Prince



"My name is Prince And I am funky"

- Prince, My Name Is Prince

"Prince? That skinny motherfucker with the high voice?"

- Prince, Bob George

Move over James Brown, there's a new sex machine in town, and his name's Prince.

Prince Rogers Nelson (born June 7, 1958), generally known simply as "Prince" or "His Purple Badness" to fans, is probably the most famous musician from Minnesota since Bob Dylan to become incredibly successful and carve a place for himself in the annals of pop music history.

Known as a multi-instrumentalist who can play several instruments pretty epically (keyboards, synthesizers, guitar, bass, drums, drum machine) and a highly idiosyncratic (sometimes bordering on Control Freak) songwriter, Prince had a future rock star's obligatory chaotic childhood and parent separation, though his mother has stated he only had "normal disagreements" with his father, and other people have suggested it wasn't anywhere near as bad as depicted in Purple Rain or songs like "Papa" (food for thought: Prince also co-wrote several songs with his father John L. Nelson). After running away from home and staying with his neighbours (where he met future bandmate André Cymone), Prince entered his first band in the early seventies, playing piano and guitar. A demo recorded in 1976 brought the attention of a few major record labels, and he wound up signing with Warner Bros. Records because they offered him the most creative freedom (commence laughter). His first two albums for the label, For You and Prince, were full of rather generic, disco-influenced R&B.

With Dirty Mind, Prince finally hit upon his Signature Style that would hereafter be called the "Minneapolis sound": a fusion of funk (by way of Parliament-Funkadelic, Jimi Hendrix and Sly & the Family Stone), New Wave (lots of robotic synths and drum machines), pop and rock. It also helped that by then he had assembled a good backing band (bassist André Cymone, guitarist Dez Dickerson, keyboardists Lisa Coleman and Doctor Fink, drummer Bobby Z.). Lyrically, Dirty Mind marked the first appearance of Prince's overwhelming preoccupation with sex and matters of the flesh in general, as showcased by such songs as "Dirty Mind" (about having a dirty mind), "Head" (about him tricking a bride into marrying him through the power of head), "Sister" (about really Squicky Brother-Sister Incest).

Unsurprisingly, this all proved to be a bit too much for America in The Eighties (his bizarre wardrobe certainly didn't help matters) -- while opening for The Rolling Stones in 1981, Prince got pelted with trash and booed off the stage. Still, he soldiered on and released Controversy, which was pretty much Dirty Mind again (general consensus has pretty much branded Controversy with the It's the Same, So It Sucks iron).

By this time, Prince's backing band had crystallized into its most famous incarnation:
 * Brown Mark - bass guitar, vocals
 * Bobby Z. - drums
 * Lisa Coleman - keyboards, vocals (generally credited as "Wendy and Lisa")
 * Wendy Melvoin - guitar, vocals (generally credited as "Wendy and Lisa", replaced Dez Dickerson in 1983)
 * Doctor Fink - keyboards, vocals

Now christened "The Revolution", Prince made 1999, his breakthrough album into the US mainstream - mostly on the backs of the hit singles "1999" (a catchy funk tune about nuclear armageddon) and "Little Red Corvette" (an entire Dual-Meaning Song using cars as a metaphor for a bad relationship).

Prince's next project was a small film where he played a troubled musical prodigy who is trying to become a star despite his Jerkass behaviour threatening to drive away his bandmates. The Revolution and other associates all appeared using their real names, except Prince's character who was named "The Kid". You might have heard of the movie, it was named Purple Rain. 1984 thus turned out to be Prince's best year: the soundtrack album Purple Rain was a massive success, spending 6 consecutive months at #1 on the US charts, the film got nominated for Academy Awards and grossed over $80 million at the box office, and four of the singles drawn from it were smash hits: "When Doves Cry", "Let's Go Crazy", "Purple Rain" and "I Would Die 4 U". Purple Rain not only introduced Prince's Xtreme Kool Letterz spelling system but also showed a more theatrical yet still highly catchy variation on the Minneapolis sound, emphasising the pop and rock aspects and having louder guitars but still keeping the stylistic mishmash intact, making it a crossover success.

In this period, Prince also got in trouble due to his explicit style. Then-Senator Al Gore'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 Parents Music Resource Center (yes, the inventors of the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" sticker), instead of, oh we don't know, being more careful about buying albums in the future or something like that.

Following a successful tour marred by occasional tension within the band, Prince & the Revolution released another successful album, Around the World in a Day, this time amplifying the psychedelic elements hinted at with Purple Rain to a vaguely Beatlesque sound. The resulting tour worsened intra-band tension due to Prince's recruitment of additional members (Susannah Melvoin, Eric Leeds, Atlanta Bliss, Jerome Benton, Wally Salford, Greg Brooks). He also began a new film project named Under the Cherry Moon. While Purple Rain had a lukewarm-but-positive reception, Cherry Moon was savaged by critics due to bad plot and acting, but the film's soundtrack album Parade did just as well on the charts.

Since the intra-band tension had grown to severe levels by now, Prince disbanded The Revolution in 1986, firing almost everyone (Brown Mark quit by himself) besides Doctor Fink. A new lineup was assembled, including guitarist Miko Weaver, drummer Sheila E., Bliss and Leeds on horns, bassist Levi Seacer, Jr. and keyboardist Boni Boyer. Some of them appeared on Sign the Times, Prince's first solo effort after the disintegration of The Revolution. While this earned a much better reception critically and commercially, it marked the beginning of Prince's feud with Warner Bros. Records, after they scrapped his plan to originally release a triple album and forced him to reduce it to a double album -- possibly a rare case of positive Executive Meddling. He then was tapped to create the soundtrack for the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film (Michael Jackson had been in talks to do it, but it never panned out).

After the rest of his old bandmates drifted away (Dr. Fink, Sheila E., Leeds, Bliss, and so on), Prince debuted a new backing band, The New Power Generation, in 1990. Its members have included:

... and many others.
 * Levi Seacer, Jr. - rhythm guitar (1991-1993)
 * Kat Dyson - rhythm guitar (1996-1997)
 * "Rev." Michael Scott - rhythm guitar (1997-2001, 2004, 2006)
 * Sonny T. - bass (1991-1996)
 * Rhonda Smith - bass (1996-2004)
 * Rosie Gaines - keyboards, vocals (1990-1992)
 * Tommy Barbarella - keyboards (1991-1996)
 * Kip Blackshire - keyboards, backing vocals (1999-2001)
 * Renato Neto - keyboards (2002-2008)
 * Michael Bland - drums (1991-1996)
 * Kirk Johnson - percussion, backing vocals, drums, drum machine programming (1993-2000)
 * John Blackwell - drums (2000-2004)
 * Maceo Parker - horns (1999-2007)
 * Tony Morris - horns (1998-2000)
 * Greg Boyer - horns (2001-2008)
 * Tony M. - rapping (1991-1993)
 * Mayte Garcia - backing vocals (1992-1996)

Prince dropped into a Seasonal Rot during The Nineties. When his commercial success slipped, he feuded with Warner Brothers (at one point writing "Slave" across his face) until he got off the label and changed his name to the unpronounceable "love symbol," leading to the nickname "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince". Now having gained Protection From Editors, he proceeded to put out a string of albums, playing to a small but dedicated group of fans while the mainstream's attention moved elsewhere. Your Mileage May Vary on the music created during this period, but many don't feel it matches his material from the 80s.

When his contract with Warner Bros expired in 2000, he made a statement that he was changing his name back to Prince, rather than the symbol he had adopted to detach himself from them. He entered the mainstream again, releasing his album Musicology on a major label and performing at the Grammy Awards. Since then, Prince has held a larger audience than during his off-label years in The Nineties but still not matching his peak popularity.

Prince has written more than one thousand songs. Most have been released under his own name, some have been released under pseudonyms and pen names, while others have been recorded and released by other artists. Associates and "spinoff bands" of the latter have mostly involved others recording vocals over his own songs with his own lyrics (Vanity 6, Apollonia 6, Mazarati, Madhouse, The Family), with some such spinoff bands managing to win creative independence (Sheila E., The Time), or others not being involved with him at all (Wendy & Lisa - considering Prince's conflicts with them led to The Revolution breaking up, that's not at all surprising). We have a page for them over at Prince's Associates.

Prince reportedly has hundreds of unreleased songs in his "vault". He has won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award, and is one of the few people to have simultaneously managed a #1 movie, album and single in the same year. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible in 2004. In that same year Rolling Stone ranked Prince #28 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

He's also apparently really good at basketball.

Main Studio Discography

 * 1978: For You
 * 1979: Prince
 * 1980: Dirty Mind
 * 1981: Controversy
 * 1982: 1999 (double album)
 * 1984: Purple Rain (soundtrack album)
 * 1985: Around the World in a Day
 * 1986: Parade (soundtrack album)
 * 1987: Sign '☮' the Times (double album)
 * 1988: Lovesexy
 * 1989: Batman
 * 1990: Graffiti Bridge (soundtrack album)
 * 1991: Diamonds and Pearls
 * 1992: Love Symbol Album
 * 1993: The Hits/The B Sides (the first Prince compilation to include some of his numerous B-sides; he was specifically paid by Warner Bros. to not be involved in its assembling)
 * 1994: Come
 * 1994: The Black Album (recorded in 1987 and intended to be a follow-up to Sign, shelved for some reason, distributed as bootleg, released legally in 1994)
 * 1995: The Gold Experience
 * 1996: Chaos and Disorder
 * 1996: Emancipation (triple album)
 * 1998: Crystal Ball (a quadruple album, with 3 CDs including edited/revised versions of previously bootlegged songs, remixes, and an acoustic album named The Truth. It was also shipped with a cassette of the 25-minute jam "The War" and another bonus disc filled with instrumentals, Kamasutra. Prince's overblown promises and legendarily poor handling of the release managed to alienate a sizeable portion of his fanbase (the YMMV page has more details under Hype Backlash) and it wouldn't be the last time that happened.)
 * 1999: Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic
 * 2001: The Rainbow Children
 * 2002: One Nite Alone...
 * 2003: Xpectation
 * 2003: N.E.W.S
 * 2004: Musicology
 * 2004: The Chocolate Invasion
 * 2004: The Slaughterhouse
 * 2006: 3121
 * 2007: Planet Earth
 * 2009: LOtUSFLOW3R/MPLSound/Elixer (three albums packaged as one, with the first two by Prince and the last by his latest protegé, Bria Valente)
 * 2010: 20Ten


 * The Trope Formerly Known as X

"If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind Then give me the electric chair for all my future crimes"
 * A Day in the Limelight: "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 allowed him two days of studio time as a present. Afterwards, 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 Sibling Team moment, since David Coleman [cello, oud, fingercymbals, darbuka and sings backing vocals] and Jonathan Melvoin [tambourine and backing vocals] share contributions with their sisters.)
 * Ambiguously Bisexual
 * Author Avatar: The Kid in Purple Rain and Graffiti Bridge, plus his character in Under the Cherry Moon. All two of them are really unpleasant, annoying folks.
 * Auto Erotica: "Little Red Corvette". Also serves as Double Entendre.
 * Bawdy Song and Intercourse with You: The poster child of these tropes, what with the amount of colourful metaphors and outright requests for it in 90% of his back catalogue. He even wrote a call-and-response anthem for the act called "Sex", but when it comes to being explicit, the following pretty much take the cake: "Sister", "Let's Pretend We're Married" (with the charming declaration "I sincerely wanna fuck the taste out of your mouth. Can you relate?"), "Darling Nikki" (the song that spurned the PMRC hearings that gave us the Parental Advisory stickers), "Erotic City", "Le Grind" and "Cindy C."
 * Ballad of X: "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" (who?)
 * Bishonen and Dude Looks Like a Lady: Aw, come on! Just look at the PICTURE AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE. Not to mention the cover of Lovesexy.
 * Boastful Rap: "My Name is Prince"
 * Brother-Sister Incest: "Sister". Apparently, incest is all it's cracked up to be...
 * Careful with That Axe: Dude can scream -- even if it does sound feminine.
 * Casanova: He's probably "recruited" more "proteges" in a week than any man can in five years, despite looking like he frequently wears said "proteges"' clothes and looks better in them than they do.
 * Cleavage Window: Invoked with a pair of cleavage window pants at the 1991 MTV Music Awards.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Just ask Kevin Smith sometime...
 * In one interview, Prince claimed that he was born epileptic and suffered from seizures in his childhood. Maybe that has something to do with it?
 * Concept Album: The Rainbow Children is ostensibly about a digital garden and a fight between the titular Rainbow Children and the Banished Ones, but its real concept might as well be "Prince ranting about shit for an hour. Fauxlosophically."
 * Contemptible Cover: The covers of Prince (Prince naked shown from the torso up), Dirty Mind (Prince wearing a trenchcoat and a thong) and Lovesexy (Prince naked in a religious pose that just happens to cover his balls) qualify as this. Retailers famously refused to stock Lovesexy as it is, either selling it from behind the counter or wrapped in a brown paper bag, much like John Lennon's Two Virgins.
 * A Date with Rosie Palms: "Gotta Stop (Messin' About)", "Jack U Off", and so on.
 * Dual-Meaning Chorus: "Little Red Corvette".
 * Epic Rocking: "1999", "Let's Pretend We're Married", "D.M.S.R.", "Automatic", "All the Critics Love U in New York", "Purple Rain", "Temptation", "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man", the original version of "Computer Blue" (see below at What Could Have Been) etc. etc.
 * Then there's his guitar work, from the blistering coda of "Let's Go Crazy" to his show-stealing solo from when he joined Tom Petty in performing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
 * The 12'' single version of "America" runs 21 minutes long because Prince and The Revolution jammed away until they had no more room left on tape. This was covered by a quick fade-out.
 * The first CD issue of Lovesexy was indexed as one 45:07 track without any separation between songs, to force listeners to listen to it in its entirety.
 * Genre Popularizer: The "Minneapolis sound", which was largely restricted to him and his associates (though often imita ted) and didn't survive past The Eighties.
 * Gratuitous Spanish: If somebody wanders into Prince's orbit and happens to speak Spanish, he will not hesitate to use that. This is most noticeable on some of his associates' albums, chiefly from Apollonia Kotero and Mayte Garcia, but he also indulged in it with "Te Amo Corazón" from 3121.
 * Heartbeat Soundtrack: The backing track of "Sex in the Summer" uses... a sample of the heartbeat of Prince and Mayte's then-unborn son. Makes the song harder to listen to.
 * Hey Its That Girl: Pearl, one of Prince's dancers from the "Diamonds And Pearls" tour and videos, is better known by her real name, Robia LaMorte, who played Jenny Calendar.
 * Hijacked by Jesus: While he did drop mentions and references to Christianity as far back as "Let's Pretend We're Married" (I'm in love with God/He's the only way/'Cause you and I know we're gonna die someday) and did write songs like "God" and "I Would Die 4 U", Prince converted to a Jehovah's Witness sometime in the early 2000s. Goodbye, explicit lyrics of yesteryear. He even went around self-censoring his past songs while performing live for a while, or altering their lyrics in other ways . Fans weren't amused.
 * Hypocritical Humour: He derided rappers as tone deaf on "Dead on It", then started incorporating it into his music on Lovesexy's "Alphabet St." and even moreso in The Nineties (cf. "Gett Off" and "My Name Is Prince").
 * He dedicates a verse of "We March" from The Gold Experience to lecturing his audience not to call women "bitches" (not to mention trashing Gangsta Rap for the same reason on "Days of Wild"), but only six songs later he blindsides them with a song called "Billy Jack Bitch" (which loops you-know-which exclamation from Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass Bitch").
 * I Am the Band: "Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed by Prince." Considering how many instruments he plays, yeah, he kind of is. One wonders why he even bothered letting other musicians tag along in the first place.
 * To perform live?
 * Lampshaded and parodied on a season 10 Saturday Night Live cold opening where Prince (played by Billy Crystal) sings a "We Are the World" parody called "I Am Also the World" with his back-up dancers (played by Mary Gross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and any time another musician (in this case, Willie Nelson [played by Jim Belushi], Bruce Springsteen [played by Gary Kroeger], and Cyndi Lauper [played by Pamela Stephenson]) tries to duet with Prince, his bodyguards [played by episode hosts Mr. T and Hulk Hogan] would beat the snot out of them.
 * I Call Him "Mister Happy": Even with a song called "Mr. Happy", reportedly Prince named his penis Valentino. Have fun never hearing "Manic Monday" the same way again!
 * Instrumentals: Very very few early on - "Venus de Milo" and "2 Nigs United 4 West Compton" were the only ones to make it onto albums in The Eighties. There's more on Kamasutra, Xpectation, C-Note and N.E.W.S.
 * Insufferable Genius: Stories abound of Prince's Jerkass behaviour, which was also the source of The Revolution's breakup. He didn't exactly try to hide it in his films either. Dude's like the James Cameron of music or something.
 * For some inexplicable reason, most of his jerkassery seemed to be aimed at Wendy & Lisa. Instead of scrounging up the old Revolution stories, here's a more recent one: in 1998 he announced a Prince & the Revolution comeback album called Roadhouse Garden and tried to get the duo involved. They reasonably asked for some compensation, and said no when he didn't offer any. Then he went and blamed them for the album being shelved.
 * Elton John said of a meeting with Prince, "I went up to Prince and said, 'I'm a big fan of your stuff,' and he looked at me and just walked off... left me standing there like a twat. He's a prat, but he's a clever prat."
 * During the Nude Tour, Prince constantly picked on guitar Miko Weaver, something biographer Alex Hahn and other bandmates suggest was due to him feeling jealous that Weaver had a bigger Groupie Brigade and was generally more popular with the ladies. In a pre-tour rehearsal, Prince even challenged Weaver to "take this shit outside", to which Weaver snarked "Yeah, like I'm gonna come outside with you and your bodyguards" and walked out, but was eventually convinced to return for the tour.
 * During the same Nude Tour, Rosie Gaines complained that she was being mistreated by dancers Tony M., Kirky J. and Damon Dickson, but Prince simply moved her to Mavis Staples' tour bus instead of reprimanding them.
 * The Immodest Orgasm: The end of "International Lover", complete with one of Prince's famous screams.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: The Black Album was pulled just weeks before its intended release and was replaced by Lovesexy, causing it to become one of the most bootlegged albums of all time. The album garnered a limited official release in 1994, in an attempt to help close off his contract with Warner Bros. (It didn't work.) Some of his unreleased stuff tends to leak out once in a while on bootlegs, and several others were released on the Internet through the NPG Music Club. Good luck catching them all.
 * Last-Note Nightmare: "Do Me, Baby" is pretty soothing for the most part, but the very end is pretty creepy and ominous sounding.
 * Lucky Charms Title: "Sign “☮” the Times" or "♥ or $". Prince took this even further with the symbol later used for his name, which was first used as the title for his fourteenth album.
 * A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Implied in the chorus of "Electric Chair":

"*guitar feedback* Lisa: Wendy? Wendy: Yes Lisa? Lisa: Is the water warm enough? Wendy: Yes Lisa. Lisa: Shall we begin? Wendy: Yes Lisa. *Epic Riff*"
 * Minimalistic Cover Art
 * Misogyny Song: Some of his unreleased material goes here, like "It Takes 3" (ladies, Sonny T. doesn't want to know you unless you have friends for threesomes!) and "Extra Loveable" (where after a bunch of normal lyrics expressing attraction to an unnamed woman, Prince suddenly starts singing about how he's going to rape her).
 * Name's the Same:
 * Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly: Prince's "Minneapolis Sound" involves a huge smashing-together of Funk, New Wave, rock, pop, soul/R&B and psychedelic rock. And it is awesome.
 * New Sound Album: Dirty Mind (showing off the Minneapolis Sound), 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 Funk Metal), Lovesexy (poppy), Graffiti Bridge (better technology), Diamonds and Pearls (less New Wave, less rock/pop, more funk/R&B/soul).
 * No Ending: "Batdance" cuts to a sudden halt with a sample of Michael Keaton saying "Stop."
 * Non-Actor Vehicle: Purple Rain, Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge. Only the first is considered in any way good - more specifically, So Bad It's Good. Over the years UTCM has attained minor cult status among fans.
 * 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 o' 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).
 * Noodle Incident: Why did Prince withdraw the Black Album? Er, hard to say. Stories circulate about how he became convinced it was evil, and some former associates claim that he came up with this idea after having a bad trip on ecstasy. Even when it was issued in 1994 to help complete his contract, his publicist stated he was still "spiritually against" it.
 * Not Christian Rock: We can go all day over this, but the Hijacked by Jesus part above kind of makes it moot.
 * And considering the content of the vast majority of his songs, it's not all that hard to figure out.
 * Although, Purple Rain and Let's Go Crazy can both be seen as (and have been stated to be) religious metaphors.
 * Older Than They Look: Looking at Prince, it's hard to believe that he's in his early 50s and he still looks the same as he did in the 1980s.
 * One-Letter Name: The symbol, used when he was referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" Said symbol, while not a alphabetical letter, still had to be printed during this time and Warner Brothers had to send out floppy disks of a special font that included the symbol so that print media could print it.
 * One Name Only: Prince.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: See The Trope Formerly Known as X.
 * Piss-Take Rap: "Dead on It". "Now the rapper's problem usually stems from being tone deaf..."
 * Ping-Pong Naivete: In "Uptown", Prince is approached by a seemingly loose woman and mentions that he's taken aback by the request to 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 can seem jarring.
 * Playing to The Fetishes.
 * Pop Star Composer: Did the '89 Batman soundtrack.
 * Power Ballad: Best match for this criteria: "Purple Rain".
 * Prince's Associates: Loads of them.
 * Protest Song: Not what he's primarily known for, but "Partyup", "Ronnie Talk to Russia" (although he liked Ronald Reagan), "America", "Sign O' the Times", "Dance On", "We March" and "Dear Mr. Man" count. These tend to be a bit Anvilicious though.
 * Purple Is Powerful
 * Rearrange the Song: Some of Prince's songs got stuck in Development Hell and by the time they came out they'd been drastically revised:
 * "Tick, Tick, Bang" was originally recorded in the Controversy sessions as a Punk Rock song with frenzied drumming, monotone synth and Prince's multitracked vocals. The Graffiti Bridge version somehow grew to include a slower tempo, a beat sampled from Jimi Hendrix, a different synth melody and more samples.
 * "You" was originally recorded by Prince in 1979 as a rock-oriented side-project called "The Rebels", and it was (appropriately) a riff-driven Power Pop song with a droning synth sequence, not too far removed from what Devo ended up doing the next year with Freedom of Choice. By the time Prince pawned it off to Paula Abdul in 1991 with the Princebonics-ized title of "U", the rock part was absent, and it was now more of a dance song.
 * The other surviving Rebels song, "If I Love You Tonight", wasn't radically changed since it started as a ballad, but Mayte's version has a more obvious R&B influence, with drum machines replacing Bobby Z.'s drums, and Princebonics replacing the normal title.
 * "Alphabet St." and "Kiss" both started out as acoustic blues songs in 1987 and 1985, respectively, and their original demos can be found on bootlegs, the former in drastically shortened form.
 * "Strange Relationship" had originally been recorded in 1982, and reworked with Wendy and Lisa in 1985, gaining a noticeable Indian influence through their playing sitar and wood flute. By the time it came out on Sign '☮' the Times, The Revolution had disbanded, and Prince altered the mix to bury their contributions. (They weren't removed, but picking out the sitar and wood flute now requires some more careful listening.)
 * In fact, one of the chief complaints of fans against the Crystal Ball boxset, besides the predominance of material from The Nineties, is that the 1980s songs were presented in revised form.
 * Real Men Wear Pink: Could very well be a Real Life Trope Codifier of this.
 * Record Producer: "Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed by Prince" ("& the Revolution" for Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day and Parade).
 * Retraux: MPLSound, if the name wasn't enough of a clue, is basically an entire album of Prince ransacking his 1980s Minneapolis sound.
 * Rockstar Song: "Baby I'm a Star", "My Name Is Prince".
 * Rummage Sale Reject: This is what he and the Revolution dressed like back in The Eighties. With heavy doses of Awesome Anachronistic Apparel. They pulled it off.
 * I wouldn't say Prince was dressed up like a Rummage Sale Reject in the 1980s -- more like a cross-dressing Rummage Sale Reject. He did wear a lot of ruffles and pastels and tight pants and high heeled boots.
 * Sampling: Many people have sampled his stuff (example: Public Enemy'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 Stupid Statement Dance Mix with "Batdance". Starting in The Nineties he would use the occasional sample more frequently: "7" is based on the 1960s R&B song "Tramp" by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, "Tick Tick Bang" yanks the drum beat from Jimi Hendrix's "Little Miss Lover", one version of the bootlegged "Dis Beat Disrupts" samples the famous "When the Levee Breaks" beat.
 * Self-Deprecation: "Prince? That skinny motherfucker with the high voice?"
 * From "Now", a song released during his symbol phase: "Don't worry about my name, it's too long to remember / I could tell you now but we'd be here 'till next September."
 * The unreleased "Blues in C (If I Had a Harem)" pokes fun at his Casanova reputation.
 * Self-Titled Album: His second album was this. The symbol that was the name of his fourteenth album was later used as his legal name.
 * Sexophone: Surprisingly this is rarely imployed, but finally saw use on 1989's three-part "The Scandalous Sex Suite", a 19-minute re-imagining of the song "Scandalous" from the Batman soundtrack. The woman in question being Kim Basinger, who converses with Prince throughout the song. This may have also been used in the infamous Underwear scene from the cinematic classic Graffiti Bridge.
 * Signature Song: "1999", "Purple Rain", the list can go on...
 * His live television performances usually consist of a selection of "Let's Go Crazy", "When Doves Cry", "Purple Rain", the intro to "1999", "Little Red Corvette" and not much else.
 * Spoken Word in Music: Numerous examples exist throughout his career. The most famous examples would include the start of "Let's Go Crazy". The most infamous example would probably be the intro to "Computer Blue":


 * Additional examples include the talk with God at the end of "Temptation" and the entirety of "Bob George".
 * "One Song", where half of its 8-minute length is taken up my a monologue/sermon before the song even starts.
 * "The War", a 25-minute live jam with Fauxlosophic Narration making up the lyrics.
 * Subdued Section: Too many to count.
 * Subliminal Seduction: Inverted 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 are you? I'm fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon." During live performances on tour, that section would be played forwards (probably because there was no way to properly reproduce it live).
 * Stupid Statement Dance Mix: "Batdance", which is Frankenstein'd together out of samples from Batman, quotes from unreleased Prince songs floating around that time (as well as the 1966 Batman theme), simplistic drum machines and a typically Princetastic guitar solo. Somehow, this was a #1 single.
 * Take That: He's recorded quite a few songs bashing on Warner Bros. Records, like "Dolphin", "Face Down" and "White Mansion".
 * The unreleased song "Extra Loveable" zings departed Revolution guitarist Dez Dickerson with "Hey Dez, don't you like my band?".
 * Take That, Critics!: "All the Critics Love U in New York". The title says it all. Additionally, "Bob George" is rumoured to be a reference to Nelson George, a Billboard and Village Voice music critic who gave some of his albums bad reviews.
 * The b-side "Hello" is a big take that to all of his critics, specifically those who criticized his absence in "We Are the World".
 * Talking to Himself: Prince distorts his voice electronically to have a dialogue between himself and God in "Temptation". He also sped up his voice on several occasions; many excursions into the upper range were intended to sound like a female alter ego named Camille.
 * Textless Album Cover: The Black Album (), Sign '☮' the Times and Batman.
 * The Quiet One: Prince and The Revolution ended up interviewed on MTV when the "America" single was released, an interview during which Prince refused to speak and instead let his bandmates answer all the questions.
 * Their First Time: From "Adore": "You made love to me like you were afraid… Was you afraid of me? Was I the first? Was I your every fantasy?"
 * Throw It In: Ton of Studio Chatter and random jamming.
 * Some production accidents even found their way into the completed songs. For instance, engineer Susan Rogers accidentally caused some words to be distorted while recording the vocals to "If I Was Your Girlfriend" through a technical error, and recounted to Alex Hahn that she thought Prince "was going to rip my head off!". Upon listening, Prince loved the effect and kept it in.
 * Similarly, "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" quite noticeably lacks low-end and sounds somewhat thin and muddy. This was also the result of a technical error at his Chanhassen home studio. The Prince Vault has the details, but for TLDR: Prince was recording through a console with two separate power supplies, and did not test it beforehand. During the "Dorothy Parker" session, the house was affected by a power cut, and lost one of the power supplies. Susan Rogers noticed that the music sounded flat, but she didn't want to interrupt recording to point it out, and only discovered the problem after the song had been finished. Prince liked the recording, and did not attempt to re-do the song with the fixed console.
 * Unusual Euphemism: Plenty.
 * "Dirty Mind": "In my daddy's car, it's you I really wanna drive."
 * "Le Grind": "We're gonna do the grind y'all, gotcha where I wantcha. Girl, it's gonna feel so good. Up and down, up and down, on the beat y'all, like a pony would, pony would."
 * "Cindy C": "I'm sure you're quite intelligent, a whiz at math and all that shit but I'm, I'm a tad more interested in flyin' your kite tonight..."
 * "Cream": "Cream, get on top; Cream, you will cop; Cream, don't you stop; Cream, sha-boogey-bop."
 * "Come": "Like a strawberry, chocolate, fender jazz, mashed potato fuzztone all over your thighs, oh baby!"
 * "Hot With U": "I wanna get you underneath the cream and do the marshmallow."
 * Villain Song: "Dance with the Devil", where The Joker is explicitly compared to Satan.
 * Xtreme Kool Letterz: Prince was one of the first to use this to write his song titles and lyrics, to the point that the system was nicknamed "Princebonics" (and reading it is the easiest way to send your inner Grammar Nazi into fits of fury). Starting in 1981, "to" = "2", "for" = "4", "you" = "U", "I" = an eye symbol (geddit?), "are" = "R", and so on. Prince fans usually romanize the eye symbol as "Eye" instead of "I", as the album Lovesexy featured two songs named "Eye No" and "I Wish U Heaven". This system reached its nadir with the 1986 song "♥ or $", pronounced "Love or Money".
 * Very obvious, and to some annoying, in his interview with Ebony magazine in June 2010 in which all of his responses are typed like this.
 * Could it be argued that Prince invented text messaging? Yes.
 * See also Lucky Charms Title above.

"What kinda fuck ending was that?"