![]() ![]() That’s fine, of course, but it’s not my cup of tea. Most distressingly from my perspective, there’s very little of Prince’s personality to be heard in his collaborations with Támar: it’s workmanlike, radio-friendly early 21st century R&B that just happens to be co-written and performed by Prince. But her featured track on 3121, “ Beautiful Loved & Blessed,” is just sort of a snoozefest to me before writing this blog, I can’t remember the last time I listened to it all the way through. I totally understand and respect her talent the girl can sing and she has stage presence, both of which are amply demonstrated by the above footage of her February 2006 show with Prince. I’ll be honest: I’m not a huge fan of Támar’s brand of contemporary R&B (this will be a recurring theme for this post, by the way). Soon, in advance of his 2006 album 3121, he took a relative unknown under his wing: a former member of Girl’s Tyme (the group that eventually became Destiny’s Child) named Támar Davis. It was also around this time when he began to more prominently position himself as a mentor to young artists, particularly women, performing with Beyoncé and Alicia Keys at various award shows and afterparties. By the end of the decade, the once-prolific idolmaker was the one seeking other artists’ support: 1999’s Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, a bald-faced attempt by O(+> and Arista to replicate the success of Santana‘s Supernatural, awkwardly paired the Purple One as a reluctant “legacy artist” alongside then-current names like Eve, Gwen Stefani, Ani DiFranco, and Sheryl Crow.Īfter the turn of the century, however, the pendulum began to swing the other way. The publicity push around Prince’s 2004 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, culminating in the release of his comeback album Musicologyand its massive accompanying tour, restored him to household name status. ![]() And, while NPG Records‘ attempts to sell music via Internet mail-order were groundbreaking for the time, they were also mismanaged and inefficient just ask anyone who preordered Crystal Ballfrom O(+>’s website in 1997. As I mentioned last time, most of the side projects sampled by the compilation were quietly cancelled only Mayte’s Child of the Sun was released in 1995, and then only in Europe. O(+>’s own career was up and down in the latter half of the ’90s: up with Emancipationin 1996, mostly down after that. The years immediately following the release of 1-800-NEW-FUNK were fallow ones for the artist then known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. But it was also a more sustainable and, I think, humane approach to cultivating talent one much better suited to Prince’s latter-day reputation as a fierce protector of artists’ rights. I think, however, that the shift was philosophical as well as pragmatic: with one notable exception, Prince’s latter-day side projects were more conventional mentor/mentee relationships, rather than the svengali-like practices of his earlier “ Jamie Starr” days. In some ways, that made these projects less memorable than, say, the Time or Vanity 6: those thinly-veiled Prince albums recorded when he was at the peak of his powers as a songwriter and producer. In part, this was because he just wasn’t a big enough star anymore to sustain multiple artists’ careers in addition to his own. We’re covering a lot of ground this time, because for the last two decades of his life, Prince took a notably more laid-back approach to his spinoff acts. Well, here we are: the last full weekend of summer, and the last installment of my Prince (Protégé) Summer guest series. ![]()
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