Interestingly, Prince changed Camille’s gender at will she was originally conceived as a female, for her album and film appearances. Like all good villains, Camille survived to vex us all with the Lovesexy-era track “Scarlet Pussy,” and as the antagonist responsible for the “Black Album,” a record Prince attributed to evil Camille’s even-more-evil alter ego Spooky Electric. Did Prince change his mind, or did Warner Brothers hesitate due to the brazen concept? Mere weeks before its scheduled release, the “Camille” album was cancelled under mysterious circumstances. In fact, Camille was soon resurrected as the villain in early versions of the “Graffiti Bridge” script. This fascinating concept wasn’t developed past the ideation phase, but it wasn’t the end of Camille in film. The film’s initial concept was to feature Prince playing both himself and the evil Camille, with the shocking revelation that both characters were the same person suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Camille had taken root within Prince to such an extent that a film was being considered to compliment the album. While androgyny and aliases were nothing new for Prince, his creation of a seemingly fully formed alter-ego, one of the opposite gender, was something of a rebirth. Prince had begun referring to his impulsive female alter ego as Camille, possibly a reference to the 1985 film “ Mystère Alexina“, in which the intersex protagonist also used Camille as a pseudonym. The rarest of the rare-an advance pressing of the unreleased “Camille” recently sold for $58,787.

Alter ego band ma