The Word He Wrote on His Cheek

In the summer of 1993, on his thirty-fifth birthday, one of the most successful recording artists in the world walked into a photo shoot with the word SLAVE written on his cheek. He wore it at concerts. He wore it at award shows. He wore it in front of executives who had signed the contracts he was protesting. Prince Rogers Nelson had sold more records than almost anyone alive. He was also, in the terms of the industry he had spent his career inside, the property of Warner Bros. Records — a company that owned every master recording he had made since he was nineteen, and was, per the deal, allowed to dictate how often he could release the next one.

That is the part most fans knew. What most did not know was that the fight was about ownership, not money — and that when Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol on that same birthday, he was not being a diva. He was breaking the contract. He was telling Warner: you own the recordings of Prince. You do not own me. And whatever I make from here will be made by someone who is not Prince.

He kept working. He put out music under the symbol. He put out music under aliases. He made himself difficult on purpose. In interviews, he refused to explain, because explanation was a form of asking permission, and he was done asking. Warner released him from the deal in 1996. He put down the grease paint around 2000 and took back his own name. In 2014 — after nearly two decades of standing there in the wind — he got his masters back.

There are two ways to tell that story. One is as a business fight, which it was. Another is as a piece of songwriting. The word on the cheek was a line in a song about ownership. It was small, and repeatable, and impossible to look at without reading. It was aimed at the people at the front of the room. It was true. That is what a great lyric does.

Every artist eventually meets the question of ownership. In publishing, it is who wrote it. In masters, it is who paid for the recording. In performance rights, it is who is being heard. There is an old habit in the industry of collapsing all of those into one signature at the bottom of a page, on a day when you are twenty-two and would sign anything for a chance at a studio. Prince did not invent the fight; he just made the fight visible. What he showed was that the signature is not the end of the story. Contracts can be re-negotiated by people who are willing to become inconvenient.

Not every writer wants to be inconvenient. Not every writer needs to be. But you should know, before the pen goes down, what you are signing away, and for how long, and who inherits it when you are gone. Those are not questions for after the record is finished. They are questions for the room where the deal is made, at a table that is often set to be intimidating on purpose.

Prince died in April 2016 at fifty-seven. He had, by then, put his own name back on the marquee, and put his own hand back on the tape. Some things you have to fight for twice.