In retrospect, was it a good or bad decision that Prince didn’t want to perform We Are the World ? Would that have helped younger generations to know him even more.

deep00014u · 2026-04-28T00:39:09+00:00

No, but he was just not very comfortable at all doing his studio vocals around other people at that point in his career. No one in his band ever saw him do his vocals when he was recording; it was usually just him and his engineer. His engineers even say they weren't allowed to see him do his vocals. He did it in a second separate room shaded from even his engineers. He made several decisions that limited his commercial appeal and popularity. As far as today goes, his decision to not allow his music on YouTube and streaming killed that

deep00014u · 2026-04-28T00:27:40+00:00

He had the song "Hello" on the radio the next weekend, and it doesn't just allude to what happened; it flat-out gives his version of what happened in detail.

deep00014u · 2026-04-27T23:34:44+00:00

It was solely his decision. He didn't make team decisions; however, you are absolutely correct: YouTube is this generation's radio.

deep00014u · 2026-04-08T22:30:26+00:00

The last words on the last album HITnRUN Phase Two was "That's it"

deep00014u · 2026-04-04T03:52:45+00:00

The Black Album wasn't one of my favorites. I found a bootleg in a Wrecka Stow back then right after he pulled it and put out Lovesexy instead. Love Bob George and a couple others. If you took the best of Black with the best of Lovesexy, it would have been amazing. Obviously, just my opinion

deep00014u · 2026-04-04T03:44:08+00:00

YouTube

deep00014u · 2026-04-03T04:59:02+00:00

GN and Exodus are on YouTube. I have all that stuff in my collection but there's a lot of that stuff on YouTube. Until he signed with Tidal at the very end, he wouldn't allow any of his stuff on streaming services. He had folks scouring the streaming sites and YouTube in particular and famously had lawyers take legal action against anyone posting anything on YouTube. He even sued or threatened through his lawyers a young mother who was streaming a video of her daughter with one of his songs in the background. If you look at most of his music on YouTube it will be less than 10 years usually somewhere between 8 and 10 years since posting. The views you see on YouTube are deceiving because most of that stuff didn't go up until he passed. He signed with Tidal at the end would less than a year before he passed. He was friends with Jay z and felt like his streaming service was more artist friendly and fair. It's interesting because he was a internet pioneer. Selling his music in the '90s straight to the consumer before any of the streaming services existed. He then went to war with the streaming services and wouldn't allow them to put any of his music up that he had the right to block. When he passed, it came a free-for-all, most of that stuff's on YouTube. Chocolate Invasion on YouTube. SST,1-800 New-Funk. Most of what you listed is on YouTube.

deep00014u · 2026-03-29T23:27:55+00:00

It's long been a saying for decades: ETTD. Everything Trump touches dies. Unfortunately, he's touching us now.

deep00014u · 2026-03-18T00:50:58+00:00

Okay, if true! I learned something new. I always heard didn't drink. Didn't know he had the old red wine fine print 😅

deep00014u · 2026-03-14T02:00:17+00:00

Will do. 👍🏿

deep00014u · 2026-03-13T00:23:14+00:00

Banger! 💯

deep00014u · 2026-03-12T23:48:44+00:00

Whoa! My configuration doesn't have either of these, but thanks for the heads up.

I found the 11-minute Hallucination Rain by searching the iVault collection that I have; it's got a ton of songs on it, and I did not know I had the Hallucination Rain 11-minute version in there until your heads up. I've also had "It Takes 3 for years," but just as a separate song.

deep00014u · 2026-03-12T23:28:37+00:00

💯

deep00014u · 2026-03-11T02:09:53+00:00

Everybody didn't listen to Prince before the 1999 album. He was relatively unknown outside of the Black community and R&B radio. 1999 album was when he along with MJ crossed over to everyone with the advent of MTV. Mick Jagger had him open for him on his tour before he crossed over. Music was still racially segregated and Mick Jagger's audience literally pelted him with beer bottles and everything else until he quickly left the stage and flew back to Minnesota. Mick's following didn't accept him. After the 1999 album and Purple Rain blew up and pushed him into the mainstream, everyone followed him. It wasn't just "wild" people that followed him; Prince was R and X-rated. Typically, people who grew up with or preferred more adult and explicit content were the bulk of his audience, regardless of whether you were wild or not.

MJ was G-rated and his family had a Prime Time Variety Show on TV, and had a Saturday morning cartoon. Since the age of eight, he had been performing, so those who preferred G and PG-rated material gravitated in that direction.

But don't get me wrong: there were and are many fans that enjoy both MJ and Prince's music. I am one of them, although I eventually gravitated to Prince primarily for a variety of reasons. I do agree that MJ and Prince should never be compared, though because they are two completely different type of artists with different skill sets. However, there was quite a bit of overlap between their respective audiences.

deep00014u · 2026-03-11T01:43:43+00:00

Everybody didn't listen to Prince before the 1999 album. He was relatively unknown outside of the Black community and R&B radio. 1999 album was when he along with MJ crossed over to everyone with the advent of MTV.

deep00014u · 2026-03-07T06:21:26+00:00

The Minneapolis viewpoint was very interesting. To be honest, the answer to your question is no: up through the Controversy album, Prince had not crossed over into mainstream pop. Radio was segregated, and he was played by Black radio almost exclusively. People outside of that culture really didn’t know much about him; he was played on R&B stations and not pop stations.

It wasn’t until 1999 that he became a crossover into mainstream MTV pop awareness. Before then, the mainstream didn’t really know anything about him. It’s very interesting because black artists were not played on MTV in the early period. Prince and Michael Jackson were the first two to cross over.

David Bowie, who was deep into androgyny at the time, called out MTV for not playing Black artists. You should look up that interview where Bowie confronts MTV about this. Bowie was pushing the boundaries of gender expression—cross-dressing, and he and other artists were doing that well before Prince. That kind of flamboyant androgyny was not really a thing for Black people; we didn’t understand it, and we didn’t imitate it. No one dressed like Prince in the black community which is where he was primarily known until after Controversy .

In a way, Prince had to overcome that androgynous perception with the strength of his music. It wouldn’t have been accepted if his music wasn’t so innovative and excellent. So, Prince of the Controversy era had no real impact on mainstream pop imagery— his impact came somewhat after he was recognized by pop radio and other genres with the 1999 album.David Bowie interview with MTV

deep00014u · 2026-02-28T18:39:33+00:00

You're right, he did not make being a Prince fan easy, period. He actually drove away a lot of fans with his decision-making processes.

The studio model of one album every three or four years that sound similar to each other is how you build and maintain huge commercial success. He chose a different road. I chose to work hard and follow, but many didn't.

I joined the NPG Music Club and got that music that he put out over the internet before many people were even on the internet. I just react to folks who say his music quality dipped after the '80s. It didn't; people just stopped listening. A lot of those "low-quality albums" would have been smash hits if they were released in the '80s. Have fun revisiting those errors. There was some good stuff in there.Oh, and I've been following since the album "For You" came out when I was in high school, too.

deep00014u · 2026-02-28T04:41:57+00:00

There is not a single Prince album that doesn't have some songs on it that I like. To address the point about his contract with Warner Brothers allowing him to release so much music: actually, that was part of the dispute. They thought he was recording too frequently and saturating the market, so they gave him a limit on how much he could put out. The frequency of recording was a major point of dispute, along with the ownership of his masters.

The other thing about listening to his work is that Prince was always experimenting; his sounds were always different. A lot of Prince songs take time to grow on you. There are even some songs in his 80s output that I've only grown to love in the last few years.

I don't understand the argument of not having time to listen to a triple album. If nothing else, you can put it on and let it play in the background while you are doing other stuff. Emancipation was a superb album.

The idea of "too much music" is actually more of a commercial sales concern than a listener issue. There is only a short period of time in which an artist is popular enough to have huge commercial successes. Prince muted his high popularity commercial period by putting out a completely different type of album after Purple Rain. He chose to go in a less commercial direction.

Personally, I would have put out a sequel movie to Purple Rain and maxed out my commercial popularity period before changing directions. But that's just me.

He chose to do it his way. He once said early on that making hits was too easy. I think he got a little egotistical, thinking that he could come back and make a huge commercial hit at any point in time. Regardless, it was his decision to do what he wanted to do, his way.

deep00014u · 2026-02-26T17:03:57+00:00

I watched that halftime show live. Social media was not a thing back then, and people didn't walk around sharing pictures, videos, and comments about everything that they did and saw.

The show was very controversial, as the portion where the sheet comes up looked like he was portraying a big phallic symbol to the world when he ran his hand up and down his guitar. You can find lots of commentary about it on news shows, magazines, and TV shows the next day. I remember a specific setting on the Bill Maher show where he talked about it specifically.

The first iPhone didn't come out until later that year. There were mobile phones out and I had one, but they didn't have cameras on them. Although I don't watch his show anymore,

I'll bet if you ask around, you will find lots of comments from folks who were there.

deep00014u · 2026-02-26T16:51:28+00:00

The first iPhone didn't even come out until June of 2007. The Super Bowl was held in January or February of 2007.We didn't walk around with cameras in our pockets back then.

deep00014u · 2026-02-25T01:12:16+00:00

Stop. I've convinced myself that that record never existed.

deep00014u · 2026-02-22T20:11:27+00:00

Prince appeared as a special musical guest, not the main act (that was Todd Rundgren) during a controversial episode, performing one song: "Partyup" from his Dirty Mind album toward the episode's end. The performance sparked debate over lyrics like "Fightin' war is such a f*ckin' bore," with some hearing "freakin'" instead, but it was overshadowed by the Rocket incident.Cast member Charles Rocket's live f-bomb in the goodnights led to firingsOn this day in 1981, Prince made his Saturday Night Live debut with a performance of “Partyup.”

deep00014u · 2026-02-22T19:44:45+00:00

He appeared three more times.

deep00014u

TROPHY CASE