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You more than likely weren't aware of Carmen at the time she had her album out in 1993- unless you were a big Prince fan or if you watched the video channel "The Box" regularly, which played her video "Go Go Dancer" on an hourly basis. I personally had heard her name mentioned on MTV news frequently, prior to the release, but never knew what her face looked like.
Apparently the reason so few of us actually heard her music is because
"My mother begged me not to come. You know,
'People get murdered, there's rapists and LA is crazy, and I don't
want you to get hurt, you're my baby.' But I knew that this was
what I wanted."
Within one week of her arrival, she was hanging out at a club called Spice and was approached by a women who was putting together a band produced by Prince. The woman felt that Carmen had the look they were after, and she asked Carmen to audition that very evening!
"We ended up going to Prince's house in LA. And
he was really nice, but kind of quiet. Basically, I auditioned right there in front
of him at around 2 am. He played piano and I sang. It was 'Do Re Mi' from The Sound Of
Music, with Prince playing the piano. I was once in the The Sound Of Music
musical, so I knew the song. And then I danced. Now, the whole time he's
sitting there, he's just watching me with no expression on his face. So there I
am, dancing my butt off, doing the Booty Shake and everything - ha ha! -
and he still has no expression, so I'm thinking, 'He thinks I suck. I've gotta
take some more classes.' So I go home and don't hear a thing for two months.
Then the woman called me and said she couldn't explain what went wrong. So
I got in touch with Prince's bodyguard because I'd recorded some demos on
my own that I wasn't really happy with and I thought it would be great if
Prince would help me out. I finally got a phone call ages later, at around 4 am,
and it was him. He said, 'I wrote you a song, If you like it, you can sing it.' It
was called 'Carmen On Top' and I loved it."
The only problem was that she would have to leave LA, the city she had just begun to warm up to, and move to Minneapollis to record the album.
"I was 18 years old and I was very nervous because I had
never really been away from home. I had just come here to L.A., so to
actually go there and record and spend time in a strange place where I had no
friends was very scary for me, but I trusted Prince and I could tell just by
hanging out with him that short period of time, that he was a good person and
that everything would be OK, so I trusted my instincts."
"It was great, Paisley Park is such a beautiful studio. It's almost like being in Heaven. Everything was very easy, and I was very well taken care of."
Nobody really knows what "well taken care of" means. For a short period of time she was claiming that she dated Prince. Then around the time she started Baywatch she began to deny having a romantic relationship with Prince. To this day she insists that he was only her "mentor." I'm clueless about what the truth is, but I do know that it's not uncommon for Prince and one of his female protoges to create the illusion they are a couple, purely for promotional reasons.
MoviesTo the right of the screen you will find all the movies from Paisley Park that I currently have available. If the copywrite owners (Paisley Park Studios) have any problem with them being displayed I will take them down. Hopefully it will be ok since they are chopped into small DivX clips. (Please be sure you have DivX installed before you try to download the movies.)
GoGo Dancer is the first video that Carmen made. She plays a high school girl who secretly works as a gogo dancer at night. This is probably Carmens best video- it's so beautifully lit and the choreography is fantastic. For some reason Carmen reminds me a little bit of Shirley Temple in this video. In the shots where she's got corkscrew curls and bare feet- she seems like such a little girl. Maybe that's why it was played so much on the Video Jukebox, back in '93.
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hat an incredible life this girl has lived! Carmen's history as a recording artist with Paisley Park is what I find the most facinating out of all the twists and turns her career has taken. This period is very mysterious, which makes it all the more intriguing.
was in a massive legal battle with Warner Brothers, as he was trying to get out of his contract. So he focused all his energy on that instead of getting her record promoted. As a result, very few coppies were sold and it later went out-of-print.
"Basically, that whole
experience just inspired me to work harder and to achieve my
goals, and it gave me a chance to realize what talents I have and
that- if I work hard- that I can achieve anything in life that I
want. He still is a big inspiration to me. He's definitely a genius, and
whatever he wants, he gets, and he works hard for it. So I look at
it as a positive step."
here have been a lot of different stories about how Carmen got involved with 
Carmen was 18 and had just graduated from high school. That summer she landed a job at an amusement park, dancing in a magic show she now describes as "Las Vegas cheesey." She saved up her money from that job and bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.
Carmen remained in Minneapollis for the next two and a half years. We hear her talk about her audition with Prince a lot, but she very rarely gives details about what went on while she was making her record. The Uptown artical does a very good job at laying out the production details, so you can read that 
"I wasn't really a gogo dancer. That was just the concept for the video."
I believe Fun was the second video she shot. It was set to be her second single, but never released. I've only been able to find the short clip that's included on her documentary- I have no idea if the rest of it can be found anywhere. (Anyone know?) The video has sort of a cheesey eighties vibe, but it's still cool.
There are actually two versions for Everybody Get On Up. They are very similar, but for the second one they added some more footage where she's doing much sexier dance moves and showing a lot more skin. I didn't include clips from the first video because I didn't want to flood this page with Everybody Get On Up performances, but I may add them later. This video is probably the least exciting out of all of them, but the dancing is very impressive.
Fantasia Erotica was Carmens last attempt at releasing a hit single. The video seems to have some sort of double life concept, like GoGo Dancer. It shows her sleeping a lot, so maybe the majority of the video is what she's dreaming... I don't know.