We know celebrities can be an outlandish bunch, and Prince was certainly one of the more out there performers of the modern era.

Now back in the day, around 1993 to be precise, Prince changed his name – which led to the rather cumbersome ‘Artist Formerly Known As Prince’.

Seems odd right – why not just call him by the new name he had chosen? It’s all a bit complicated, so here’s BBC with the full story:

…In 1993, Prince announced that he would no longer go by the name Prince, but rather by a “Love Symbol” which was a mash-up of the gender symbols for man and woman.

“It is an unpronounceable symbol whose meaning has not been identified. It’s all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency,” he wrote…

Record sales declined. It presented all kinds of logistical challenges for the media, resulting in the clumsy title, “Artist Formerly Known As Prince”…

The symbol was a rebellion against Prince’s record label, Warner Bros. He first signed with the company back in 1977…But after inking a new deal in the early 1990s, Prince chafed under the company’s rigid production schedule.

A prolific songwriter, he wanted to release material as soon as it was ready – he had 500 unreleased songs in his famous studio vault. But Warner Bros refused, believing it would saturate the market and dilute demand for the artist’s music.

“He felt the contracts at the time were onerous and burdensome,” says John Kellogg, assistant chair of the music business management department at Berklee College of Music. “He rebelled against that.”

Prince compared his contractual obligations to slavery, and began performing with the word “SLAVE” on his cheek. He saw his own name as a part of his contractual entrapment.

“Warner Bros took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing took to promote all of the music I wrote,” Prince once said in a press release. “The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros.”

It was only in 2000 that the contract expired, at which point he went back to using his original moniker.

For 20 interesting facts about Prince click HERE.

[source:bbc]