Non-Urban Music Who was more influental, MJ or Prince?

[Bender]

Sorry, what I meant was: Prince is the more influential musician to musicians.

MJ is more influential for making fans sing and dance along to/with his music.

 

[Casey]

Mili, could you elaborate on the purple rain - 8 mile comment?

Sure.

I actually had never mentioned it, before this thread to anyone (I don't think). Funnily enough, I came across an article on Blender website that said the same thing, and another comment on CNN.

If you watch both movies you will understand. Structurally and thematically there are a number of parallels.

The most striking similarity to me personally, was in the way that the song "Lose Yourself" gets written piece by piece throughout the film, ie you start off with random words here and there, and it builds up until the film climaxes with the complete song, which basically lyrically sums up the lessons the protagonist has learned and the tribulations he has been through, throughout the movie. This is exactly the theme that happens through Purple Rain with the title track.

There's a number of other similarities that anyone familiar with Purple Rain would spot upon watching Em's flick, but I just googled the keywords "8 mile ripped off Purple Rain" and found this article, which makes for an interesting read.

Eminem’s movie 8 Mile comes out in a couple of weeks, and the soundtrack comes out today. Like his latest album, The Eminem Show, which has dominated the charts since its release in May, the soundtrack is expected to top the chart with huge sales. It could well end up ruling right through Christmas.

In years past, there have been other soundtracks that have dominated the charts at the holidays, when record sales are typically highest. In almost all cases, the smash soundtrack is one where a pop star is crossing over to act in a movie. In 1992, the Whitney Houston-dominated Bodyguard soundtrack owned the season and even, at one point, set a one-week sales record, moving over a million copies just before Christmas (the record has since been eclipsed). Houston also dominated December 1995, when she costarred in Waiting to Exhale and its soundtrack – actually a diva-studded affair with only a couple of Houston cuts – topped the charts for just over a month. Even in the ’60s, soundtracks were popular stocking stuffers: Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii dominated the charts for 20 weeks at the end of 1961, and the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night topped the album chart in the summer of 1964 and stayed there almost through Thanksgiving. In almost all cases (except for Houston in Exhale), the soundtrack album was bigger than usual because of pop-image synergy: each musical act starred in a film whose plot thinly veiled the act’s real-life persona.

The king of this phenomenon – his soundtrack topped the charts for a full six months in 1984–85 – was Prince. Though A Hard Day’s Night was easily the better movie and The Bodyguard was higher-grossing, Purple Rain created the modern template for rock-movie crossover, in that it concocted a half-real, half-fantastic legend and let the music play a larger-than-usual role in defining the legend. The Beatles were already revealed and defined by the time their film debut hit screens; and Houston may have played a reclusive pop star in her film debut, but The Bodyguard revealed nothing about her life (nor pretended to), and its signature song, the Dolly Parton-penned “I Will Always Love You,” was a decade-old ballad not even written for the movie. Purple Rain caught everyone by surprise because both the film and its songs defined Prince in one stroke. Even though the movie was a flattering, at times absurd version of Prince’s life, it seemed more revealing than it was, and fans ate it up. It was an ingenious approach – and whether Eminem, a.k.a. Marshall Mathers, realizes it or not, it’s exactly the template that he’s following.

A couple of critics who’ve had advance previews of 8 Mile have already pointed out the movie’s structural similarity to Purple Rain: widely admired pop star from small, previously undocumented musical subculture stars in fictionalized, self-aggrandizing version of own life. Prince’s mid-’80s Minneapolis, hotbed of quirky synth-funk, equals Eminem’s late-’90s 8 Mile section of Detroit, hotbed of battle-rhyming hip-hop.

These are appropriate, if facile, comparisons, but the moment I realized what Eminem and director Curtis Hanson were up to was when I heard the music playing behind the first 8 Mile trailers this summer. “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” from the already-released Eminem Show album, was featured prominently in the trailer and served as a sort of preview single for the movie. You may have heard it on the radio by now: “I’m sorry Mama/I never meant to hurt you/I never meant to make you cry/But tonight, I’m cleanin’ out my closet.” These lyrics – so broadly similar to Prince’s “When Doves Cry” it’s almost comical – are actually the politest words in the song; Eminem spends most of the verses delineating the many ways he blames his mother for the pain in his life. The song would be just the latest ignominious addition to the canon of Complaint Rock that has dominated the radio for the last half-decade (cf. Korn, Limp, Papa Roach, etc.), except Em’s laid-back, contemplative flow and Dr. Dre’s percolating backing track give “Closet” a cool-headedness that belies the lyrics. More important, like “When Doves Cry,” the song borrows elements directly from the artist’s life and recasts them cinematically – big enough for any listener to project themselves into – without actually revealing much about the artist’s deeper emotions at all. We relate to Marshall Mathers’s defiance and anger, the way we empathized with Prince Rogers Nelson’s defiance and confusion, but “Eminem” and “Prince” remain larger than life, unattainably cool.

The current single, “Lose Yourself,” is Eminem’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” a more upbeat track whose first job is getting people into theaters and second job is exhorting them to let loose. The first single proper from the soundtrack, “Lose” is already a bigger hit than “Cleanin’” was, racing to #2 on the charts. It better represents the movie because it showcases a victorious Eminem, rocking a crowd, marshaling their mania for his own catharsis – the movie’s ultimate theme. In the “Lose Yourself” video, and in the latest ads for the movie, Em commands his Detroit audience with the same bravado Prince exhibited in front of the crowd at Minneapolis’s First Avenue in his filmed performance of “Let’s Go Crazy.” (Back in ‘84, though “When Doves Cry” was the bigger and more acclaimed hit, “Let’s Go Crazy” was the song featured in all trailers and commercials for Purple Rain.) All “Lose Yourself” needs is Em reciting a “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today for this thing called life” intro, and the parallel would be perfect.

No word yet on whether 8 Mile sports a closing gospel ballad a la the song “Purple Rain.” And I have no idea if, in the movie, Em tricks costar Brittany Murphy into doffing her clothes and bathing in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. (Can you swim naked in the Great Lakes?)

It’s easy to get glib with these comparisons, and to be sure, there are some significant dissimilarities between 8 Mile and Purple Rain – mostly in Eminem’s favor: his film boasts an Oscar-caliber director in Hanson (L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys) and an Oscar-winning costar in Kim Basinger; Prince made do with hack director Albert Magnoli and where-is-she-now costar Apollonia Kotero. More significantly, Em needs this movie now less than Prince did in 1984 – His Purpleness was at that time an acclaimed pop act with several hits under his belt but no #1 smashes, his zeitgeist-defining cultural contributions yet to be made. Eminem has pretty much been casting the zeitgeist in his image for three years now. Conversely, that means that 8 Mile will produce less of the pleasureable shock of emergence than Purple Rain did in 1984. A star was born, Slim Shady, back in 1999, and our boy’s already all grown up by now. But to film critics and movie audiences who don’t watch MTV, Eminem’s new project will probably come as something of a revelation.

There’s at least one way in which Prince has Eminem clearly beat: no way are D12 any match for Morris Day and the Time. I mean, I’d like to hear Mathers’s hometown crew try to top “Jungle Love.” Oh-ee-oh-ee-oh!

 

[Casey]

Rukas - yeah JT's first album was him trying to rip off MJ. But his second album was him trying to rip off Prince. All the way through.

 

[Bender]

One thing I would like to point out Is that both Prince, Michael jackson, and Eminem, have all done movies with correlating soundtracks in relation to the artist.

Since Prince's Purple Rain is a 1984 feature film, and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker was released in 1988, it would only follow that Prince was the one who influenced Michael Jackson to both make a film and its correlating soundtrack. If this is correct then Prince stands to be influential over Michael Jackson. Eminem with 8-mile has followed suit.

 

[Shadows]

Rukas - yeah JT's first album was him trying to rip off MJ. But his second album was him trying to rip off Prince. All the way through.

Almost as if JT used MJ's appeal to get attn away from the boyband, and used Prince's music to get the listeners hooked huh?

 

[Casey]

Almost as if JT used MJ's appeal to get attn away from the boyband, and used Prince's music to get the listeners hooked huh?

Absolutely.

The most striking example of Justin ripping off Prince is if you listen to Justin's "Sexy Ladies" from 2006, then listen to Prince's "Sexy Dancer" from 1979.

Complete and utter shameless rip off.

 

[Rukas]

One thing I would like to point out Is that both Prince, Michael jackson, and Eminem, have all done movies with correlating soundtracks in relation to the artist.

Since Prince's Purple Rain is a 1984 feature film, and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker was released in 1988, it would only follow that Prince was the one who influenced Michael Jackson to both make a film and its correlating soundtrack. If this is correct then Prince stands to be influential over Michael Jackson. Eminem with 8-mile has followed suit.

Ok so I guess Prince was influenced by Elvis then, so your trail doesnt go back to Prince, it goes back to Elvis.

 

[Rukas]

Absolutely.

The most striking example of Justin ripping off Prince is if you listen to Justin's "Sexy Ladies" from 2006, then listen to Prince's "Sexy Dancer" from 1979.

Complete and utter shameless rip off.

Thats probably Timbaland's doing.

 

[Casey]

Thats probably Timbaland's doing.

It's both of their doing. They were deliberately trying to rip off Prince. Timbaland isn't the one who decided to hire Mike Scott and John Blackwell from the New Power Generation to be in Timberlake's band.

 

[Casey]

Rukas, I'm not sure that Elvis ever did a movie and soundtrack as a correlating package, ie where the music promoted the movie and the movie also promoted the music. I could be wrong, and I'm not trying to claim Prince was the first musician ever to make a movie, if anything I'd say he was inspired by The Beatles and "A Hard Days Night", but Prince absolutely defined it more than anyone has done before or since.