In addition to a Diamond certification, the album won three Grammy Awards, four American Music Awards, four Soul Train Music Awards, and eleven Billboard Music Awards. The success of Usher’s Confessions has artists like Prince and so many others to thank for being trailblazers and building platforms that would allow for black music to thrive in popular “mainstream” spaces. He didn’t just claim a creative space that existed and make it his own-he created new sonic and cultural spaces for his music to exist, and invited the rest of us in. Even if he wasn’t explicitly saying it, 1999-as with all his work-was rooted in Prince’s identity as a black man in America and a black man in the music industry. In addition, before Whitney Houston’s music videos were being nominated for awards, the videos for " 1999" and " Little Red Corvette" were some of the first videos by a black artist to be played regularly on MTV. Heavy on the Minneapolis sound that Prince helped pioneer the decade before, 1999 further solidified his growing body of work as unique and beyond category. While Purple Rain would become Prince’s most successful album in terms of sales and awards, 1999 is considered his breakthrough album as well as one of his most influential. By March 1999, the album 1999 had sold 4 million copies in the United States.
This album with his band The Revolution was Prince’s first top 10 album. In 1983, Prince received a plaque to commemorate the sale of over 1 million copies (Platinum certification) of his 1982 album, 1999. Other African American artists with Diamond albums include Boyz II Men ( II), TLC ( CrazySex圜ool), Mariah Carey ( Daydream and Music Box), Hootie and the Blowfish ( Cracked Rear View), Whitney Houston ( Whitney Houston and Whitney), Outkast ( Speakerboxxx/The Love Below), 2Pac ( All Eyez On Me and Greatest Hits), Notorious BIG ( Life After Death), and Nelly ( Country Grammar). The most recent certified Diamond album by an African American artist is The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill, which was released in 1998 and became Diamond in February 2021. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life was released in 1976 but didn’t became Diamond until 2005. While the rise of these and many other Diamond albums was quick, a few have taken many years to sell 10 million copies. Prince and The Revolution’s Purple Rain and MC Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em followed in 19-more examples of albums with incredibly fast sales. Lionel Richie followed in 1985 when Can’t Slow Down was certified Diamond, also two years after it hit the charts. Michael Jackson became the first African American artist with a Diamond certified album in 1984 with Thriller, just two years after it was released (it became 20x Multi-Platinum on October 30, 1984).
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