Page 13 - Florida Sentinel 4-26-16 Edition

Prince News
Prince’s Remains Cremated,
Prince Rogers Nelson June 7,, 1958- April 21,, 2016
President Obama, Drake, Killer Mike,
Stevie Nicks, Alabama Shakes,
Disclosure, More Honor Prince
In the hours follow- ing the announcement that Prince was found dead Thursday morning at his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota at the age of 57, countless people have taken to social media to pay tribute to the icon.
Below, find reactions
from President
Obama, Drake, Stevie Nicks, Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, Mariah Carey, Killer Mike, the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy, Spike Lee, DJ Premier, Mary J. Blige, Alabama Shakes, and more.
PRINCE And SPIKE LEE
Private ‘Beautiful’ Ceremony Held
Prince’s remains have been cremated, and a small group of family and friends held a private ceremony to honor the music legend, his publicist said Saturday.
Yvette Noel-Schure said in a statement that Prince’s remains had been cremated without specifying when. His body was released to his family Friday after- noon after a Minnesota medical examiner performed an autopsy.
“A few hours ago, Prince was celebrated by a small group of his most beloved: family, friends and his musi- cians, in a private, beautiful ceremony to say a loving goodbye,” Noel-Schure said in the statement.
The “final storage” of Prince’s remains would remain private, but an announcement about a “musical celebra- tion” is forthcoming, the statement said.
Prince Album Sales Soar On Amazon, iTunes
Prince’s Secret Vault Of
Fallen music superstar Prince is proving to be just as big a chart- topper in death as he was in life, with his albums swamping the top slots on download charts at both
There Will Never Be Another Like Prince, the Greatest Recording Artist of All Time
Prince Rogers Nelson was—and still is—the gold standard of artistry. A brilliant guitarist, bassist, arranger, and producer, he was more than a vision- ary. He was an entity unto himself.
Prince’s death gutted music fans everywhere. The iconic musician became synonymous with music over a four-decade-long career that challenged con- vention and championed freedom—and he became a benchmark for any artist who believes themselves driven by creativity and unwilling to relinquish con- trol. But with his passing, there is something that needs to be stated, once and for all. Whatever your preferred genre of music—you need to understand something:
We just lost the second greatest recording artist of all time. Michael Jackson being the first.
The world is devastated, shocked, and stunned. The biggest icons in music, sports, and even the pres- ident of the United States reacted with sorrow and disbelief when it was announced that Prince had died. But this is more than just the death of a popular artist. We lost the gold standard for artistry. We lost the man who was the living, breathing embodiment of everything you could want an artist to be.
Will Prince’s Little Sister Inherit His $300M ?
While it’s still not clear who will inherit Prince’s Paisley Park estate and net worth, new reports sug- gest that his younger sister, Tyka Nelson, could be first in line. However, Nelson will likely get her late brother’s fortune only in the event that Prince did not have a will at the time of his death.
Minnesota law states that the first person to in- herit someone’s fortune after one’s death, in the ab- sence of a will, is a spouse, followed by children. Prince, who died at the age of 57 Thursday in his compound, was not married at the time of his death. It’s also believed that he didn’t have any living chil- dren. The iconic singer did have one child, a son named Boy Gregory, but the baby died one week after his birth from a rare genetic disorder called Pfeiffer syndrome.
Based on the law, the deceased person’s net worth would then go to grandchildren, parents, siblings or “more distant relatives if there are no closer ones.” Prince’s parents died more than a decade ago, which means Nelson could be given Prince’s for- tune, estimated to worth more than $300 million.
As far as her bond with Prince, Nelson offered: “I love my brother. But I’m not a yo-yo. He can’t just keep spinning me in and out of his life.”
“Hopefully, Prince executed a trust and indicated his intentions, both with respect to who his trustee would be and how he would want the estate to be dis- posed of,” Streisand said (via Page Six). “Prince was an incredibly smart person, he had great legal representation ... so I would suspect that somebody along the way said, ‘Look, we’ve got to get you to ex- ecute some documents.’”
Unreleased Music Could Produce
Prince in London in 2007.
His purple reign over the music industry isn’t over yet.
Prince leaves behind a cache of unreleased music so vast that his estate could put out a posthumous album every year for the next century.
The storied vault featur-
ing thousands of secret
songs, albums and yes,
even movies, has been the
source of much speculation among the late artist’s purple people for decades.
About 70% of the music Prince produced was never re- leased.
That’s saying a lot for a musician who released 39 studio albums, 4 live albums, 13 EPs and 104 singles over the past four decades.
Prince sold 100 million albums throughout his career, but Prince’s producers and friends have said some of his best music is sitting dormant in the vault. If it were to be opened, and the music packaged and sold posthumously, Prince’s estate could sell tens of millions of albums for po- tentially hundreds of millions of dollars.
But it’s not clear that Prince ever wanted that music re- leased.
Alan Leeds, Prince’s former tour manager and presi- dent of Paisley Park Records until 1992, told the writer that the artist recorded every concert he ever did.
“You could do a box set of 10 CDs of live concerts from the various eras of his career,” said Leeds.
The shelves of stereo tapes and multitrack tapes and full albums are stowed in an actual bank vault in the Paisley Park basement.
“It has a bank vault door. It’s really, really thick. It has the wheel on it, just like you’d see in a bank vault,” Rogers said. “When I left in 87, it was nearly full, so I can’t imagine what they’ve done [since]. It was just row after row after row of everything we did.”
But Prince was notoriously protective of his brand and music. In a nasty dispute with his original label, Warner Bros., in the mid-1990s, Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and painted the word “slave” on his face. He prevented his music from being released on Spotify, and it’s hard to come by on YouTube as well.
Notably, Prince worked at a torrid pace in the late ‘90s in an effort to quickly release enough albums to end his Warner Bros. contract. He was criticized by fans for pro- ducing some of his worst work during that time. His final Warner Bros. album was released in 1999 — called “The Vault: Old friends 4 Sale.”
So it’s anyone’s guess what Prince would have wanted to do with the vault music. It’s also unclear who will inherit Prince’s estate and what will become of the vault.
But not all posthumous record releases go smoothly.
Tupac’s estate feuded with his record label, Death Row, for years. Tupac had no will, and his mother was eventu- ally deemed his heir. She fought bitterly with Death Row over Tupac’s rights, eventually forming her own label to release five posthumous albums.
Prince said he wrote music to keep himself alive. He could live on through his music for decades. But if the vault stays sealed, his fans will have to remember him from the thousand or so songs that were released during his lifetime.
Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes.
Despite the purple rocker’s notorious antipathy for dig-
ital music, fans have rushed to purchase his catalog on Amazon and iTunes since his sudden death on Thursday. “Purple Rain,” “Sign O’ The Times” and Prince’s other musical hits dominated the list of top 5 digital albums on Amazon, and occupied the top six slots of iTunes top downloads.
Although Prince released a new album just last year called “Hitnrun Phase One,” the digital downloads charts were virtually dominated by old stalwarts from the 80s and the 90s.
The downloads appear to be part of a feedback loop of fan nostalgia. Radio stations across the U.S. have been playing the artist’s catalog virtually nonstop in tribute, and cable channel BET Soul dedicated the entire weekend’s programming exclusively to Prince videos.
Spotify, however, was noticeably absent from the pur- ple party, with none of its top 50 including any Prince songs. That was because in the year before he died, the singer yanked his catalog from streaming sites and granted Jay-Z’s Tidal platform sole rights.
Prince’s Net Worth: $300 Million, Donated Millions To Charity
It has been days since the tragic passing of the purple music icon, Prince. He was a true leg- end and everyone inside and outside the industry admired him for his work and zeal. His inspiration has reached many artists and has also gained him quite an impressive ca- reer.
In the end, Heavy re-
ported that he was able to
bring up a total net worth
value of $300 million. Celebrity Net Worth has it that his luxurious sense of living enabled him to settle several homes in his lifetime, including a villa that’s stationed right beside the Mediterranean Sea.
According to DrFunkenBerry, his career racked up sales of over 100 million albums worldwide and has earned his keep from 7 Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Oscar. He usually performs on his own time and history has it that he also loved to pop up at other artists’ concerts in his early years. However, if you wanted him to show up at your party, you need to pay the standard $2 million talent fee but if the mood strikes him, he’ll do it for free.
And though he was valued at $300 million, most of his money went to charity. People have always seen him afford a luxurious lifestyle but Born Rich indicated that he do- nated millions to New York Charities like Harlem Chil- dren’s Zone, American Ballet Theatre and Uptown Dance Academy.
PRINCE
Albums For Another 100 Years
Musician Prince performs onstage at the 36th Annual NAACP Image Awards at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
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