Comment: how Prince played the music industry Published on: 22 April 2016 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Adam Behr discusses the legacy of Prince. Dr Adam Behr, Lecturer in Contemporary and Pop Music , When Tipper Gore heard the reference to masturbation in the lyrics to Prince鈥檚 on the album she had just bought for her 11-year-old daughter, it sparked a chain of events that sent shockwaves through the record industry, ultimately culminating in . As was so often the case with Prince, the controversy stemmed from his unique position in the realm of popular music. Prince was a prodigiously gifted multi-instrumentalist and guitar virtuoso, a commercial pop artist, a showman and a bandleader drawing on traditions dating back to the pre-pop big-band outfits via James Brown鈥檚 soul revues. He was at once easy to place 鈥� an almost archetypal pop star 鈥� and impossible to label definitively. His chart prominence in the 1980s doubtless contributed to Gore鈥檚 mistaken assumptions about the content of his work, but his star persona also revealed fault-lines in commercial music making 鈥� which he didn鈥檛 hesitate to prise open. These are as much part of his legacy as his ceaselessly eclectic output. Amongst the vanguard of black American artists of his generation to break into the white market, he was the first 鈥� only really 鈥� since Hendrix to do so on a grand scale as an overtly 鈥渞ock鈥� act even as he maintained his links to the genres on the other side of the segregation lines. Prince didn鈥檛 so much 鈥渃ross over鈥� as straddle the divide. Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones brought in to provide the guitar pyrotechnics on . Prince had them on tap. Flowers are left outside Paisley Park, the Minnesotan home and studio of Prince. William Anstett/EPA Prince and the Revolution At 37 studio albums under his own name, his body of work is immense, even leaving aside the vast seam of , and spans the gamut of modern popular music genres whilst somehow avoiding pastiche. Prince occupies a strange place in the field of popular music 鈥� a jack-of-all-trades yet still in a class of his own. The pop, funk, psychedelia, hard-rock and soft soul were all held together by force of personality, even as his public face was also clearly a creation. This may seem contradictory for someone whose , but contradiction 鈥� even something of a obdurate streak 鈥� was also Prince鈥檚 stock in trade. He was an arch manipulator of the pop machinery, and didn鈥檛 make things easy for fans or the media. From 鈥減urple鈥� through 鈥減aisley鈥� to a distinctive lexicon 鈥� glyphs of eyes to represent the letter 鈥淚鈥� in titles, 鈥淯鈥� for the word 鈥測ou鈥� 鈥� he inhabited his own aesthetic world. But even as a branding exercise, this was one that almost wilfully gritted the gears of smooth production. From awkward typography outwards, his career often ran at oblique angles to standard practice. This was most famously exemplified by his decision in 1993 to to an unpronounceable merger of the traditional symbols for male and female, but it was a tendency that ran deep. In 1987 he his follow-up to the successful immediately prior to release. It had been slated to hit the market with an entirely black cover and no title. The replacement , poppier and more musically accessible, arrived as a CD with only one track (and nine songs) to forestall the much-touted programming and skipping facility of the format. The cover was a photograph of himself naked. Some shops baulked at stocking it without covering it up. In 2007 he gave away copies of his album in the UK as a on The Mail on Sunday, in direction contradiction to the wishes of his record company, which consequently withdrew its British release. This free UK album was accompanied by an unheard of 21-night run at the O2 Arena as the industry at large was coming to terms with the fact . Sometimes lacking the support of major industry channels and, at times, in obstinate opposition to them, he nevertheless carved out a profitable route to his fans. Sign 鈥極鈥� The Times. , Sign 鈥極鈥� The Times For all his eccentricities, there was an internal consistency to his working practices. Author and journalist noted that where Michael Jackson鈥檚 business practices were geared towards promoting his larger than life persona, 鈥淧rince 鈥� used his energy to build and direct a multi-media empire鈥�. His early contract with Warner gave him creative control 鈥� almost unheard of for a new artist 鈥� and he leveraged his commercial success into the construction of his own Paisley Park studio complex. Even his name-change 鈥� and public appearances with the word 鈥溾�� written on his face 鈥� were tied to his subsequent acrimonious parting with the label over ownership of the master recordings of his releases. Experimental in business as well as music, he pioneered direct distribution to his fans over the internet , before also being one of the first artists to after taking and, by turns, before releasing a song exclusively to the platform in July 2015 and an album to streaming service in December. As paradoxical as this appeared, Prince鈥檚 career can be read as a serious of interventions to maintain control of his artistic and financial destiny across the value chain 鈥� from production, through publishing and distribution to live performance. Never one to compromise, musically or otherwise, his twists and turns over the internet, along with his back and forth relationships with record labels, were all evidence of an ongoing attempt to simultaneously capitalise on the latest developments and kick against what he perceived as the structural inequities of the system to prioritise the relationship between the musician and the audience. Unpredictable and shocking to the last, Prince will be best remembered 鈥� and certainly most loved 鈥� for his music. But his imprint on modern music making went beyond that. A bellwether for popular music and its underlying practices, he was indeed a 鈥淪ign O the Times鈥�. , Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, This article was originally published on . Read the . 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