Slave Trade

A film exploring the strange but prophetic mid-1990s period in Prince's career as he took full control of his music. In the mid-1990s reports emerged that Prince had fallen into dispute with his record company. Having signed what was ostensibly a new, 100 million dollar contract just a couple of years before, Prince was now demanding - not unreasonably to most commentators - control of his masters and the freedom to release what he wanted when he wanted. After a bitter war of words, during which the star scrawled Slave across his cheek whenever he appeared in public and routinely disrespected his label, the parties finally settled and Prince henceforth was free to take full control of his music and the way it was sold to consumers. Prince approached this task with devastating foresight as he routinely created new marketing concepts which, with time, became the norm across the music world. Recognizing the future power of the world-wide-web as an essential distribution tool for recorded work long before the majors realized what a huge threat the internet would pose to their core sales methods, it is no exaggeration to say that Prince reinvented the industry for the 21st century. This film explores and documents this strange but prophetic period in Prince's career and with the help of those who witnessed events as they unfolded, shows that Prince is not just a remarkable musician, performer and composer, but arguably, also has the shrewdest brain in show business.