Fenxy

Prince still has fans?

I don't know what the hell is going on here (maybe he's lost it?), but I'm going to reserve my judgement. It's even weirder because he recently gave away 1mil copies of his latest almbum for free, before the CD sales officially opened — a gesture that I thought he'd done to piss off the record companies and overabused copyright management, as well as pleasing his fans. Maybe I was wrong.

In combination with hthth's recollection of how they planted free copies all over of Prince's CD, I simply do not get it. This doesn't make any sense. Maybe that was just a publicity fluke, an isolated incident of benevolence.

Prince's latest initiative is likely to please record industry executives and music retailers, who have not always seen eye-to-eye with the 49-year-old.

He has referred to the record industry as "the speculation business" and gave away copies of his new album "Planet Earth" for free with a British Sunday newspaper.

(Yahoo Music)

I've heard he really is an egocentric guy. If you're on set with him for a project, you're disallowed from looking at his face or addressing him directly. (One of my contacts is a Hollywood animal trainer--they used her animals in his video and she was on set to direct them. I guess one of the atrocities she committed was by going up to Prince directly and asking him where he wanted them and everyone just kind of stared at her for daring to talk to him.)

Then again, Chappelle has parodied Prince for inviting people over to his house and cooking pancakes for them...which I've heard actually happens. Haha!! Celebrities, anyway.

That's why it makes sense that money is not the focus, silencing the criticism is.

@estarla - He is very egocentric. I experienced his lack of desire to interact with people at an after party. After being stunned how short he is with heels on I was speechless on how different he is around people vs. on stage. He embraces the music on stage but pushes people away.

@Tyme: I see, that makes complete sense then when you look at it from that angle. Amazing, then, how his ego can really get in the way of common sense. He can't handle the criticism even a little bit to recognize that his fans got him there in the first place. Sounds a little bit like SMS...

Disclaimer: Not that there's anything wrong with guys being short, btw. A bad 'tude is always a bad 'tude no matter who's got it. ;)

Prince the artist and Prince's art are two different things. Maybe he sees it that way, with no gray areas, when it comes to people paying attention to him instead of purely his music.

@estarla - It was odd. Eddy Murphy has similar oddities in his personality. He doesn't like people looking at him either, which makes me wonder why people who don't like to be looked at get in that profession. o_O

hthth - He's a veteran performer. Kind of odd 30 yrs. into the game he develops this stance.

I wonder about the legality of it. If I decide to get a tattoo of Prince on my arm, then I give a fan site permission to display a picture of my arm (that has the tattoo) on the site...does he have the right to say I can't display my arm? Or if I make a Prince shirt. As long as I am not getting financial gain from it and the site isn't making money from my tattoo - what can Prince do? Sue because they have advertising on the site to pay for time/server fees? I think bootleggers at concerts make more than these fan sites do, particularly since Prince isn't doing that much right now.

The more I think about it the less sense it makes lol.

Easy. Prince has lost his mind. So listen to Saul Williams instead. :)