You know that whole Internet thing? It's over. Passé. Tired. According to Prince, a musician who really wants to reach the masses needs to get hip to two new technologies instead: the CD and the daily newspaper.

Talk about partying like it's 1999.

U need 2 buy this newspaper



Prince's new album, 20TEN, will be soon given away to all readers of the UK's Daily Mirror newspaper "because he wants as many people as possible to hear his music." According to the paper, this will be the only way for UK and Irish fans to obtain the album. It won't be sold in stores, it won't be sold online, and Prince won't have any samples on his website (he shut it down).

As part of this promotion, Prince gave his first UK interview in 10 years to a Daily Mirror staff writer who was given one day to make it from London to Minneapolis.

The frankly bizarre encounter with Prince features quotes like, "Playing electric guitar your whole life does something to you. I'm convinced all that electricity racing through my body made me keep my hair." Indeed, after the creepy water-and-melon-slices "dance party" where Prince squirrels himself away in a control room watching old Soul Train clips while his five guests try to have a good time (you really need to read this interview), one suspects the entire experience is a bit of performance art designed to keep Prince both notorious and newsworthy.

Further compounding the feeling is Prince's quotes about the Internet. "The Internet's completely over," he says in the interview. "I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it."

And: "The Internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

None of this really adds up. While the paper says its promotion is about getting "as many people as possible" to hear his music, that's certainly not Prince's goal or he would release it on file-sharing networks instead. As the quote about iTunes makes clear, his stand is very much about the money. Why won't iTunes pay him his "advance"?

Whatever the reality of the rest of it, this whinging about the Internet has the ring of truth. In 2007, remember, Prince was going to "reclaim the Internet" through lawsuits against outfits like YouTube and The Pirate Bay. Then he went after online fan sites over artwork and album covers. Then he had his team start leaning on Pirate Bay advertisers and allegedly shadowing some of the admins around Sweden.

Reclaiming the Internet didn't work, so Prince is now determined to make the 'Net uncool. And if he can do that with CDs and newspapers, more power to him.

Perhaps the entire story is best summed up in a comment from our own forums. "Internet to Prince: Lol Wut?"