The student newspaper of, by, and for Ames High School.

The WEB

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The student newspaper of, by, and for Ames High School.

The WEB

The student newspaper of, by, and for Ames High School.

The WEB

A Portrait of the Artist Formerly Known as Prince as a Young Man

The connotations of the word "prince" are as ambiguous as the symbol Prince Rodgers Nelson used to identify himself in his "Who am I?" years. Today, the guitar legend, whose reign began in 1978, continued through the 80’s, and could possibly be continuing today (there is dispute over whether Elvis’s posthumous coup has successfully overthrown the purple regime), has released a new album, which is actually three albums in one, and being sold only at Target. "It’s bad for the economy," said junior Gabe Harris, an 80’s music expert. Harris said Prince can be bad for the eyes as well. "He used to wear bikinis in concert." That sounds like something another Nelson, who may be on WEB staff and may have edited this page, would do. However, there are two things Prince is not bad for: the Super Bowl (well, it could be worse), and your wallet. His three-in-one album is selling for $11.98, "because no one will buy it for full price," said junior Jonathan Kaiser, more of a 90’s music expert, but a valid source, because Prince is immortal to the passage of music-time (but not time signatures, from which no one is exempt). Kaiser, however, does not believe this, saying, "Just because people bought his albums 20 years ago, doesn’t mean they will want to buy them now." On whether Prince’s new release will be good for your ears, it would be necessary to take a look through the history of his releases. However, this is difficult to do, since he has released over 30 albums. In fact, the newest, LOtUSFLOW3R , is not even his first trilogy-record. Emancipation , released in 1996, was also a three CD set. Basically, all you need to know about Prince is that he had a drought from 1985 to 2006 with no albums reaching number one on the charts. In this span, he released eight albums, recording his biggest bomb, The Rainbow Children in 2001 (which peaked at 109th on the charts), since his debut album, For You , which peaked at 163rd. He then made a comeback with 3121 in 2006, and since then each of his albums has been in the top three at one point or another. Sandwiched between 3121 and LOtUSFLOW3R , however, was Planet Earth , released in 2007. The BBC television program Planet Earth was run in 2006, making Prince’s album title unoriginal with a hint of lame. Moreover, it was released in the UK for free and distributed regularly everywhere else on planet Earth, thus contradicting the unifying implications of the title. One wonders, then, if the title of the album should have been something like Planet Earth (Belongs to Britain) , or something more like pLANEt ErTH (B longs 2 Bri10) . Unless you cannot contain your curiosity over Prince’s new album, avoid it. However, if you get the chance to have Prince on your Mad Gab team, DO NOT PASS IT UP! There are hardly any things you can know for sure about Prince, but one thing you can be assured of is that Prince is a Mad Gab fiend . You try coming up with things like love symbol #2, Sign ☮’ the Times , or Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic ! Although music and Mad Gab may seem a planet Earth apart, perhaps Prince, in some profound way, has related them. However, you can’t go wrong keeping the two separate by playing Mad Gab like mad and not listening to Prince.

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