I know that he combines different styles of music. Still, when his craftmanship is in place it sounds like nothing else in my opinion. I never call his music in the eighties for "80's music". New Position came out the same year as Shake You Down, Gregory Abbott and Nothing's gonna stop us now with Starship for instance. As much as you may like those songs, they really sound like 1986. New Position still sounds fresh and totally different, and this from a minor song on Parade. The same could be said about anotherloverholenyohead which is a bigger and longer song. The way he arranges all instruments most of the time works to perfection.

[Edited 1/30/15 5:00am]

[Edited 1/30/15 5:01am]

Purple Music

He's got a personal style, but he's not a genre.

FragileUndertow said:

Purple Music

I must admit I always found it interesting that when I first became a Prince follower as a teenager that almost every one of my local record stores placed Prince in a different part of the store. I have found him in the UK under Funk/soul/pop/rock/(Easy Listening!)/world music(!) and for the Black Album - Hip-hop. Great fun as a kid trawling round the store checking every genre!

I always have, Purple Music all the way

FragileUndertow said:

Purple Music

THIS is how all of my Prince music is genre tagged in iTunes...

djThunderfunk said:

FragileUndertow said:

Purple Music

THIS is how all of my Prince music is genre tagged in iTunes...

I use to do the same thing
But i've gotten lazy over the years

Militant said:

jayspud said:

my Prince itunes library has Purple Music as the genre alzo mit.

djThunderfunk said:

FragileUndertow said:

Purple Music

THIS is how all of my Prince music is genre tagged in iTunes...

That's what I've got it tagged, too. At one point I had it segregated into released (Purple Music) and unreleased (Purple Underground) and live boots (Purple Concord Jams)... but then I said forget it, and collapsed it all into one genre tag.

SuperSoulFighter said:

SuperSoulFighter said:

jayspud said:

I must admit I always found it interesting that when I first became a Prince follower as a teenager that almost every one of my local record stores placed Prince in a different part of the store. I have found him in the UK under Funk/soul/pop/rock/(Easy Listening!)/world music(!) and for the Black Album - Hip-hop. Great fun as a kid trawling round the store checking every genre!

Oh yeah! I always had trouble finding Prince in the record stores. Pop? Rock? Dance? Soul?

Hah, I remember finding him in the "dance" section sometimes. Mostly they had techno there.

Oh yeah, Prince's music is not a genre itself by any means. I guess "Minneapolis sound" in a way could be seen as a subgenre of various different genres, but he certainly didn't confine himself to that approach only.

No. Prince is the great genre blender, he's known for feeling comfortable within many idioms and often has a personal take on them, but he's not a genre into himself.

While I mentioned that I genre tag Prince's work as "Purple Music," that's just so I can give everything the credited artist tag or whatever and still have the ability to just pick a genre and play randomly from it easily.

.

I do the same thing with work from those that at one point were connected to Parliament-Funkadelic, and with some other artists whose work crosses genres and use different artist credits.