History Music / Prince

* CompositeCharacter: In "Partyman" [[PracticallyJoker his character]] looks like a mix between [[Film/{{Batman1989}} Nicholson's Joker]] and [[Characters/BatmanTwoFace Two-Face]]

* CompositeCharacter: In "Partyman" [[PraticallyJoker his character]] looks like a mix between [[Film/{{Batman1989}} Nicholson's Joker]] and [[Characters/BatmanTwoFace Two-Face]]

->U R now an official member of the New Power Generation. Welcome 2 the dawn.

Move over, Music/JamesBrown, there's a new sex machine in town, and his name's Prince.

In this period, Prince also got in trouble due to his explicit style. Then-Senator UsefulNotes/AlGore's wife, Tipper, was outraged by hearing her 12-year old daughter listening to the explicit lyrics of "Darling Nikki" and founded the much-hated [[MoralGuardians Parents Music Resource Center]] (yes, the inventors of the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" sticker).

Behind him, the Purple One left quite a legacy, and the Prince estate keep that legacy in the public eye with reissues of albums like ''1999,'' ''[[Music/PurpleRainAlbum Purple Rain]]'' and ''Music/SignOTheTimes,'' all of which are remastered and generously expanded with single edits, extended versions and previously unreleased outtakes. They've also slowly rolled out some posthumous albums, most notably ''Originals,'' i.e. the original demos of songs he went on to give to other artists (such as Music/TheBangles' "Manic Monday"). And the estate is only just getting started.

** Prince also had a habit of micro-managing every band he formulated. Albums by Vanity 6, Apollonia 6, Jill Jones, The Time, The Family, Sheila E. and more were written, recorded and performed entirely by him, rarely with contributions by the bands in question (in the case of the first four artists, only the singers contributed and even then, they followed Prince's guide vocal track to the letter and Prince was always involved on backup vocals.) The Time famously never got to play on their own albums until their fourth one. Only time will tell if his more recent projects, such as New Power Generation and Bria Valente, will reveal that they received the same treatment.

* ADayInTheLimelight: The song "Around the World in a Day" owes its existence to this. Long story short, Prince invited Lisa Coleman's brother David to their then-studio (an abandoned warehouse full of recording equipment on Flying Cloud Drive in Eden Prairie, Minnesota) for his birthday in June 1984 and [[http://www.princevault.com/index.php/Around_The_World_In_A_Day allowed him two days of studio time as a present]]. Afterward, Prince listened to what David had recorded and liked it so much he added his own input, and after a re-recording with The Revolution, it became the title track and first song for his next album. (The finished track also arguably qualifies as a SiblingTeam moment, since David Coleman [cello, oud, finger cymbals, darbuka, and sings backing vocals] and Jonathan Melvoin [tambourine and backing vocals] share contributions with their sisters.)
* DigitalPiracyIsEvil: Zigzagged. He's very well known for his stance against digital media, piracy and concert taping, and is just as easily mocked for the various {{Frivolous Lawsuit}}s that stem from said beliefs.

** Enforced early on by Prince, between himself, his bandmates and even ''the other bands he toured with.'' Tales of Prince's shenanigans are so legendary that not many are sure how much of the film ''Film/PurpleRain'' required acting. Prince also notably created Morris Day's character with a rivalry between that character and his own Prince persona in mind. Several of these rivalries started to become antagonistic and ultimately caused The Revolution and his relations with members of The Time to fall apart. Prince calmed down since, for the most part. To add to this, Prince created rivalries with himself in 1982: The Time were credited with providing the backing music for Vanity 6's album (in reality performed by Prince), so on The Time's second album, they scream "We don't like New Wave!" after a song that makes fun of it. Prince also called out Jamie Starr, the producer persona he himself used for both Vanity 6 and The Time, as a thief on his song "D.M.S.R." Considering how bad things went with both versions of The Revolution, he stopped antagonizing everyone around him starting in the nineties.

** Whether he was doing them individually or all at the same time, Prince was well-versed in countless styles of popular music such as rock, {{funk}}, [=R&B=], {{synth pop}}, Latin pop and even {{jazz}}. The double album ''[=Lotusflow3r=]''/''[=MPLSoUND=]'' makes this explicit by having the first album be all "band" music (rock, funk, and soul) while the second is all SynthPop.

** He derided rappers as tone deaf on "Dead on It", then started incorporating it into his music on ''Lovesexy''[='=]s "Alphabet St." and even more so in TheNineties (cf. "Gett Off" and "My Name Is Prince").

* IAmTheBand: "Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed by Prince." Considering how many instruments he not only played but played ''incredibly well'', yeah, he kind of is, although he obviously had to form backing bands for live performances. Lampshaded and parodied on a season 10 ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' cold opening where Prince (played by Creator/BillyCrystal) sings a "We Are the World" parody called "I Am Also the World" with his back-up dancers (played by Mary Gross and Creator/JuliaLouisDreyfus) and any time another musician (in this case, Music/WillieNelson [played by Creator/JamesBelushi], Music/BruceSpringsteen [played by Gary Kroeger], and Music/CyndiLauper [played by Pamela Stephenson]) tries to duet with Prince, his bodyguards [played by episode hosts Creator/{{Mr T}} and Wrestling/HulkHogan] would beat the snot out of them.

* LargeHam: Prince really invoked this trope on songs where he lets out that legendary '''scream.''' He could be subtle if the song called for it, but he was not ''at all'' afraid to be theatrical. For just one example, the coda to "Temptation" from ''Around The World In A Day'' is Prince perv'ing on some young lady, then being reprimanded by ''God,'' and shrieking in horror at what his sinful behavior has wrought. It's very, very over-the-top, as you can probably imagine.

* LeadSingerPlaysLeadGuitar: He famous not just for his voice, but for his skilled guitar playing as well.

* NewSoundAlbum: ''Dirty Mind'' (showing off the Minneapolis Sound) ''1999'' (leaning into dystopian cyber-funk); ''Purple Rain'' (adding psychedelic bits, pushing the rock and pop parts forward, showing off The Revolution); ''Around the World in a Day'' (dialing up the psychedelia); ''Sign ''☮'' the Times'' (first post-Revolution solo album, more stripped-down arrangements and production); ''The Black Album'' (pure funk with bits of FunkMetal); ''Lovesexy'' (poppy); ''Graffiti Bridge'' (better technology); ''Diamonds and Pearls'' (dropping the 80s inklings for more soul, R&B and new jack swing.)
* NewTechnologyIsEvil: '''OH GOD YES'''. Prince was pretty much against the Internet and the usage of [=MP3s=] and such. He even went out of his way to have ''any'' songs of his removed from Website/YouTube, most notably a live video of his cover of the Music/{{Radiohead}} song "Creep," only letting it back up when the band and their fans began to complain. There is also the fact that if you had his music online, he [[DisproportionateRetribution would not hesitate to sue you or ruin you]]. However, Prince would use an electronic platform [[{{Hypocrite}} only if it benefitted him financially]]. He famously set up the NPG Music Club to distribute music and videos, and in 2015, swapped from Apple Music and Spotify to Tidal, since it seemed to give him the best cut. The kicker to all this is that in TheNineties, Prince won awards and was seen as a big trailblazer for his use of the Internet to promote his music - of course, this is before the Internet exploded by the end of the decade. Only after his death would his music (but not all of it) eventually be released on Apple Music and Spotify, and only in summer 2017 would a new official Prince channel be created on [=YouTube=] to upload his music videos.

** Unsurprisingly, his most acclaimed movies are the concert films ''Prince and the Revolution: Live'' (filmed on March 30, 1985 at Syracuse, New York) and ''Sign "☮" the Times'' (supposed to have used concert footage from Rotterdam and Antwerp, but those shots turned out grainy and unusable so most of the film, including the segues, was reshot at Paisley Park).

* SubliminalSeduction: {{Inverted|Trope}} entirely with "Darling Nikki". The song itself is about a "sex fiend" who has her full way with Prince, leaving him a wreck that begs for more. The backward message that concludes the song? "Hello, how R U? I'm fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon." During live performances on tour, that section would be played forwards, because there was no way to properly reproduce it live.

* UnpluggedVersion: ''The Truth,'' shipped with the ''Crystal Ball'' set. It's not as stripped down as you'd think - Prince overdubbed some of his own vocals, sound effects and other weird stuff. But the meat of the album is simply Prince and an acoustic guitar. Prince was known to go acoustic once in a while during live shows, most notably his mini-set during the ''Art Of Musicology'' special.

* UpdatedReRelease: Original CD issues of ''1999'' excluded the EpicRocking track "D.M.S.R." to allow the double-LP album to fit on one 74-minute Compact Disc. Once the CD format was revised to expand the maximum audio storage capacity to 80 minutes, ''1999'' was reissued on CD in 1990 with "D.M.S.R." added back in.[[note]]More specifically, the CD runs 70:29 with "D.S.M.R." included, but manufacturers often kept CD runtimes around the 64 minute mark, as outer edge playback was spotty on early model CD players if you went over that time. The injection moulding process for CD was not as well developed as it would be by 1990, and there could be disc reading problems with the outer edge, so shorter runtimes were effectively damage control (better to lose a song than have people returning "defective" [=CDs=]). Hence why the song was still cut.[[/note]]

He was apparently [[Series/ChappellesShow really good at basketball]]; just ask Charlie Murphy.[[note]]He actually did play basketball in high school, and multiple tour managers have described how Prince and his entourage would sometimes rent a local community center or gymnasium for a few hours before or after a show to play a few games. Micki Free even states Murphy wasn't exaggerating at all.[[/note]]

* PingPongNaivete: In "Uptown", Prince is approached by a seemingly loose woman and mentions that he's taken aback by the request to "[[UnusualEuphemism party in Uptown]]". His internal monologue even calls her "a crazy little mixed up dame / she's a victim of society and all its games." Considering most of the rest of the ''Dirty Mind'' album consists of Prince sticking his dick in things, this is kinda jarring.

* NoEnding: "Batdance" cuts to a sudden halt with a sample of Creator/MichaelKeaton saying "Stop."

* AlternateAlbumCover: The American and initial European releases of the album feature a photo of Prince posing with Lori Werner and Robia [=LaMorte=], framed by a border depicting strings of pearls against a gold backdrop; early CD and cassette releases additionally featured a holographic effect on the cover. Later European releases and the international release, meanwhile, feature a different photo of the three that takes up the entire cover.

** Whether he was doing them individually or all at the same time, Prince was well-versed in countless styles of popular music such as rock, {{funk}}, [=R&B=], {{synth pop}}, Latin pop and even {{jazz}}. The double album ''[=Lotusflow3r=]''/''[=MPLSoUND=]'' makes this explicit by having the first album be all "band" music (rock, funk, and soul) while the second is all synth pop.

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: Woe to the poor fan with sensitive tastes who is introduced to Prince's decidedly less-sexual later material and works their way back to "Darling Nikki."

----

* {{Sampling}}: Many people have sampled his stuff (example: Music/PublicEnemy's "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" uses the squealy guitar solo from "Let's Go Crazy"), not really surprising there. Prince himself first dipped into this with the ''Batman'' soundtrack, which featured samples taken from a workprint of the movie, with no ADR or foley, and outright made a StupidStatementDanceMix with "Batdance". Starting in TheNineties he would use the occasional sample more frequently: "7" is based on the 1960s R&B song "Tramp" by Music/OtisRedding and Carla Thomas, "Tick Tick Bang" yanks the drumbeat from Music/JimiHendrix's "Little Miss Lover", one version of the bootlegged "Dis Beat Disrupts" samples the famous [[Music/LedZeppelin "When the Levee Breaks" beat]].

* StupidStatementDanceMix: "Batdance", which is Frankenstein'd together out of dialogue samples from ''Batman''; vocal quotes from Prince songs from that film's soundtrack; the "Batmaaaan!" of the 1966 Batman theme; a backing track from a song ''rejected'' for the film; an entirely unrelated funk riff; and a typically Princetastic guitar solo. It sounds as ridiculous as that description makes it out to be. And it became a #1 single in the US.

* ADateWithRosiePalms:
** "Gotta Stop (Messin' About)", "Jack U Off", and so on.
** If you can interpret Prince is speaking about his own junk in "Private Joy", then that song becomes an example as well.

He was apparently [[Series/ChappellesShow really good at basketball]]; just ask Charlie Murphy.[[note]]He actually did play basketball in high school, and multiple tour managers have described how Prince and his entourage would sometimes rent a local community center or gymnasium for a few hours before or after a show to play a few games. So yeah, Chappelle wasn't exaggerating about that.[[/note]]