Prince believed the music industry mishandled Mavis Staples: “I don’t they even know”
The music industry is known to be far too cruel to its artists. They might be in the business to make money, but there’s only so many times that they can hit hard before people drop them like a bad habit. But Prince knew that the industry didn’t really know what they had on their hands with some musical legends.
Then again, Prince’s attitude towards the industry was always going to be a bit strained. He always knew that there was someone looking to tear him down in some places, and while he soldiered through horror stories that would leave most people discouraged for the rest of their lives, he was never going to be completely happy when people at Warner Bros started treating his music like a piece of meat half the time.
But Prince was already cut from a different cloth than most artists. Making new music was no big deal to him, and even if he had to make new albums, he wanted to challenge everyone’s notions of what the album experience could be. Sometimes it could be a new set of classics like Diamonds and Pearls, or it could be one spectacular collection of music like he did on Emancipation.
At the same time, a lot of Prince’s heroes weren’t so lucky when it came to their classics. They had the potential to make good records, but when looking at his heroes like Joni Mitchell and James Brown, each of them had their moments where things could get more than a little bit complicated when trying to put out their albums.
And while ‘The Purple One’ could call his own shots, it was a tragedy seeing Mavis Staples get the shaft far too often. She was a once-in-a-generation singer whenever she got onstage, and when she worked with Prince on a few projects at Paisley Park, it should have been a slam dunk for any R&B-focused label. Yet when Warner Bros decided to take on the record, Prince was shellshocked when Staples got dropped.
As far as he could see, the label was throwing away a blank check with a golden voice, saying, “Mavis Staples is a brilliant, brilliant artist, but I don’t think anyone at Warners knows what to do with her. Sometimes, I think all a company does is sign people, and then gets those People to sign other people. All these people getting signed, and that’s the last you hear of them. I don’t think they even know who they got on their label.”
Granted, it’s not like the label wasn’t aware of people jumping the gun every now and again, either. There have been musical proteges that have turned out to be flashes in the pan, but considering the kind of standards that Prince set for himself whenever he performed, he was never going to showcase anyone if he didn’t think they could dominate whatever part of the industry they were working in.
Because if we’re looking at this objectively, having any artist get a co-sign from Prince is the equivalent of Paul McCartney or Jimi Hendrix saying that someone is their favourite new artist. Sure, they could be hyping their new discovery up for the hell of it, but is anyone going to argue with people who could spit out hits faster than it takes most of us to make a half-decent sandwich?
