CHANHASSEN, Minnestota
The sound of someone knocking out a funk drumbeat thumped down a hallway as a visitor walked into Paisley Park, the studio complex Prince built in this Minneapolis suburb. Soon afterward the drummer emerged, wearing a white jacket of Chinese silk, tight white pants with buttons up the leg, white shoes and a red T-shirt lettered NPGMC. It was Prince, who had been using the time before an interview to record one more track for one more song in progress.
Prince has been virtually a one-man studio band since he released his first album in 1978, and in the years since he has recorded funk and rock, pop ballads and jazzy excursions; he has written streamlined, straightfoward hits and complex experiments. His skill and versatility have made him a model for musicians as different as D’Angelo, Beck and OutKast, and his storehouse of unreleased material, which he calls the Vault, may well hold thousands of songs.
“I record all the time,” he said simply. But this afternoon he paused to reflect on what has been his best year in at least a decade.
Prince led off this year’s Grammy Awards broadcast in February, joined onstage by Beyoncé, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March. His current album, “Musicology” (Paisley Park/Columbia), has sold more than a million copies in the United States since it was released in June, and it is lodged in the Top 20 of the Billboard album chart. Meanwhile, Prince is selling out arenas on tour.
On Monday Prince starts a three-night stand at Madison Square Garden, followed by shows at the Continental Arena in East Rutherford, N.J. (July 16 and 18), the Hartford Civic Center (July 17) and Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y. (July 20). He usually follows arena shows with late-night jam sessions at clubs. He has also renovated Paisley Park to change it from two recording studios to four. And on Dec. 31, 2001, he quietly married Manuela Testolini, a former Paisley Park employee.
Prince, 46, said he was a bit sleepy as he led his visitor into Studio A and settled in behind the 48-track mixing console. But on “Musicology” he boasted that he didn’t have an Off switch, and he grew more animated as he spoke: jumping to his feet, picking up a guitar to play a funk vamp, declaiming and gesticulating like a gospel preacher.
The lascivious young man who recorded albums like “Dirty Mind” (1980) has affirmed a newfound faith. “I always knew I had a relationship with God,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure God had a relationship with me.”
One of the new rooms in Paisley Park has the word “Knowledge” painted outside it. Its shelves hold books and pamphlets from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a Bible sits open on a lectern. Prince has stopped using profanity and has stopped singing about casual sex.
“I’ve always understood the two to be intertwined, sexuality and spirituality,” he said. “That never changed. What became more clear-cut to me was the importance of monogamy. And that was in the Scriptures many years ago.”
“The word sex has been turned into something so. . . . it means so many things to so many different people,” he added. “I don’t use it much anymore. It’s been sullied.”
On tour, he has been reaching into his old repertory for songs like “Purple Rain” and “D.M.S.R.,” which stands for “Dance Music Sex Romance.” Is he embarrassed now by some of the raunchier songs in his catalog? “Embarrassed?” he said with a smile. “I don’t know that word. Have you seen my outfits?"
Tabulating Prince’s current success has been contentious. On his current tour, concertgoers receive copies of the album as part of the price of the ticket, and those albums have been counted for Billboard’s chart rankings. “Once the ticket is sold, the CD is sold,” Prince said. “It’s one-stop shopping.” According to Sony Music, those albums account for about 27 percent of sales of “Musicology.” Yet even during the week ending July 4, when Prince was not playing concerts, the album sold 61,000 copies, keeping it at No. 15.
“One has been spurring the other, which is exactly what Prince thought it would do,” said Michelle Anthony, executive vice president of Sony Music. “With someone like Prince, you almost have cover to break all the rules.”
After complaints that Prince was giving the album away, Billboard and SoundScan, which compiles the charts, changed the method for counting album sales. If an album is sold with a concert ticket, the buyer now has to specifically authorize a surcharge for the price of the album if the sale is to be counted. Yet the rule is not retroactive, so Prince is likely to remain near the top of the chart for as long as he is on tour.
“I didn’t do this to usurp power from Billboard or SoundScan,” he said. “But the real power is in community, in actually connecting with people.”
Prince’s new visibility is not exactly a comeback. He never stopped making albums or touring, but for years he left behind the star-making machinery of the major labels. His longtime contract with Warner Brothers Records turned sour in 1993 as he changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph and appeared with the word “Slave” written on his face. Albums credited to Prince, with songs from the Vault and titles like “Chaos and Disorder,” continued to appear on Warner until the contract ran out, while albums credited to the glyph were released independently. He is now negotiating with Warner Brothers over the release of remastered versions of his old albums, including a 20th-anniversary edition of “Purple Rain.”
Prince formed his own company, NPG Records (for New Power Generation, the name of his band). Fans can subscribe to the NPG Music Club (www.npgmusicclub.com), which offers music to download and advance notice and discounts on concert tickets. After the Warner contract ended, Prince resumed using his old name.
By then he had decided on a new business model. In a typical recording contract, the label finances the recording of an album and other costs, then recoups its investment from the musicians’ royalties, typically about 15 percent of the album’s wholesale price. After costs are recouped, the label still owns the master recording, an agreement some musicians have compared to paying off a mortgage but having the bank still own the house. “There are a bunch of laws on the books that allow them to rape artists,” Prince said.
Prince refuses to accept that arrangement anymore. In his current deal with Sony Music USA—Don Ienner, the president of Sony Music USA, called it unique—Prince pays for recording and promotional costs, and Columbia presses, distributes and markets the album, receiving a percentage of each sale. It is not a long-term or exclusive agreement, although Columbia would be happy to repeat it. “No one can come and claim ownership of my work,” Prince said. “I am the creator of it, and it lives within me.”
“It’s the way it should have been a long time ago,” he added. “The whole paradigm has got to shift. But I’m free now.”
He tried a similar one-shot deal with Arista, in 1999, for “Rave un2 the Joy Fantastic,” credited to the glyph, but its songs were more convoluted than those on “Musicology,” which puts its funk and hooks on the surface. The album has made it easy for old fans to rediscover him and younger ones to connect.
“I make all kinds of records,” Prince said. “For this album, I didn’t feel like making some grand statement. It ain’t like me trying to pull the trigger back and annihilate something. I’m just chillin’.”
By this time, friends and family had drifted into Studio A: Prince’s wife, the funk bass player Larry Graham and Mr. Graham’s wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandson. The grandson, Jaiden Eittreim, 19 months old, was poking at a keyboard while Prince pushed buttons to trigger rhythm tracks, approving of the child’s timing: “He is definitely going to be funky,” Prince said.
Eventually it was bedtime, and Jaiden started to fuss and pout as he was dislodged from the keyboard. Ms. Testolini looked on with a smile: “That’s just how Prince is,” she said fondly of her husband, “when you try to take him out of the studio.”