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Chicago Tribune [US] - November 8, 1985
"Andre Cymone: He's Attending To The Business"
Written By - Tom Popson

It has been three years since vocalist and all-around-instrumentalist Andre Cymoneleft Prince's band to perform solo. In that time, Cymone, who is signed to Columbia Records, has released three albums, the latest titled"AC." The first two LPs sold a little more than 100,000 copies each, saysCymone, and he hopes that "AC"--which has spawned a Top 10 dance-chartsingle, "The Dance Electric"--will clock in closer to the 500,000-unit salesneeded for gold-record certification.

Cymone seems very aware of things such as record sales. He clearly isconcerned with the ins and outs of career-building. Ask him if he has yet accomplished those things he wanted to do when he went solo, and Cymone islikely to reply with some inside-the-industry thoughts on the necessity ofimpressing your record label.

"I'm only getting started," he says. "It's only my third little ol'album. It's only a beginning when you're with a company like CBS. That's alarge label. They have a lot of big acts, a lot of big artists. So you kind ofhave to stick in there until they really understand and kind of notice whereyou're coming from.

"Once you do that, once they realize you are an artist that can sellrecords, then you win because that company can sell more albums than a lot ofother record labels. Actually, at first you can tend to get lost. Prince hadthe same problem. I remember that was one of his biggest frustrations when hesigned with Warner Bros. They were huge, and he couldn't understand why theywouldn't do this and that. He ran into that problem for about three or fouralbums until finally they realized what they had. Whenever you sign with a biglabel, you just kind of have to make noise until they realize, 'We do have atalented artist here.' "Well, is Cymone at the place in his career where he'd like to be?

"No," he says. "I can see I'm getting there, but I'm not there yet. Ithink the 'AC' album will help things out. The next album, though, shouldreally kick it in the right direction, and I'll probably be prettysatisfied."

Cymone says it was the feeling he was being "stifled" as part ofPrince's entourage that caused him to leave for a solo career. Being on hisown, however, has not exactly put that feeling to rest.

"Being stifled in the group was one thing," Cymone says. "But gettinginto the business this way is another form of being stifled. You still can'tmake the kind of music you really want to make until you really getestablished.

"You just have to keep on. That's the thing: You have to overcome theseobstacles. Once you do, you can make the kind of music you're really happymaking. Then you're happy. And usually, the kind of music you want to make isthe kind that brings you the real superstardom. Because it's you.

"All I know is, I want to be the best at what I do. Or at least try tobe as good as I possibly can."

Cymone--who arrives Sunday at the UIC Pavilion for a show also featuringthe Gap Band, Zapp, Ready for the World, Klymaxx and Doug E. Fresh--reportsthat he and Prince are good friends today, having smoothed over some badfeelings that arose when Cymone went solo. Prince, in fact, wrote andcoproduced "The Dance Electric" on Cymone's "AC" album."We've always been good friends," Cymone says. "People probably don'trealize how close we were when we grew up. We lived together with my motherfor years. There were some hard feelings when I left--although not as many assome people made everybody else think--but we ironed them out.

"There were too many things that I really couldn't do then. And I'dactually told Prince that after he got himself established, I was going to leave.

"Leaving didn't work out quite as easy as I thought, though. He wanted me to stay. I was already working on producing a group called the Girls, though, and it was hard for me to do that and be in his group. He would want me to work on something, and it was hard stringing the female group along."

Cymone still lives in the Minneapolis area, where he and Prince grew up, although he is thinking of finding a second home on the West Coast, where he lived briefly while recording "AC." According to Cymone, there are at least two drawbacks to living in Minneapolis: the cold and the music on the radio.

"Radio in Minneapolis is terrible," he says. "Real bad. When you come into town, and you turn on the radio, man, it's terrible. You get a whole bunch of people like Tom Waits. That's cool, but I think they should break it up a bit. Everything is basically all-pop radio.

"You would never know local people, people in Minneapolis, are doing anything in music. You don't get that vibe, that feeling at all. You'd think living here, you'd get some support."

While there are a couple decent stations that now play his and Prince's records, Cymone says, the situation with the airwaves has at times led him to phone local radio outlets with some suggestions.

"I've called 'em, yeah," he says. "Not only asking for my record, but for other people's records. Like, when I was out in Los Angeles, they were playing a lot of Prince's records. They were playing one of his records that's one of my favorite songs, 'She's Always in My Hair' (the B-side of Prince's 'Raspberry Beret' single).

"But they never play it in Minneapolis. I'm not the type of person that can just sit around. It's like, wait a minute, how come they're not playing these? So I called a station, and they gave me this excuse about their format.

"Then I also called the black station and told them they should be playing more by these artists. Actually, they started playing them."