http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-prince-a...
> Tensions between artist and label first came to a boil in early 1994, when he decided to drop the name Prince and asked that people start identifying him by an unpronounceable symbol--thus disassociating himself, in a most burdensome way, from the guy who recorded some of the most popular and acclaimed albums of the '80s.
> To further express his frustration, he stopped performing Prince-era material in concert and began appearing in public with the word "slave" written on his cheek. In 1994, he also released "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," a successful single that was distributed not by Warner Bros. but by the independent company Bellmark Records.
> In one breath, he'll say, "If I knew the things I know now before, I wouldn't be in the music industry." In the next, he'll talk about his craft with such passion that it's impossible to imagine him working in any other field.
I suppose few of his independent ambitions here sound that crazy today...but this was in 1996, 5 years before the first iPod.