Naturally, the effect was slightly more mechanical and robotic than his previous work and strongly recalled the electro-funk experiments of several underground funk and hip-hop artists at the time. Where his earlier albums had been a fusion of organic and electronic sounds, 1999 was constructed almost entirely on synthesizers by Prince himself. After delivering the sound-alike album, Controversy, Prince revamped his sound and delivered the double album 1999. It would still be another year before Prince would make major waves in the industry with his overwhelmingly well-received breakthrough, Dirty Mind.With Dirty Mind, Prince had established a wild fusion of funk, rock, new wave, and soul that signaled he was an original, maverick talent, but it failed to win him a large audience. to market him as a mainstream pop artist (“Don’t make me black,” he told the head of A&R at the label, Lenny Waronker), his work was still predominantly considered through the lens of the R&B and disco genres. Reviews of Prince almost exclusively compared him to other African-American artists, and even though he was explicitly instructing Warner Bros. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 - but in 1979 Prince was still struggling to break out of the rigid categorizations of the music industry. Those first out-of-town concerts were well-received, and the band was soon enlisted to open for funk superstar Rick James on a three-month tour, giving Prince the opportunity to win over new fans from coast to coast in the spring of 1980.Ĭommercially, Prince performed significantly better than his debut album - the album sold 3 million copies and was certified platinum, and three of its singles climbed the R&B charts, with “I Wanna Be Your Lover” crossing over to No. tour in support of Prince with his new band, which also included guitarist Dez Dickerson and keyboardists Matt “Dr.” Fink and Gayle Chapman, hitting 10 cities between November 1979 and February 1980.
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