Prince signed expecting to release music at a faster cadence so he would have been out of his contract in about 4-5 years with stuff that was kind of sub-par even for Prince. Warner told him that wasn't going to happen as they needed to do marketing and that meant he wasn't going to get out of his contract until 10 years or so. This was the disconnect--Warner thought they locked Prince up for 10 years and Prince thought he was getting out in 5.
Prince, for all his brilliance, was really the one who screwed this one up--likely because of ego wanting "The Biggest(tm) Deal". He had a huge amount of leverage after "Diamonds and Pearls" and just negotiated poorly. It's not like Prince didn't understand the music business by 1991--he had been in it and complaining about it since the 1970s.
Characterizing it as him having negotiated poorly conjures a vision of That One Scene in The Social Network ("You're gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?"), or perhaps Nelson Muntze ("Stop hitting yourself.")
I remember some interview (probably from YouTube) from something like the late 70s/early 80s where Prince is excoriating his contract because the album cost more than the advance.
Prince signed expecting to release music at a faster cadence so he would have been out of his contract in about 4-5 years with stuff that was kind of sub-par even for Prince. Warner told him that wasn't going to happen as they needed to do marketing and that meant he wasn't going to get out of his contract until 10 years or so. This was the disconnect--Warner thought they locked Prince up for 10 years and Prince thought he was getting out in 5.
Prince, for all his brilliance, was really the one who screwed this one up--likely because of ego wanting "The Biggest(tm) Deal". He had a huge amount of leverage after "Diamonds and Pearls" and just negotiated poorly. It's not like Prince didn't understand the music business by 1991--he had been in it and complaining about it since the 1970s.