Prince

by Ronin Ro

  He maintained that problems with Warner hadn’t affected his income. “I’m not in financial straits and never will be.” But they hadn’t improved it, either. Diamonds and Pearls was his last true hit. The Gold Experience couldn’t sell 500,000 copies. That year’s Girl 6 soundtrack sold less than 100,000 copies, according to SoundScan. He could use a hit but Chaos wasn’t selling. Not even the TV appearances helped. Its embarrassing sales of only 140,000 in the United States were the worst of his career. After a month on the Billboard 200, Chaos rose only to No. 26. The album didn’t even enter the R&B Chart, and left the charts entirely a week later.

  After turning his audience against Warner, and refusing to promote Chaos with a tour, or more appearances and interviews, Prince blamed the failure on the label’s “chaotic and disorderly” promotion. Warner’s Bob Merlis calmly said Prince could now “make a new deal with another record company. We’ve come to a point where we feel that if he’s happier somewhere else, we don’t have any beef with him.”

  Now, Prince exuded uncharacteristic uncertainty. “After I’m free from Warner Bros., it’ll either be very quiet or very exciting. But it won’t be in the middle. It’ll be extreme. Life, I mean. It’ll all be extreme.”

  Prince finished Emancipation and could use a break, especially with Mayte about to give birth. But he had to find a label to release it. Sales of his last few Warner albums were shockingly low. Reporters claimed he was bankrupt and crazy, Prince remembered in Rolling Stone. He’d have to use the until his final deal with Warner—related to publishing—expired on New Year’s Eve 1999, His new hairstyles and fashions couldn’t raise sales. “People stopped caring years ago, other than a shrinking base of fanatics,” Alan Leeds said.

  When a Rolling Stone writer arrived at Paisley Park to hear the new album, Prince had pregnant young Mayte nearby for support. And instead of his usual haughtiness, Prince asked, “We still all right? Let me know when I start boring you.” He leaped off the arm of a couch and raced to the CD player. He replaced his slow cover of “Betcha by Golly Wow!” with the rock-flavored “Damned if I Do.” He said, “I’m bouncing off the walls playing this.”

  When he wasn’t promoting the new album, he helped allay Mayte’s fears about the baby. In July, she traveled to Manhattan with her bodyguard Arlene Mojica, and Arlene’s sister Erlene, hired to be the baby’s nanny.

  But an unexpected physical pain led to the Mojicas rushing her to an emergency room. During a subsequent telephone call to Prince in Minneapolis, the Mojicas informed him of the hospital visit and he allegedly suggested that nerves were probably to blame. Upon her return from Manhattan, Mayte scheduled an appointment for a sonogram. At North Memorial Hospital—about eighteen miles from Prince’s Paisley Park complex—Dr. Leslie Jaeger performed the examination and said the child had “an abnormally large head and could possibly be born with deformities.” Mayte was shocked. She was also retaining water. The doctor referred her to a specialist and advised that Mayte have a full chromosome test performed, to determine the problem, and either terminate the pregnancy or “go ahead and have the child,” Arlene claimed.

  Prince received the news just as Londell McMillan told him EMI-Capitol Music Group was interested in distributing Emancipation, and wanted to move quickly. Prince had met EMI’s Chairman/CEO Charles Koppelman six years ago, when he stopped by Koppelman’s SBK Records to pitch some artists. Nothing came of those meetings but the elder Koppelman still wanted to meet. Thus, Prince welcomed EMI executives to Paisley Park for a brief meeting on September 18.

  Before, Prince told Hello! magazine, he had never wanted to discuss anything but his music with reporters. Now, his inch-thick global marketing plan included sales targets, promotion strategies and plans for interviews, press conferences, radio and TV ads, and a worldwide tour that could earn as much as $45 million in ticket sales. He even considered distributing albums at his shows. “Maybe we could put a sampler on every seat,” he joked. “Or give them the whole thing, and build it into the ticket price.” He could also have 1-800-NEW FUNK (his direct-selling hotline taking about seven thousand calls a month) sell it.

  A three-CD set like Emancipation was risky but Koppelman was impressed. After ten days of quick negotiations, EMI started preparing a contract. NPG Records would officially release Emancipation. Prince would receive no advance. Instead, he’d submit a finished album and pay Capitol-EMI a cut for every copy it created. They would manufacture and distribute the album, and help promote and publicize it. He meanwhile would keep his masters, receive a larger cut of profits, do his own marketing, and continue to sell other NPG albums on his Web site The Dawn Experience.

  One late September day, Mayte again visited North Memorial Hospital. Much of what follows is based on the Mojica sisters’ comments to reporter Stuart White of News of the World: A female doctor had the Mojica sisters call Prince—it was an emergency. When he arrived, the doctor said, “Your wife is having contractions.” The doctor wanted to prescribe magnesium to delay them. Prince needed a second to take this in, the sisters remembered. He wanted a private moment with Mayte, to see how she was doing. But the doctor complained about his delay. “This is bad news,” she said. “We have to deal with it.”

  Mayte was trembling now.

  Unfortunately, the Mojicas recalled, he signed a release form and led his wife out of there. He sat near his wife in a limousine. He had barely had time to hear what was happening. After rolling a few miles, he had his driver stop. This was all new to him. He was reeling. He asked Erlene Mojica, the nanny, for her suggestion.

  Erlene suggested taking her to another nearby hospital.

  It was a good idea. At the new hospital, the Mojicas led her inside. Prince sat out in the car, knowing that if he entered, hospital employees would be distracted. Before he knew it, one of the Mojicas rushed out. He leaned forward, eager to hear the news. Another doctor was saying Mayte needed magnesium.

  She went back in while Prince waited. Then the woman returned and said the doctor had injected Mayte. Another trip away and back: the contractions slowed. But the hospital would keep her there.

  This was all happening as Londell McMillan was arranging a deal for Emancipation.

  Prince was worried about his wife, missing her as she remained in the hospital. But still he packed for his October 10 trip to EMI’s Manhattan offices. He said nothing about his personal problems while playing executives more music. The next day, they finalized the deal.

  Back home again, he had to balance his personal life—making sure Mayte was okay in the hospital—with preparations for the next step in the wooing of EMI.

  October 15, chairman Koppelman, Vice President Terri Santisi, distribution president Russ Bach, and label president Davitt Sigerson arrived in Minneapolis by corporate jet. Local EMI employees and key personnel from Best Buy, Musicland, and Target also arrived at Paisley Park.

  Prince was not sleeping well these days, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Still, he slipped into an orange suit for a scheduled listening party, including uninvited reporter Jon Bream. He entered a control room and started previewing Emancipation songs. At one point, he felt they didn’t like one song. He turned it off and removed this disc from the player only to hear the crowd shout “More! More!” Behind a glass in the control room, he put the CD back on, then took a series of bows. After a dozen songs, some in full, others fragments, he said, “This is my most important record. I’m free, and my music is free.” An ovation followed. Facing his audience, he asked, “Any questions?”

  No one spoke.

  He said, “Jon, I see you back there. I’m sure you have some questions.”

  Bream, invited by a Best Buy official, did indeed. How long would this deal last?

  “Forever, I hope.”

  Once most of the guests left, Prince handed two EMI executives a few songs. They rushed to catch a flight to Phoenix, Arizona, where they would audition them that night for accounts at a fall conference held by the National Assoc
iation of Recording Merchandisers.

  That night, Prince couldn’t sleep. Dawn finally arrived. He dressed and got over to the hospital, where doctors prepared to perform a caesarean on Mayte eight months into her pregnancy.

  They were about to start the operation. He was outside of the room. A doctor told him to slip into special surgical clothes.

  Prince was present for the birth. His son. But almost as soon as Mayte had given birth, nurses quickly took the child out of the room. Nurses transferred the boy to the adjoining Children’s Health Care Hospital and placed him into an incubator, Stuart White reported.

  Then, a doctor delivered the news that would transform their relationship—and their lives: Their child was born with the rare Pfeiffer syndrome 2, Stuart White noted, which could cause the skull to harden before it should, thereby compressing the brain, and potentially causing retardation and other problems. As days passed, the frightened couple heard even more bad news: Their child had water on the brain, and intestinal and eye problems.

  “Prince was crying,” Arlene Mojica recalled. In a hall, he openly sobbed, “I’ll bring anyone from anywhere … whatever it takes and whatever it costs, to help my child.”

  As the week continued, the Mojicas told White, he and Mayte reportedly saw their child undergo surgery on his left eyelid.

  Then doctors performed a colostomy.

  The child remained connected to a ventilator.

  Doctors proposed yet another operation.

  Some considered removing the child from the ventilator to see if he would be able to breathe.

  It was the most difficult challenge Prince had ever faced. He told Erlene this wasn’t what he wanted for his child. Mayte remained hopeful, even as doctors hinted at another, impossible choice: to spare the child needless suffering.

  Prince tried to be strong for Mayte. To spare his son further pain. Erlene recalled he told her, “We have to convince Mayte to let the baby go. We’re not having the tracheotomy.” He led Mayte into a room to tell her what doctors told him. She started weeping. When he emerged, Erlene asked if he would be there when they removed the baby from the machine. He had barely had time to process this latest development.

  Still, she remembered him saying, “No. Just let me know when it’s done.”

  October 23, 1996, at about seven thirty in the morning, the Mojicas dressed the infant in all-white clothing. Every fifteen minutes, the doctor checked his heart and blood pressure. Prince was nervous. He was hoping for the best, as always. He reached for his telephone, Erlene remembered, to ask Arlene, “Is it done?”

  Arlene said not yet.

  He called again.

  At 8:45, the phone rang. He rushed to answer. Arlene delivered the bad news. His son hadn’t made it.

  Prince hung up. He was numb. Prince had memorialized his short life in a song, in which Prince included his ultrasound heartbeat, written when he thought everything had turned out all right. And at Paisley, the playground he built, so they could play together, remained, a painful reminder. He barely noticed when Erlene Mojica entered the room hours later, carrying a small urn. “Sir, I have the baby.”

  “Give it to me later,” he replied.

  Even as magazines started rolling out interviews he gave during the pregnancy, he and Mayte coped with their loss. For three weeks, he slept only three hours a night.

  More than ever, he could use a break. But still he worked to honor his commitment to EMI. At the same time, he filled a video for “Betcha by Golly Wow” with kids’ faces, and a scene in which he and Mayte embraced in a hospital room. Then he rushed to add special effects—a rainbow and a falling star—thirty-three hours before its premiere on VHi, MTV, and BET. “I didn’t have enough time but I’m real proud of it,” he told a reporter in the editing room.

  At home, he and Mayte reacted differently to the tragedy. “Losing a baby is a terrible thing,” she told reporter Judith Woods. It could make couples closer or drive them apart. “In our case the latter happened.” They didn’t fight or have dramatic fallouts. Instead, his bereavement inspired the already industrious musician to bury himself even deeper in work. Where he had planned a break after Emancipation he now reached for an acoustic guitar and wrote short, lonely works like “The Truth,” “Don’t Play Me,” and “Comeback.” He considered building a children’s hospital on vacant lots across the road from Paisley.

  Publicly, he continued to honor his promise to promote Emancipation. Mayte was by his side November 12, when he greeted hundreds of reporters at his complex and played a concert for MTV cameras. That night, a sea of fans followed the couple from room to room. Some reporters wondered aloud about his newborn son.

  At midnight, he took the stage in purple and black, and had his latest band seemingly play to backing tapes. Then he staged his first informal news conference for two hundred people in Studio A. He let photographers snap shots for thirty seconds and admitted Warner helped him out. “They built this place for me,” he said. “I even invited them to come tonight.” But he still didn’t own Prince’s music, he quickly added. Eventually, one writer asked why he was suddenly so open.

  “I’ve got a record to sell,” he answered.

  Prince was ready for reviews. “People will say it’s sprawling and it’s all over the place. That’s fine. I play a lot of styles.” To his surprise, reviewers offered nearly unanimous praise. November 19, people rushed out to buy copies, and Emancipation debuted at No. 11 (and No. 6 on the R&B Chart).

  Two days later, he was on Oprah. Women watched in record numbers. But even Winfrey’s seal of approval couldn’t stop Emancipation from dropping twenty-seven spots, to No. 38, its second week in stores.

  At home, Mayte told Judith Woods, she wished he would spend more time with her, help her cope with feelings of loss. Instead, he kept to himself, adding lonely acoustic works to The Truth. He planned to finish this for EMI, then tour for Emancipation, as promised. He wanted to move past the tragedy but reporters wouldn’t let it go.

  Prince maintained his composure while facing questions about his personal tragedy. Mayte joined him for a mid-December appearance on NBC’s Today. Mayte was “very friendly, but guarded,” Robyne Robinson explained. Prince meanwhile was turning to the Bible for comfort. “And they were very guarded because of the baby’s death. It was sort of a bittersweet time.” The television appearance found them confirming the child was born with a health problem.

  In early January, Emancipation slid to No. 72 after selling only 316,000 copies. Radio stations kept playing his album cut “Betcha by Golly Wow!” But EMI executives wouldn’t put it on a single. Instead, January 13, they released “The Holy River” for Top 40 and rock stations and “Somebody’s Somebody” for urban-contemporary.

  People gossiped about low sales even as he arrived at the Manhattan club Life for a private party. It was February 28 and EMI’s Koppelman threw the party to celebrate, quizzically, the double platinum sales of Emancipation. “Not bad for someone whose career was supposed to be in the gutter,” Prince said. That night, he saw the crowd included rapper LL Cool J, Michael Jackson’s former producer Quincy Jones, Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan, shock rocker Marilyn Manson, Jon Bon Jovi, actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Rock, even TLC’s T-Boz. These stars and more watched Koppelman hand Prince a plaque and call this commemoration “a historic event both for the industry and for our relationship.” He added that Emancipation’s 2 million sales in just thirteen weeks made it “one of the best-selling multiple CDs of all time.” Prince was proud. So was EMI, which quickly created trade ads bragging about Emancipation’s sales. But Entertainment Weekly’s “Platinum Bombshell: Why Record Sales Numbers Don’t Add Up” asked “was the claim 2 good 2 B true?”

  The RIAA and SoundScan tallied sales differently, it explained. The RIAA offered “less exact” figures by reporting the number of albums that labels claimed to have shipped to retailers and clubs, or sold through mail order. SoundScan meanwhile conducted weekly tallies of actual retail
sales. Then, a little-publicized RIAA quirk had double albums count as two separate units when it came to Gold and Platinum awards, so long as both discs’ combined running time was at least 120 minutes. With Prince making sure his three-CD set lasted exactly 180 minutes—one hour per disc, he said—Emancipation only had to ship 666,666 copies to be certified double platinum. Thus, the RIAA had Emancipation down for 2 million sales while SoundScan showed it sold 460,000 copies by early April, “quite a long way from 2 million, though not all that bad for a higher-priced triple-CD set.” An EMI spokeswoman said, “It’s up to the RIAA. They make the rules, not us.” But Entertainment Weekly felt she was “passing the buck,” and called the label’s claim of double platinum sales a “king-size discrepancy.”

  Prince continued to tour for the album, and to earn good money thanks to his larger percentage of royalties. He again brought fans another memorable stage set, gold Chinese lions and white palm trees surrounding his enormous . But instead of faithful Emancipation numbers—and thoughts of the pregnancy and tragedy—he held his -shaped guitar and played “Purple Rain” in a haze of violet lights. The New York Times loved it, saying he made clear “what low standards we’ve set for rock and pop concerts in the nineties.” Soon, he pulled even more Emancipation songs from the set list, replacing them with Prince classics.

  Prince was still promoting the album when EMI experienced major trouble. London-based owners EMI Group P.L.C. decided to shutter two New York-based imprints. Regrettably, EMI Records was one of them. EMI Music Chief Ken Berry called this “the final step” in reorganizing the North American music operation, and a way to save EMI Group between $80 and $100 million a year in expenses and salaries. At Virgin and Capitol executives were allowed to bring EMI acts to their labels, if they so chose. But no one mentioned Prince or Emancipation.