Paisley Park, a lavishly weird recording complex just west of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is exactly the kind of place you’d expect to be owned and operated by a lavishly weird recording star like Prince. The wildly talented singer-songwriter doesn’t go by the name of Prince anymore, of course; in 1993 he changed his name to the unpronounceable glyph [symbol for the artist formerly known as Prince], and now most people call him either “the artist formerly known as Prince” or, more familiarly, “the Artist.”
The latter, one quickly learns, is correct usage among employees at Paisley Park, a workplace that seems to have just about everything but llamas. The walls are ringed by zodiac signs, dotted by paintings of puffy clouds and gilded with the Artist’s gold records. High up on one wall is an illustration of two huge eyes-guess whose?—with a godlike sunburst beaming out from between them. The Artist’s private office has a papal portentousness to it-the doors are made of stained glass. And when the Artist is on the premises, a glass pyramid that crowns the complex glows with a purplish light. That is how ye shall know he is among us.
But pretentious quirkiness without the platinum popularity to back it up can begin to feel a little Norma Desmondish, and the Artist has been suffering from dwindling sales for almost a decade. Purple Rain (1984) sold 13 million copies; his last album, Chaos and Disorder (1996), didn’t even sell 100,000. But this week the performer who defined ’80s glam-pop and helped pioneer rock-funk fusion is attempting a comeback. Having extricated himself from his contract with Warner Bros. Records (a pact he so despised he started writing slave on his cheek), the Artist is releasing a triple CD titled Emancipation, the first in his new deal with EMI. While the album’s overall import falls well short of that of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, it does have its moments.
The famously reclusive performer is also doing interviews. Last week he sat down with a TIME reporter (who ducked the question of what one calls the Artist to his face by not calling him anything) to talk about his new album, his new contract, his new wife, his new child and all the newness in general that surrounds him lately. In person he seems more fragile than one might expect, with his thin frame and delicately eyelined eyes. When he speaks, his voice is deep and soft. “This record is very personal to me,” he says about Emancipation, a 36-song, three-hour-long epic. “I got everything out of my system with it.
When I wrote it, I was a free man and a happy man and a clear man. You’ll hear much more clarity and joy in it.” But was a triple album really necessary? “I let the music dictate what I want,” says the Artist. “Citizen Kane is a long movie; maybe this is my Citizen Kane. I’ve got nobody to answer to now. This is one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done.”
With songs like the racy Little Red Corvette, the Artist, when he was Prince, established a reputation for funky eroticism, for music that celebrated getting down and playing around. Now the Artist is married (his bride Mayte was one of his dancers) and has an infant child, and his album reflects his new domesticity. ("So what does your wife call you?” the Artist is asked. “She calls me many things,” he replies.) Emancipation champions monogamy-especially on the swaying jam Friend, Lover, Mother/Wife. The Artist also seems anxious about the world his child will inherit-several songs, including New World, deal with technology’s dangers.
"My writing has changed immensely,” says the Artist. “Getting married has really got me focused. Songs come to me a lot easier. This album-I could almost see the whole thing done in my head. The common thread is love-even the angry songs I tried to resolve positively.”
He’s also resolved his anger toward Warner Bros. He calls his 1992 contract with the company “a learning experience.” The Artist wanted to release more than one CD a year; Warner Bros. thought that would dilute his work. The company also released two CDs of Prince material against his will-The Black Album (1994), a sharp-tongued CD that parodied rap and that Prince had famously shelved; and the uneven Come (1994), a collection of outtakes. The Artist was not amused.
"You don’t know how much it hurts not owning your own material,” he says, his new deal having changed that. “When a record company goes ahead and does something with a song you wrote-let’s say it turns up in a Nike commercial-it can make you angry for a week.” An executive at Warner Bros. sees things differently: “Prince never understood that you can’t release as much as you can spew out...That way of thinking can come from living isolated like he has in a place like Minnesota. He’s shy and somewhat closed off, and has always had a small group of people around him who never told him anything he didn’t want to hear. He wanted his freedom so badly. He was really tortured.”
No longer. Last week the Artist held a coming-out party. Three hundred guests streamed into Paisley Park to hear him perform. The show started with a recording of Martin Luther King proclaiming, “Free at last, free at last!” The Artist then took the stage to play Jam of the Year, from his new album, and Purple Rain, one of his biggest hits. The concert ended when he announced, “Hey, man, it’s my wife’s birthday, we gotta get outta here! Nov. 19! Don’t y’all let us down!” Nov. 19, of course, happens to be the release date of Emancipation. The first disc is mostly shimmery party music; the second is slower and sexier; the third draws from throbbing, dance-oriented techno. While a few of the new numbers, such as Let’s Have a Baby, are as sharply winning as long-ago Prince smashes like Kiss and When Doves Cry, Emancipation is plagued with a lot of filler. In the end there are just too many middling songs. Still, listeners can indulge in a little emancipation of their own and make one great album out of this three-CD set. Directions: 1)Buy Emancipation and a blank tape; 2)Record these songs off the three CDs: Jam of the Year; Somebody’s Somebody; In This Bed I Scream; One Kiss at a Time; Soul Sanctuary; Emale; Let’s Have a Baby; Friend, Lover, Mother/Wife; My Computer; and the title track. A little extra work? Sure. But well worth it. Freedom has its price.