And I bet Chaka mad that it isn’t.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    In case anybody doesn’t know the story behind the symbol, Prince created it because of a dispute with his record company. They wouldn’t let him do what he wanted and wouldn’t let him out of his contract, To perform outside of his contract he could change his name, but legally wouldn’t be able to refer to himself as the guy who used to be Prince - because that would be still using the name. This is a standard feature of recording contracts.

    So he changed his name to a symbol and didn’t tell anyone how to say it. But people had to call him something, so after some brief confusion concert venues and the media settled on, “the artist formerly known as Prince.” He didn’t tell them to mention his former name, they did that on their own. And his recording contract didn’t apply to them, so the record company had nobody to sue. Essentially he was still performing as Prince, and the company just had to suck it. I will never stop admiring the brilliance of this.