Rethinking the biographic performance, rebranding and re-symbolisation of Prince

Abstract

Most biographic treatments of Prince agree on the basic components of his chronological life. I will provide a précis of the biographic information that has become instrumental when discussing Prince as a subject. Where I disagree with this conventional field of Prince biography and the works that have relied on this method of making Prince knowable is that up until now these have not treated Prince Rogers Nelson as the biological and ontological body separate from Prince the artist and the staged personae through which he wrote songs, and created and performed music. It is through these staged personae, that were also turned into brands, that Prince produced an empire of music performances, recordings and artistic meanings, and also through which he became known for his creative work. Prince the artist was made knowable in a highly mediated environment of audiovisual reproduction of music performance, initially mostly analogue but later fully part of the digital world. This thesis is about questions of cultural production, biographic performance, and biographic maintenance. Not only was Prince’s music authored and produced as recordings and live stage performances, but the very idea of Prince as an artist was also the subject of constant production. And once Prince was produced, its existence required maintenance, both as consistency and as reworking. These are the features of my study of Prince Rogers Nelson as he performed through the produced persona of Prince and later as and then once again as Prince. This distinction should not be understood through a lens of the idea of an authentic self and a musical alias. Rather these processes of artistic production were geared towards music enhancement and promotion, and perhaps branding, in a domain of heightened aural and visual performativity. Prince was made knowable through sound and visuality. Sometimes maintenance took the form of the defence of intellectual property, for music became property through the rituals and procedures of commerce. At times, these conditions saw the need for the ongoing production of Prince and at others, the performed music required a new persona and brand, such as