by Ronin Ro
Prince hadn’t attacked rap with “Dead On It,” so much as what it had become, Tony explained. During the early 1980s, Prince had heard acts like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five address social ills with “message-raps” (a subgenre named after one of their hits, “The Message”). But during the mid-1980s, rap moved in another direction. Rappers weren’t “saying anything but, ‘Yo, baby! Party all the time! I got this, I got that,’” Tony explained. This was when Prince used his song to denounce shallow sentiments. But socially relevant artists like KRS-One, and Chuck D—who set their hits to James Brown samples—had him eager to record more rap.
Still Prince kept recording corny raps like “Jughead,” about a new dance step. His engineers wondered what happened to the old Prince. For his classic “Sign O’ the Times,” Prince had required only six tracks. Now, many new songs had forty-eight or more, tons of drums, loops, and basses.”It was a bit frustrating to see what I consider to be a very talented musician fucking around with a lot of trendy crap,” Michael Koppelman said.
January 21, 1991, Prince was ready to play Rock in Rio II, in Brazil for $500,000 (the same amount as headliners Guns ‘N’ Roses), the Jornal do Brasil reported; he had decided on short notice to do the show. But his keyboardist Fink was producing another project. Fink had to submit it on time. Fink asked Prince’s managers to find a replacement for the show. Prince had invited young local keyboardist Tommy Elm to play a warm-up show at Glam Slam, and decided Elm could handle it.
At Maracana Stadium, nine shows would start at 6:00 P.M. and run until 2:00 A.M. Brazilian acts would open for Guns ‘N’ Roses, George Michael, Santana, and INXS. MTV would air portions February 9. Green laser lights covered a crowd of 100,000. Giant monitors broadcast the events onstage. The crowd danced, waved arms, lit matches, and sang along to every hit chorus. Santana’s set went over well. Between sets, seminude ladies danced near inflatable animals while a band played carnival music.
Prince ran two hours late. He got onstage with his hair standing up, his beard carefully sculpted, his collar points raised, and his shirt unbuttoned to the navel. His image—three stories high—appeared on the giant video screens. He started his set with a cool funk riff. Then he began swiveling his hips and claiming this was the hot new dance, “the Horny Pony.” Sections of the crowd yelled “Viado! Viado!” (Portuguese, Entertainment Weekly explained, for “faggot”). After the show, he decided to buy the TV rights back from MTV.
Back home, he decided that Tommy Elm should stay, taking Fink’s spot in his New Power Generation and a new nickname: Tommy Barbarella. Fink meanwhile wondered what just happened. He had been with The Revolution since its earliest days. He said nothing when Prince expanded the lineup (circa Parade). He remained with Prince even after Prince fired most other members—even as each new album found him straying further from his bestselling Purple Rain image and sound. He absorbed Prince’s putdowns during recent rehearsals (including one reportedly hurled in front of Fink’s parents). Fink stayed even when, as he told Alex Hahn, he felt Prince was suddenly favoring the band’s black members.
“There was no personal phone call, no loyalty,” he said. “His attitude was ‘You didn’t drop everything you were doing for me, so see ya!’”
Prince now worked on designing their look, asking designers to create what amounted to pajamas with lapels. He also publicly extolled his new band’s virtues. But new singer Rosie Gaines explained, “We were his first black band, and our thing was to help him get his black audience back, because he had lost that.”
Prince’s public image suffered in late January 1991 when Fargnoli’s client Sinead O’ Connor told Rolling Stone about her alleged December visit to his rental home in LA. “He continually said that he was going to beat the shit out of me,” she told Rolling Stone. He also kept her from leaving, she insisted. According to her, he sent his limo driver away, leaving her without a ride home at 5:30 in the morning. When she cried, he laughed. Her big mouth got her in trouble again, she remembered him saying. “He’s jealous. And he did say to me that he wished I’d never done his song … . I think, frankly, that that song saved his fucking ass,” she added. “He was in serious financial trouble until that song happened.” When Rolling Stone called to ask if he really did this, Prince said, “That never happened. I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
Prince resumed work on his next album. For eighteen months, he had been writing new songs. No vault material on this next one. By February, he felt he had it. He put a song called “Horny Pony,” debuted in Brazil, back in and created another configuration. It was a strong album. But Warner executives again arrived at his studio complex to ask him to delay a new album.
Warner really wanted some sort of greatest hits compilation to remind people of his talents, especially after the disappointing Graffiti Bridge.
Prince proposed a big boxed set with four or five discs of unreleased material.
Warner felt its retail price would be too high and proposed a more manageable two-CD set, with one disc containing the never-released The Black Album.
He didn’t want it out there.
Warner agreed that they’d accept another Prince album but they pleaded with him to hold off for some time. By releasing one annually since 1979, he had glutted the market, they explained. He didn’t agree, but he didn’t cause another scene. He considered Diamonds and Pearls done, but kept rewriting lyrics, remixing music, and putting things back in. Engineer Koppelman said in the Star Tribune, “I think he was purposely not putting it out—or was being forced by his record company or whatever. But he’s got to constantly work, so we just kept working on it.”
27
GIRLS AND BOYS
AT PAISLEY, IN MARCH, PRINCE ALSO STARTED A POP RAP ALBUM by a white woman named Carmen Electra. Her real name was Tara Patrick, and he had sent someone to invite her to his rented house in Beverly Hills after seeing her dance in the LA club Spice. He told her he was starting an all-girl band. Could she sing or dance? She said sure. He had her audition immediately. He kept his face impassive, even as she left that night. He was already spending more of his time on the phone with that Puerto Rican girl Mayte from the tour, after all, according to the British Mail on Sunday.
But he called within a month to offer her a recording contract. She quickly flew to Minnesota, moved into his home, and agreed to change her name to Carmen Electra (which he chose after showing her the 1954 musical Carmen Jones).
Now, when he recorded music, he looked over and saw Carmen taking everything in. Before she knew it, he told her to record his new song, “Carmen on Top.” He had bassist Levi and rapper Tony help fill her album Carmen On Top with ho-hum beats and James Brown samples. He had Carmen speak lyrics over “Good Judy Girlfriend” and two James Brown samples. “Go On (Witcha Bad Self)” featured Brown’s “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” “Just a Little Lovin’” used Brown’s introduction from “Make It Funky” (“What you gonna play now?”). A sample from Brown’s “Fun” sat near the familiar Run-DMC quote, “Awww yeah.”
On a Wednesday night, around 9 P.M., Prince was steering his classic T-Bird toward downtown. He was driving quickly when he saw a curve in the road ahead, “It was close to his house,” his spokesperson Jill Willis explained, to justify what followed.
Prince suddenly lost control of the car. His hands gripped the wheel tightly, but it was too late. In shock, he felt the car shake. He couldn’t see the road through his windshield anymore—the car had left the road entirely. It was airborne and for a second, the world looked sideways. It flipped in midair, then suddenly, everything shook. He felt a jolt as the car landed on the ground.
Prince was still breathing. His nose hurt a little. He had banged it on something. But he could move. The car behind him stopped. His friend, driving it, got out and ran over to the wreck. Prince crawled out of the car. Eventually, cops rolled up. They heard what happened and didn’t issue any tickets. They towed the car away, Willis noted; “probab
ly” destroyed.
But Prince himself somehow avoided any serious damage. “He was fine,” Willis said. “He walked away unscathed.”
Seemingly undisturbed by the accident, Prince continued to focus on his career. He grew impatient. Warner had asked him to wait but he wanted Diamonds and Pearls out there already. Indignant, he flew to Burbank and persuaded them to release it. But then he insisted they ship it with an expensive, hard-to-manufacture hologram cover (an image of him staring through a string of pearls while two women rub his chest). Warner agreed to this, too, but advised him to promote this one more. They also delayed its release from mid-September to mid-October.
Prince knew this was a pivotal album. And if he didn’t, print reports kept reminding him. Lovesexy hadn’t sold. Batman did, thanks in part to a hit film and popular superhero. He connected Graffiti Bridge to another film, but both products flopped. Diamonds and Pearls was a genuine Prince album. If fans rejected it, they were rejecting him.
In spite of these pressures, he was proud of the album. He carried a CD of it with him and blasted it in his car. “Instead of buying a tape, I make music,” he told Details. Usually, he cued up his dance-rap “Push,” but on sunny days, he drove to his mild-mannered “Strollin’.” “I don’t listen to any of my old music, you know,” he said proudly. (Heath, 1991)
One Friday in May, however, Waronker called from Warner to say the urban department didn’t hear a single for radio. “Maybe I could take so-and-so [song] and turn it around,” Waronker remembered him saying in the Star Tribune. But he caught himself. “It’s a marketing problem. You guys deal with it.” Still, he considered what Warner was saying. As with Batman and Graffiti Bridge, he went to Paisley Park, on May 10, to record another song for a lead single. This new work “Gett Off” seemed to describe an encounter with a woman in his home. He told her he didn’t serve ribs, then asked her to move closer to him so they could copulate. Its metallic drumbeat and high-pitched flute evoked Public Enemy, then he added metal chords and a sneering rap. That Monday he called Waronker back. “You’ve got yourself a new baby.” Waronker loved “Gett Off,” saying, “It was an amazing new track.”
Prince was also working on Ingrid Chavez’s debut, May 19, 1992, envisioning another disc with spoken-word poetry over his music. For good reason, she now wanted to sing. After appearing in his film, she helped Lenny Kravitz and André Betts write and record Madonna’s 1990 chart-topping dance hit “Justify My Love.” Ingrid saw the mix of styles result in big sales. But while creating “Elephant Box” and other songs, Prince wanted whispering and talking. “He had recordings of her reading her poems,” Koppelman, now main engineer, told Housequake.com. “He let me try one and ‘Winter Song’ resulted.”
Prince liked it.
“Can I do another?” Koppelman asked.
“Sure.”
Koppelman produced “Candledance,” but needed a guitar solo. While recording, Prince kept playing hazy riffs. Sensing a shift in the mood, Prince lowered the guitar and asked, “You aren’t going to use any of this, are you?”
He didn’t plan on it. “He hadn’t been hitting it,” Koppelman remembered. “Right after that he played a great solo which we kept.”
With Ingrid in LA, and his plate already full, Prince told the producers to hit the studio “and mess around,” Koppelman recalled to Housequake.com. They created “Hippy Blood.” The next day, during her meeting at Warner Bros., Ingrid played executives the song. “They loved it,” said Koppelman. “Prince had not yet heard it.” Eventually, he did, and liked it, Koppelman recalled, but he had a vision for this record. “So a bit of a spat broke out ’cause Ingrid wanted to sing some more songs and Prince had the spoken-word idea.” Warner meanwhile wanted some “Justify”-like singing. Prince argued with her and Warner then disowned it. After producing five songs, he handed Koppelman and Levi the reins. New works like “Spiritual Storm” mixed poetry with catchy singing. Koppelman recorded and mixed “quite a lot of it,” he said.
Prince moved back to his own work, planning a video for “Gett Off.” Young director Rob Borm, trying to get his new production company Point of View Films off the ground, was saying, “Hire me. I’m young. I’m hungry. I can make you some money,” according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Prince gave Borm a break, and had Gilbert Davison tell Borm, “Prince wants his yellow suit in it, and he wants his yellow car in it, and he wants it to look a little like Caligula,” the 1980 film. Borm tried to keep the two-day shoot within the Warner-approved $220,000. Prince liked the stunning, surreal “fall-of-Rome set.” Inevitably, Davison told Borm, “Oh, by the way, there’s probably going to be quite a few changes to the concept.” It needed more erotic imagery. He also used this video to introduce new dancers Diamond and Pearl (Robia Lamorte and Lori Elle Werner) to his audience. On the set, costs reached a staggering $1.3 million over seven days. Prince was finally done. Borm figured with Paisley handling the seven-figure overrun, he wouldn’t have to fear creditors.
Predicting success, Prince then created four more clips, including an eight-minute-long “orgy/club mix” that had him blindfold Diamond and Pearl and lead them from Paisley to his yellow house. “Violet the Organ Grinder” showed him in chains near four women covered in gold paint. “Gangster Glam” purported to show the “erotic behind-the-scenes” during a day at Paisley Park.
Prince wanted “Gett Off” out there as soon as possible, and threw a 9:16 version on an EP, near his pop-rock number, “Cream,” “Horny Pony,” and his mellow “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night.” But right before its release, for reasons unknown, either he or the label cancelled the EP. He wanted his music—and perhaps advances—released faster, and disagreed with Warner’s assertion that fans couldn’t handle more than one album a year. As a kid, he rode his bike to a record store to buy a new James Brown single “every three months,” he claimed. And no one called Brown too prolific. Warner however had reasons for delaying releases. “The third single from the previous album would bump into the first single from the new album,” said Bob Merlis. The promotion department couldn’t handle him competing with himself. Some promoters felt, “‘Okay, we love the guy but can we have a break?”’
Undeterred by the cancellation of the EP, he threw “Gett Off” on a limited-edition twelve-inch in time for his thirty-third birthday. The morning of June 7, clubs and radio stations received a strange-looking record in a white jacket covered with purple handwriting. Prince had pressed up about fifteen hundred copies. Warner and Paisley Park knew nothing about it but deejays played the rap-styled “Gett Off.” He created an edit for a commercial single, yanked “Horny Pony” from Diamonds and Pearls and included the new song. Warner rush-released the single and scheduled Diamonds and Pearls for release soon after. Yet, Prince couldn’t ignore that, locally, pop and rock stations had ignored it. Only KMOJ-FM, the urban radio station run on donations, played it, and even this outlet, a writer noted, was more likely to play the Fresh Prince’s rap.
Despite little disagreements, Prince was generally happy with Warner. “I mean, when Diamonds and Pearls came out, he played on the roof of the Warner Bros. building and was very proud of the relationship,” said engineer Tom Tucker. He played a private concert for Warner, one in their Burbank parking lot and another at their Warner-Elektra-Atlantic convention in Chicago. “He was walking around and saying hello to people before his performance,” said Warner vice president of publicity Bob Merlis. It was impressive, Merlis noted, but also precisely what artists should do with people that could promote products. “Setup,” Merlis explained, “is everything in the music business. He’s got everything.”
Prince also played the Jack the Rapper Convention for R&B industry professionals in Atlanta. He packed his bags for a mid-August stop in Manhattan, to play MTV’s private tenth anniversary party at the Ritz (on Monday, August 19). The crowd included influential music and television executives. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post wondered if this “was a canny move or desperate.” Afte
r disappointing projects (“notably the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack and film”), he needed friends in high places and couldn’t find “any on the radio side.” His mix of old hits and six new songs showed “flashes of brilliance, vocally and on guitar,” but his dancers felt “two or three years out of style.” He undermined credibility by emphasizing the visual. “And if the Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge movie disasters taught Prince anything, it’s that he should forget playing to the camera and just play the music.” For weeks, people around him considered Harrington’s suggestion. An anonymous source near Prince said, “It’s what he should have done for every one of his albums.”
Steve Perry, who once wrote a Musician cover story about him, felt it was smart marketing to perform at the MTV event, but the new music was desperate. “It’s flailing after something not grounded in artistic motives. For the first time in his career, he’s not sure what to do artistically; he’s acting out of market impulses.”
In early September, Prince played TV’s The Arsenio Hall Show, the first guest to perform five numbers. Then September 5, he traveled to the Universal Amphitheatre in LA, where Arsenio was hosting the MTV Video Music Awards. The ceremony found the network celebrating its tenth anniversary, and changing the name of its Video Vanguard Award to the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. As a slew of acts performed and accepted astronaut-shaped trophies, Prince waited backstage, with big hair and sculpted five o’clock shadow. When it was time, he took the stage in his yellow meshlike jumpsuit and started singing “Gett Off.” Then he turned around, and shocked the entire audience. His yellow pants had huge openings over each buttock (soon dubbed “peekaboo pants” by The Dallas Morning News). Even Bream wondered whether this was the act of a skilled promoter or a “desperate, fading superstar.” Ultimately, Harrington answered his own question in another writer’s article. “This soft-spun Prince,” he said. “I don’t buy it.”