The Artist Formerly Known As...

by Jason Warburg

Okay class, time for a little history lesson.

From 1999 through 2006, you could not find any Prince reviews on The Daily Vault.  This was because the DV's founder, Christopher Thelen, had banned him from appearing on the site for reasons he expressed thusly at the time: 


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In 1999, Prince (then known as "The Artist") launched an offensive campaign against numerous fan sites devoted to him and his music. Some sites were shut down for allegedly selling bootleg CDs; others were shut down for vague copyright reasons. In the end, the gist was that "Asshole" (as he has been called on The Daily Vault since reverting back to his given name) wanted to be the sole source of information about himself, his music and his career -- even though most of these shuttered fansites only served to promote "Asshole" and his music without any cost to the artist.

Because of the unwarranted attacks on his fans (as well as statements which suggested that anyone who even used album cover artwork was guilty of copyright violations), "Asshole" was banned from The Daily Vault on March 5, 1999. All reviews that had run to that point were taken offline, and no further review of his music has run on these pages since.

The Daily Vault has offered "Asshole" the forum to explain his actions (as well as to be held accountable for them); this offer has never been accepted. Until the day when "Asshole" apologizes to all the fans he alienated for his stupid, petty actions, The Daily Vault refuses to give him any sort of press (other than to rip on him as we're doing now).

The Daily Vault does believe that "Asshole," while a poorly guided human being, is a talented musician, and we hope he will wake up and realize what he did to his fanbase and apologize one day.

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While Prince has never apologized for his unwarranted, self-defeating and capricious actions, we at the Vault have decided to relent on our ban for the simplest of reasons -- we have writers who want to write about Prince's music.  And so, we will let them do that, and we will publish their work, and we will thereby support the Purple One's continuing musical career -- with one small caveat.  Until the Purple One issues the public apology that his fans are due, every review of his work that we publish will also be linked to this page.  It's the least we can do for an artist who threatens to sue his own fans.

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