogers Nelson, and spent much of the summer of 2000 on tour, promoting his album. In February of 2001 he established the New Power Generation (NPG) Music Club, an independent digital subscription service at npgmusicclub.com on the Internet. On this site, for a fee, his fans enjoy any of a number of multimedia amenities provided by Prince himself, including "backstage" videos of the goings on at his Paisley Park studios. Likewise, sneak previews of his recordings can be accessed along with other music and news, in label-less anonymity. After an introductory exhibition on the NPG web site, Nelson released an independent album, The Rainbow Children, in 2001. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2004, just days before announcing a one-record deal with Sony's Columbia label. The Columbia album, Musicology, won two Grammy Awards and earned Nelson recognition at the NAACP Image Awards in 2005. Additionally, Nelson's Musicology Tour of 2004 was reported by Pollstar as the highest grossing tour of 2004, taking in $87.4 million.
Nelson, having divorced Garcia in August of 2000, married Manuela Testolini on December 31, 2001.
Awards
Academy Award for best original song score, 1984, for Purple Rain; six Grammy Awards; named top urban contemporary artist of the past 20 years by Radio & Records; World Music Award for outstanding contribution to the pop industry, 1994; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2004; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Award, 2005; NAACP Vanguard Award, 2005.
Works
Selective Discography
- For You, Warner Bros., 1978.
- Prince, Warner Bros., 1979.
- Dirty Mind, Warner Bros., 1980.
- Controversy, Warner Bros., 1981.
- 1999, Warner Bros., 1982.
- Purple Rain, Warner Bros., 1984.
- Around the World in a Day, Warner Bros., 1985.
- Parade, Paisley Park, 1986.
- Sign O' the Times, Paisley Park, 1987.
- Lovesexy, Paisley Park, 1988.
- Graffiti Bridge (film soundtrack), Paisley Park, 1990.
- Diamonds & Pearls, Paisley Park, 1991.
- {Symbol}, Paisley Park, 1992.
- The Hits 1, and The Hits 2, Paisley Park, 1993.
- Black Album, Warner Bros., 1994 (recorded 1987).
- Come, Warner Bros., 1994.
- Emancipation, EMI, 1996.
- Crystal Ball, EMI, 1998.
- Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, Arista, 1999.
- The Beautiful Experience, Bellmark, 2001.
- The Rainbow Children, Redline, 2001.
- One Nite Alone ... Live!,NPG, 2002.
- N.E.W.S,NPG (Big Daddy), 2003.
- Musicology, NPG/Columbia, 2004.
Further Reading
Books
- Contemporary Musicians, various editors, volumes 1 and 14, Gale Research, Inc.
- Stambler, Irwin, The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul, rev. ed., St. Martin's, 1989.
Periodicals- Ebony, January 1997, p. 128.
- Entertainment Weekly, December 20, 1996, p. 7; November 10, 2000, p. 59; June 8, 2001 (Bonus Section, "Summer Music Preview").
- Esquire, March 1997, p. 39.
- Forbes, September 23, 1996, p. 180.
- Interview, May 1997, p. 88.
- Jet, Feb. 5, 1996, p. 36; May 19, 1997, p. 56; July 9, 2001, p. 64; January 17, 2005, p. 39.
- People, November 19, 1984, p. 160; March 7, 1994, p. 72; December 3, 2001, p. 37.
- Rolling Stone, August 30, 1984, p. 16.
- Vegetarian Times, October 1997, p. 78.
Online- CNN.com, www.cnn.com (March 16, 2004).
- CNN Money, money.cnn.com (March 25, 2004).
- NPG Music Group, http://www.npgmusicclub.com/npgmc/newz/npgnewz.html (March 26, 2002).
— James M. Manheim
