Locked in a battle with Warner Bros. Records over creative control and the pace of his releases, Prince declared his name retired and adopted a glyph combining male and female symbols. The move, widely mocked at the time, was a deliberate act of protest against a record label he felt owned not just his music but his identity.
By 1993, Prince was one of the most commercially successful musicians alive, yet he felt like a prisoner of his own contract. Warner Bros. controlled the pace of his output, insisting on spacing out album releases to maximize sales, while Prince—astonishingly prolific, with a vault of unreleased material reportedly containing thousands of songs—wanted to flood the market on his own terms.
His solution was strange and theatrical: on his 35th birthday, he announced he was changing his name to an unpronounceable glyph merging the traditional male and female symbols, a design he said represented the union of the two in one being. Unable to trademark or even type the symbol easily, journalists took to calling him "the Artist Formerly Known as Prince," often shortened to simply "the Artist."
He even appeared on stage with the word "SLAVE" written across his cheek, making explicit the comparison he intended between his contract and indentured servitude. The dispute dragged on for years before Warner released him from his obligations in 1996, after which he reverted to the name Prince—by then having proven, through sheer stubborn spectacle, that an artist's name could itself become a bargaining chip and a form of protest.
Key people: Prince