by Ronin Ro
Davis quickly scheduled “The Greatest Romance Ever Sold” as lead single. Instead of the dissent over singles shown at Warner, Prince rolled with it. Davis, after all, boldly predicted the song would be “number one all over the world.”
Warner meanwhile chose this moment to release The Vault: Old Friends 4 sale. It was late July, three years since he handed them the album and the messy-looking cover (a shot of a spiky-haired Prince in purple shirt and matching skintight slacks and heels, straddling a chair). At Warner, Bob Merlis told a reporter the delay in releasing it was “just a marketing judgment … .” They waited until they felt audiences might want something like this.
Prince complained, even though Warner had the contractual right to release three compilations of music he recorded for them. As Warner prepared his ballad “Extraordinary” for release as lead single in mid-August, Prince reminded everyone he had no love for Warner. He had a spokesperson say he didn’t care when Warner released this work; he wouldn’t promote it; it didn’t mean they were cool again. “It was the last thing he delivered to them, so it was like, ‘This is what I owe ya, see ya,’” his rep claimed.
39
SILLY GAME
AS PLANS FOR THE ARISTA RECORD UNFOLDED, PRINCE WAS negotiating with Clive Davis. Some published reports claimed Davis had Arista advance $11 million—a million more than Warner. Reporters rushed to call it his return to a major. Former employee Alan Leeds shook his head. “Sugar daddy once, sugar daddy again,” Leeds said. “Based on the kinds of deals he’s made lately, he seems more money-driven today than he was when I was working with him. I mean, Arista steps up with a deal, and he runs like a thief to get it. He wasn’t broke.”
His hard-core fans were just as stunned. But Prince offered a written statement. “I believe I had to get out of the recording industry for a while so that I could reclaim my artistry and become empowered by it again.” He didn’t like labels trying to own masters or offering long-term contracts. “Both of these problems are nonexistent in my agreement with Arista.”
He continued to stress that permanently leaving the industry was never his plan. And this wasn’t the standard deal with a long contract and the usual boundaries for what each party would or wouldn’t do. “People are looking for drama in it. It’s for one album.”
Davis, riding high after guitarist Carlos Santana’s comeback hit Supernatural, felt a guest-crammed Prince work could do just as well. But Davis didn’t play Rave for anyone at the label, or seek any opinions, until he signed the deal. When other Arista executives heard the album, they weren’t as impressed. Davis praised it to the skies, but they felt he stuck them with a turkey and a difficult sell.
August 24, 1999, Warner’s compilation The Vault: Old Friends 4 sale arrived in stores. Warner credited it to Prince, not , and promoted it as a “noteworthy musical event.” Some critics liked its jazzy sound—it had no funk or dance material—but most felt the thirty-nine-minute work was uninspired and mediocre. Prince had already included a disclaimer in liner notes that read the “enclosed material was originally intended 4 private use only.” Now, he disparaged it on his Web site. He wrote that a Warner insider heard the test pressing and told him it sounded “like a Contractual obligation” (sic). He typed that its songs were “indeed very old.” He dismissed “dated tracks,” Per Nilsen reported in Uptown magazine. Then he told a Rolling Stone reporter, “The compilations don’t concern me. They’re some songs from a long time ago—that’s not who I am.” Despite his attacks, The Vault appeared at No. 85 on the Billboard Pop Chart and No. 33 on the R&B Chart. It also sold 140,000 copies in the U.S., about as much as Chaos. But a day later, MTV announced his deal with Arista. Arista publicists also let media outlets know they’d have Rave’s lead single—that “Greatest Romance” ballad—out in September.
With Rave recorded, he moved on to its cover. His artist Steve Parke would once again handle art direction, photos, and design. For the cover shot, Prince slipped into a tight royal-blue bodysuit. He now had a goatee and a trendy new haircut—short, thin dreadlocks tinted blue. But he adopted his usual pose, standing in profile.
Davis predicted Rave would be a hit with pop and R&B/urban stations. But other Arista executives weren’t so sure. It didn’t have much R&B. In response, he went back and created his passionate work, “Man ‘o’ War.”
Prince traveled to Manhattan on Thursday, September 9, to introduce female trio TLC at the MTV Awards, and entered Electric Ladyland Studios the next day. Only a few days had passed since female rapper Eve’s solo album Let There Be Eve … Ruff Ryders’ First Lady arrived in stores, but he had her add a verse to his dance song, “Hot Wit U.” But even with her signature put-downs and praise, the song still felt like generic club rap in the post—Dr. Dre mold.
One Saturday night, Arista introduced Rave at a listening party in New York for its sales force and the international media. Arista would release the first single, his ballad, “The Greatest Romance Ever Sold,” September 22. He’d also film a video. “I will be touring to promote this album—definitely,” Prince added.
During interviews, Prince predicted his ballad would be a big hit that “cut through everything on radio.”
Programmers wouldn’t be “afraid to play it.”
But upon its release, the song landed at No. 63 on the Pop Chart and No. 23 on the R&B Chart. It didn’t enter Billboard’s Top 75 Airplay Chart. If anything, it stalled the album’s sales.
Prince continued to promote Rave with more interviews, even appearing on live talk shows he generally avoided in the past. For his interview, Bass Player’s Karl Coryat asked to bring a stenographer. “Apparently, no problem.” But Prince saw her in Paisley Park’s waiting area. “Okay,” he said. “But that hasn’t worked out too well in the past.” In a studio control room, he slammed the door behind Coryat before the stenographer could join them. “I like to start by feeling out a person through conversation,” he began. “When we talk in here, it’s your word against mine.” The walls were completely soundproof. “I prefer it this way.” Within minutes, Prince asked, “Why do you want a witness, anyway? This isn’t a deposition.” He smiled. “Are you a spy? Who sent you here? What did you do before you worked for this magazine? Are you working for someone else? Did somebody put something in your ear?”
Despite these counterproductive antics, Prince called this the best time of his life. “It’s been a great year for me.” He saw the single climb to No. 18 on the Pop Chart and No. 8 on the R&B Chart. Arista released Rave on November 9. Some critics described it as being one of his best albums in the nineties. Some judged the music as tame. Fans debated whether there were too many slow songs and rehashes of earlier hits. Some even claimed the R&B sound aped what Dr. Dre and others had been doing for years. At week’s end, he saw Rave debut at No. 18 “with just under eighty-four thousand units sold in its first week,” MTV reported. Within days, he tried to spur sales by announcing “Rave Un2 the Year 2000,” a concert he’d tape at Paisley Park then air on pay-per-view on New Year’s Eve. Then, he quickly had publicists claim the show would mark the last time he ever played his hit “1999,”
He also wanted to shoot a video for the ballad. But before he could, Davis said he needed to do a few promotional appearances in Europe (where BMG—the company that owned Arista and authorized the $11 million advance—was located). He told Arista the video should come first, along with an American tour. In the end, the video was set aside. Prince packed for an overseas flight.
The RIAA certified Rave Gold December 12 (though Arista might have shipped, and not necessarily sold, 500,000 copies). But that month, sales were slow. Pop radio barely played “The Greatest Romance Ever Sold.” He filmed a TV special believing it would raise sales and looked forward to a second single and a tour in late February.
Some people around Prince urged him to team with Santana for shows. But after a while, low sales got to him. He abandoned these plans. Suddenly, almost as soon as it had begun, relations with Aris
ta soured. Both sides were bitter. He blamed them for not properly marketing his music. Arista felt he gave up on it prematurely; he wasn’t cooperating. Their differences made it even harder for Rave to make a commercial comeback. Once again, people felt a new album couldn’t bring Prince back to the old heights. Even his fans felt he was starved for a hit.
By late January 2000, Prince met with Davis to discuss the album. Davis had told him “The Greatest Romance Ever Sold” would be number one worldwide. It didn’t happen. Now, he wondered what happened. Davis was just as disappointed, with the music and the artist—he felt Prince was retreating from their arrangement. “I thought you’d be different from what I’ve read about you,” Davis reportedly told him. “Everyone warned me.”
Arista asked him to deliver an edited “Man ‘o’ War” and a “Hot Wit U” remix. Prince handed them in, but didn’t film videos. With the label suspecting he no longer cared, there was gossip that Prince was already pitching Epic Records—Michael Jackson’s longtime label—on his next album.
Rave’s Gold certification didn’t change the general impression that he had passed his peak. Still, black music executives continued to embrace him. Thus, in early February, he heard he’d been crowned “Artist of the Decade” at the fourteenth annual Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles.
In March, print reports claimed—despite Gold-certification by the RIAA—that Rave had sold only between 350,000 and 425,000 copies in the United States. It was more than Come and The Black Album but less than his EP 1999: The New Masters. He was livid. Like Emancipation, Rave yielded no outstanding hit. No one talked about it. Again, he blamed a label. “But I’m not mad at these guys,” he told David Schimke of City Pages. “I mean, what else is Clive Davis gonna do? He can’t sing.” His unhappiness spilled onto his new site, NPG Online LTD. In one post, he accused Davis and Arista of allowing Rave to fail on the chart.
He wanted to get in there himself and raise Rave‘s sales. He decided to create a remix album, to be released by his own label. While Arista—he claimed—kept letting Rave slip further down the charts, he revisited the songs. Facing its fifteen cuts, Prince quickly removed “Strange But True” and his disco cover of Sheryl Crow’s “Everyday Is a Winding Road.” He also remixed a few other numbers. Most sounded as they did on Arista’s version. But “The Sun, the Moon, and Stars” now had ocean sounds, the hidden track “Prettyman’s” music returned from a fade out, and “Tangerine” lasted forty seconds longer. “Baby Knows” now had a male singer and yells, his title track had a technobeat and new vocal, and “Undisputed (The Moneyapolis Mix)” sported a new vocal (and rap). Then he threw in a new rock ballad, “Beautiful Strange,” that urged listeners to look within for “the light” that “forever glows.” He decided to call this version Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic.
But on March 9, before releasing it, Prince decided to “give Mr. Davis time to make good on his promise to deliver a couple of real hit singles to ‘the top of the charts.’” And “as soon as a single is ‘locked’ at radio (Arista’s job, not NPG’s), a video will be shot and a promotional campaign put into effect,” he added.
Despite public posturing, however, Prince kept working behind the scenes to try to raise Rave’s sales. That same month, Gwen Stefani and No Doubt were enjoying success with their single “Ex-Girlfriend.” No Doubt was to release Return of Saturn in about two weeks, and Prince wanted “So Far, So Pleased,” and Gwen’s singing, on Rave’s next single. He also wanted to film a video that could draw all those No Doubt fans to his work. But he needed permission from the group and their label Interscope. He reached out to Gwen and her managers and waited. And waited. And waited some more. By March 20, his new site let fans know he was still waiting. In the end, Interscope didn’t grant the necessary permission.
Then he learned, in a repeat of the upheaval he witnessed involving his chief proponents at Warner in 1995, that Arista had ejected Davis from his position. With Davis gone, reportedly forced out due to his age, Prince was able to save face by saying he would discuss future projects with Davis’s successor, young, black R&B producer L.A. Reid. But “any previous agreements with Clive Davis and NPG,” he added, “were null and void.”
By April 29, 2000, Prince had more and more fans subscribing to his online fan club. Each month, he planned—in exchange for their membership fees—to upload new songs, videos, and an hour-long radio show, not to mention the new version of Rave. He was selling them the same songs again, but told fans it was his response to Arista’s “lackluster way” of promoting the first one.
His former label Warner was also keen to repackage some of those old songs. They contacted Prince’s lawyers a few times to see if Prince would help create a second greatest hits collection. At first, Prince reportedly agreed to be involved. If anything, he wanted to submit a few new songs. But while Warner was willing to raise his royalty rate, they couldn’t reach a deal.
Warner had Gregg Geller, a staff project producer, keep compiling his biggest hits from 1979 to 1992. It would be called The Very Best of Prince, a phrase that seemed to suggest recent albums presented something else.
Prince moved on to inviting fans to an upcoming weeklong celebration of his forty-second birthday. Fans that paid seventy dollars would be able to tour Paisley Park and see him play two arena concerts. At his complex, employees made sure everything was in order. His twenty Gold and Platinum albums were on display. The bike from Purple Rain was, too. They’d open doors at ten each morning. Every thirty minutes, until 5:00 P.M., employees would lead fans on a tour of his studios, offices, the wardrobe department, and the soundstage.
In his personal life, things moved on as well. With his and Mayte’s annulment, he attended Bible study classes with his twenty-three-year-old assistant Manuela Testolini. He soon promoted her to become his personal assistant. Before long, she was designing the candles he stocked in his dressing rooms before shows. She would go on to create a company called Gamillah Holdings, Inc. and serve as its president.
That same month, May, he announced that another contract—this one professional—had quietly expired. Back in 1992, he had signed a deal for his publishing. Despite Warner closing his label Paisley Park in 1994, and letting him go as an artist in 1996, this deal remained in effect. He hadn’t discussed it at all in public.
But on May 16, he invited reporters to a sports club in New York. Forty-one-year-old Prince appeared with auburn-tinted hair and in a white turtleneck. At a mic, he said he was “reclaiming” the name “Prince” and putting the aside. “On December 31, 1999, my publishing contract with Warner/Chappell expired,” he revealed. Now, his real name was free of “all long-term, restrictive documents.” He kept reading his prewritten speech. “I will now go back to using my name instead of the symbol I adopted as a means to free myself from undesirable relationships.”
Someone interrupted to ask what he’d do with the .
“Well, it’s an internationally known logo now, so … I haven’t really given it much thought.” Then he got back on track. He’d never change his name again “because I won’t be under a restrictive long-term contract again.
“I’m in a really great mood right now.”
One journalist called him Prince.
“‘Hi, Prince,’” he repeated. “That sounds great. I haven’t heard that in a while.”
After seven years, he’d return to his real name. He’d still use the as a logo, and on album covers, and keep playing his -shaped guitar. But his years as had affected his career. The Tonight Show host Jay Leno echoed sentiments held by many when he told a camera, “He should change his name one last time to the ‘artist who formerly sold albums.’”
But he and other detractors hadn’t seen the last of Prince.
40
IT’S GONNA BE LONELY
PRINCE FINISHED AN ALBUM CALLED HIGH IN LATE SUMMER BUT let it sit. It presented the usual mix of come-ons, calls to the dance floor, and nonspecific revolutionary rhetoric. But a better idea arriv
ed, for another rock opera. And he wanted to challenge himself. He had gotten somewhat lazy in recent years—using the same bland samples and mellow rhythms on Emancipation, Newpower Soul, and even Rave. He wanted warmer acoustic sounds and an epic story involving warring clans, mind control, liars, bigotry, and a biased media.
He started recording most of The Rainbow Children that fall. As usual, he wrote most of the music himself. But he was more creative on guitar, bass, and keyboards. His grooves were more confident so he didn’t crowd every track with the usual dense production. He included seventies keyboards, jazz, gospel choirs, R&B, show tunes, and spoken word. There were more guitar solos than usual and a tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan. His booming, decelerated voice interrupted to provide long-winded and bewildering narration. And now that he was reading the Bible more, a few overt, unapologetic spiritual messages.
His title track found him singing that the “Rainbow Children” were “flying on the wings of the New Translation,” the Bible favored by the Jehovah’s Witness church. “Muse 2 the Pharaoh” hinted death was better than slavery. “Family Name” tackled how whites replaced African slaves’ surnames. As the album continued, he sang that the Banished Ones, his villains, invaded the Rainbow Children’s compound. They surrounded it with a Digital Garden, his metaphor for the media. The good guy, the Wise One, performed “an invisible deed” and sent these goons running back to their home, Menda City. Then the Rainbow Children went “door to door,” like Jehovah’s Witnesses, to ask others to help dismantle this Digital Garden and bring about the “everlasting now.”
He was working on these religious songs when he had an opportunity to reunite with The Revolution. Former Revolution Drummer Bobby Z, keyboardist Matt Fink, and bassist Mark Brown had just attended his forty-second birthday party, and jammed with him onstage.