Prince's Associates

Prince is famous for being prolific when it comes to songwriting. To avoid trouble with his label, he wrote numerous songs under pseudonyms or gave them to others - he knew lots of talented musicians in his entourage back in The Eighties. Their records are mostly interesting, with the occasional stinker, and at best just as catchy and well-made as his own.

Prince's associates generally come in a few flavours depending on songwriting:
 * People for whom Prince played every single instrument, wrote every single note (disguised with pseudonyms on the album credits) and sometimes even the lyrics. All they had to do was just add their vocals on top. For example: Vanity 6 and Apollonia 6.
 * People for whom Prince composed and produced but they had their own input, including lyrics, co-writing credits and occasionally playing instruments. For example: Sheila E. and Ingrid Chavez.
 * People for whom Prince sporadically contributed material but otherwise didn't do much. For example: Sheena Easton, Mavis Staples, Martika, and others.
 * Actual bands with which Prince was involved. For example: Madhouse and 94 East.
 * Formerly associated with him in some way but then broke away completely. Example: Wendy and Lisa, Dr. Fink, Brown Mark, Bobby Z., David Z., and so on.
 * Stuff which fits into more than one category. For example: The Time and The Family.

Many of these releases ended up out of print because they appeared on Prince's record label Paisley Park Records, which was shut down in 1994 by Warner Bros. due to severe mismanagement from his managers Bob Cavallo, Joe Ruffalo and Steve Fargnoli (They'd paid such exorbitant advances to signees, who were frequently signed behind Prince's back(!) that Warner forced Prince to lend Paisley Park Studios to other bands in an attempt to recoup some of their losses.) Keep Circulating the Tapes for some of them.

This list is by no means complete: there are several projects that never saw any form of release outside of bootlegs (like The Rebels and M.C. Flash) and there are probably even more that no one knows anything about, sitting in Prince's vault.

Just added vocals

 * Vanity 6
 * Apollonia 6
 * Jill Jones
 * The Time
 * The Family

Carmen Electra
"So please, don't step to the mic. In fact, please step away from it. Far, far away from it. i-Mockery's hilarious review of Carmen Electra"

Yes, Carmen Electra used to be a back-up dancer for Prince (in fact, he gave her the Stage Name "Carmen Electra") in the early nineties and had a self-titled album produced by him in 1993. The album's famous for being a complete shitburger. A really funny skewering of it, complete with some audio samples, is available on i-Mockery.


 * Old Shame
 * Piss-Take Rap

With their own input

 * Sheila E.
 * Ingrid Chavez
 * Mayte Garcia
 * Támar
 * Bria Valente

Sporadic contributions and one-offs

 * Martika

Mavis Staples
Much like Martika, Mavis Staples had already had a career going before her association with Prince. And it wasn't too bad either, what with being famous for having a great voice, recording with her family as The Staple Singers and being a civil rights activist in The Sixties.

Staples collaborated with Prince for a few years, contributing the song "Melody Cool" to the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack and having two solo albums, Time Waits For No One (1989) and The Voice, co-written and produced by him. And that's... kind of it actually.

Discography:
 * Mavis Staples (1969)
 * Only for the Lonely (1970)
 * A Piece of the Action (1977)
 * Oh What a Feeling (1979
 * Mavis Staples (1984)
 * Don't Change Me Now (1988)
 * Time Waits for No One (1989)
 * The Voice (1993)
 * Spirituals & Gospel: Dedicated to Mahalia Jackson with Lucky Peterson (1996)
 * Have a Little Faith (2004)
 * We'll Never Turn Back (2007)


 * Sheena Easton

Madonna
Prince wrote and produced "Love Song" on Madonna's album Like a Prayer. He also played the guitar solos on "Act of Contrition" and "Keep It Together".

Completely unrelated to this, former Revolution guitarist (and current one-half of Wendy & Lisa) Wendy Melvoin played guitar on the song "She's Not Me" from the album Hard Candy.

Kate Bush
Prince is a fan of Kate Bush, and met her during the 1990 Nude Tour, discussing a collaboration. Bush sent him the song "Why Should I Love You?", asking for backing vocals. When she received it back, Prince had not only sung but also added his own sizeable instrumental overdubs. This baffled Bush and her engineer Del Palmer, who then spent two years working on and off on it to try and "turn it back into a Kate Bush song". It eventually came out on 1993's The Red Shoes.

Bush also made a cameo appearance on Emancipation, singing backing vocals on "My Computer", but good luck hearing her at all on that song.

The Bangles
Prince wrote their big hit "Manic Monday", for which he recycled the verse melody of "1999" (fun activity: when you hear "Manic Monday", sing the lyrics from "1999"). He also dated their frontwoman Susanna Hoffs for a while, and that was it.

Tevin Campbell
Campbell contributed the song "Round and Round" to the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack and provided some additional vocals. Prince repaid him by writing and producing several songs on his 1993 album I'm Ready.

Candy Dulfer
A Dutch smooth jazz saxophone player who has sporadically contributed to Prince's albums and has served as an on-and-off member of his backing bands. Prince contributed the song "Sunday Afternoon" to her album Sax-a-Go-Go.

She's rather famous for the brutal puns that masquerade as her album titles, such as Saxuality, Sax-a-Go-Go and Candy Store. Also, she's the daughter of Dutch saxophonist Hans Dulfer.

Elisa Fiorillo
A backing singer on the Batman, Graffiti Bridge and Diamonds and Pearls albums. Fiorillo had one album named I Am co-produced by Prince and Levi Seacer, Jr. in 1990.

She also contributed a song to the soundtrack of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Actual bands

 * Mazarati
 * Madhouse

94 East
The first "real" band Prince ever played in (He was also previously in a band named Grand Central and then Champagne with André Cymone and Charles Smith, but they never recorded anything), 94 East was a funk band that existed between 1975-1979. It was formed by Pepe Willie, the husband of Prince's cousin, and included Willie, Prince and André Cymone. Their stuff is hard to find and very likely isn't even worth looking for in the first place anyway.

Their recordings were predictably reissued a couple of times after Prince hit the big time, and the most common of these is the Minneapolis Genius album. This is technically Prince's first professional album, but he ignores its existence entirely, considering that he had no input into its recording.


 * Canon Discontinuity
 * Old Shame

Broke away completely

 * Wendy and Lisa

Matt "Doctor" Fink
Matt Fink was a member of The Revolution and the NPG, working with Prince between circa 1979-1991. He played keyboards and became known as "Dr. Fink" for always wearing surgical scrubs on stage. According to Fink, it was the only outlandish outfit that Prince felt looked good on him. According to somebody else, Fink initially wore a prison outfit but discovered during the joint Fire It Up tour in 1979 that one of Rick James' bandmates did that already, and "doctor's scrubs" was the first thing he could think of as a replacement.

Fink is the longest-lasting original member of The Revolution, surviving the band's axing in 1986 and staying on until 1991, when he left along with last remaining Revolutionite Miko Weaver after the fractious Nude Tour.

After he left the Prince camp, he built his own studio (named StarVu Studios), worked on some videogame soundtracks, created a sample library, put out a solo album named Ultrasound in 2001, and signed an exclusive management deal for Europe with the company Mozart & Friends. Presumably this will lead to his releases being actually distributed in Europe.


 * Token White: Prince intentionally assembled the Revolution to be a multi-ethnic, multi-gender band like Sly & the Family Stone, and opted not to hire James Harris (later of The Time) because, while good, he did not contribute to the band's diversity. Fink was asked to audition instead and received the job, and while his talent and contribution to The Revolution is undeniable, the fact that he was a white keyboard player did represent a factor in him getting the job. He stopped being the Token White after Lisa Coleman, Wendy Melvoin and Eric Leeds became members.

David Z.
David "Z." Rivkin, brother of original Revolution drummer Bobby Z. and former member of Lipps Inc., does play instruments but is mostly famous for his work as Record Producer and engineer who pretty much helped codify the whole Minneapolis sound.

After producing and engineering for Prince and his associates in The Eighties, he left the camp sometime around 1989. He's carried on working as a producer ever since, with credits including the Fine Young Cannibals (their second album The Raw and the Cooked), Billy Idol, Neneh Cherry, Terri Nunn, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and others.)