1/2 In a rare, candid 1998 appearance on Tavis Smiley’s BET Tonight (October 27), the Artist Formerly Known as Prince discussed artistic freedom, the music industry, self-defined success, spirituality, and unity. Joined later by Chaka Khan and Larry Graham, he used the platform to outline an independent path centered on ownership, heart-centered creation, and rejecting traditional contracts. Freedom, Contracts, and Closeness to God: Prince opened by linking personal freedom directly to spiritual proximity: “When a man is free… it puts him closer to God… The path is open to get to God.” He declared he would “preach freedom” and “the annihilation of contracts.” Without contracts, he argued, there would be no need for lawyers fighting over money “which has no power ultimately.” He understood why certain magazines avoided featuring him—they preferred to keep out a message that challenged the system. This stance reflected his post-Warner Bros. era. After years of public battles over creative control and master ownership (including writing “slave” on his face), he operated through NPG Records and emphasized retaining rights. Redefining Success and Self-Love Critics noted he was selling fewer records than in his major-label peak. Prince agreed but attributed it partly to limited store availability and “player hating.” More importantly, he rejected industry metrics: “I don’t gauge success based upon the way other people gauge success. This isn’t about SoundScan… This is about our plan… what we believe now… The music is a success upon creation. When you give it to somebody like a Rolling Stone or a Vibe and they start critiquing it, then your perception changes. But that’s looking through somebody else’s eyes… We gauge success based upon what we feel in our hearts… We’ve shut our minds off now. Minds should be used for what they were made for, filing cabinets. We think with our hearts.” He framed self-regard as healthy rather than arrogant: “I think I’m great… I say that to show that I love myself. And if more people did love themselves, they’d stop worrying about whether someone was cutting edge or not.” He still sold out arenas, proof that audiences responded to the work on its own terms. Authenticity, Catalog, and Image: Prince stressed he was “a musician. I don’t sample… it’s not Memorex. I go on stage, and my microphone is on.” Playing with collaborators like Larry Graham (who had played on classic tracks) made sampling unnecessary for him. He estimated “upwards of a thousand” finished but unreleased songs at Paisley Park, a figure that underscored both his prolific output and the constraints of the old system. On his constantly evolving look and media mockery (including a New York Post Page Six jab at an outfit he wore while presenting at the GQ Awards, and the “old man” costume in the premiere of his video “Come On”), he was unbothered. People, he suggested, lived “vicariously” through the image changes, but “at the heart of the matter though is the music.” Privacy stemmed from earlier obsessive fan incidents that made him cautious. Approaching 1999, Unity, and Spirituality Prince explained his decision to do a live, relatively uncontrolled interview as 1999 neared. He had been reflecting on how “people of color have been left out of [the] space program” and “don’t really see us in Pleasantville.” He sought something that could “unite us all,” suggesting freedom as a candidate. He added a spiritual note: if Jesus returned, “we’d probably not recognize him.” Later he reinforced that “Jesus is far more important,” that people should stop asking for autographs (a practice he ended after the name change), and that focusing on welcoming Jesus’s return could reduce chaos On the song “1999” itself, written years earlier, he offered the cryptic: “If the sky has blood in it, blue and red make purple.” #PrinceOnThisDay

1997 Panasonic AJ-LT85 Laptop Editor

Happy 75th birthday to Bootsy Collins! Funk bassist from the James Brown years into Parliament-Funkadelic and his own Rubber Band. The star bass and the voice are part of the same sound.

building a cellular automata (game of life) alphabet

Patagonia, Chile

Brown suede. Cream knits. Timeless taste.

Flan Pâtissier marbré chocolat noisette ! 👩🏻‍🍳🍫🤎 Rien ne vaut un flan bien réconfortant par ce froid !

Fall flannels

Tamagotchi, 1997.

Sweater Weather Is the Best Weather.