I bet most of ya'll are gonna say the Time(and rightfully so) so you can only vote for solo artists. The top two that come to mind are Andre Cymone and Jesse Johnson. It's too bad that for whatever reasons neither one of them reached their fullest potential I feel they both possessed.Sheila E deserves much props as well.

sitruk7 said:

Well, Sheila certainly deserves props but also knows how to share power in a non-threatening way. Perhaps I need you to define 'threat' better. Are you asking who is equally a good artist (of which there are many)? Or whose artistry combined with their personality made their artistry somehow threatening to Prince (a bit different question, I think)?

sitruk7 said:

As commercial music producers, I would say Jam and Lewis were threatening. But they couldn't match Prince on other stuff like instrumental talent, singing, stage presence etc.

Sheila E. was a talented drummer, but as far as creating her own music, I don't think she was a threat.

Other than those people, I think Prince avoided taking on proteges that seemed threatening to him. Just my opinion but if you think about his criteria, especially later in the game, it makes sense.

Alliasan said:

Commercial appeal and artistic praise so to speak.

NOBODY PRINCE IS ONE OF A KIND

He was different before Wendy & Lisa... and never been the same since they left.

LovesexyIsThe1 said:

Soooo....what's your answer? Wendy? Lisa? Gotta go with just one. Read the first post.
Oh, remember, Lisa was in the band BEFORE Wendy. Its funny how people seem to always reference them together when actually Lisa was already there and brought Wendy in.

Tony M.

prince was madd intemidated by my baby. cuz he was tall, chocolate, macho and FINE! AND he could rap his sexy cocoa ass off!

BlaqueKnight said:

Yeah, but they were friends before Lisa introduced Wendy to Prince and worked together as a team throughout the whole of their career during and after the Prince years. Its blatantly Wendy AND Lisa!

sitruk7 said:

I think that in my definition of 'threat' Prince completely avoided folks that would threaten him by hiring folks that were nearly complete unknowns when he worked with them. Beyond that he mostly worked with people he could control.

Of the solo artists I'd say you're right with Sheila. But I'd say the biggest threats were really Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis - who in fact left the fairly restrictive environment and went on to very openly take on a producing career that rivaled and exceeded Prince's.

Musically I'd say Prince had very few folks that could challenge him - but to Jam & Lewis I'd add Sheila and Wendy & Lisa. There were others that went on to do some nice work (interestingly, Ingrid Chavez is in that crew via her work with David Sylvian!) but most seemed to wisely keep their heads down in the Prince days.

And now - we go on a little tangent, because I have had coffee and I do that.

It seems to me like there are two routes you can take as an extraordinary musician.

In the first - you surround yourself with those you already feel superior to, and get 'threatened' when their musical talent pushes your edges too much. This is very much Prince's paradigm, which is why I wanted to make it explicit in my previous post. Prince quite deliberately surrounded himself with nobodies in the beginning. Lest we think that's a mistake and say, yeah, well everyone was nobodies back then and he didn't have the chance to work with bigger artists, note that as he got to be a bigger artist (late 80s/early 90s) and had the chance to work with anyone, he not only continued the trend but seemed to scrape further and further into the bottom of the talentless barrel.

It wasn't until far later that Prince started to work with folks like Ani DiFranco and Maceo Parker that I'd consider his 'peers' right out of the box. (Again, I think he did have some peers in the early days, but strictly by accident - and only Sheila did he keep around!) In my dream, it took decades for Prince to be able to work with artists that could really challenge his idea of being the one, right true and only genius in his world. And I'd venture to say that by the time he did it he was sufficiently stuck in his style that he really wasn't collaborating in a meaningful sense.

In the second paradigm - you work with other great artists, early and often. I have Clapton on the brain lately so I'll use him as an example. He could have rested on his Cream laurels, but from the beginning went after working with the scariest and most talented artists in the biz - The Beatles. Years later he's still going after the greats like B. B. King - a guitar god's guitar god. The man is not afraid to admit that he doesn't know everything. He's not afraid to admit that others are guitar gods in his own right - whether or not they're big names. And in my opinion that keeps his skills open and growing - he's not at all stagnant or self-absorbed, and that shows in his music.

It's a philosophical difference, but like all of them it has real effects. Do you collaborate, jam, grow and share power? Or do you horde the illusion of power, and in so doing create a closed system that can't grow, and where growth itself becomes a threat? And what effect does each approach have?

Stopping this rant while I'm only a little behind,
Katrina

susannah said:

Their history is of no relevence to the question. They are not joined by the hip. The question was about what INDIVIDUAL, so if you can't seperate Wendy from Lisa or vice versa, then you're not answering the question.



As far as threats, Prince has had several in the band. All of his bass players have been multi-instrumentalists and in my opinion better overall musicians (with the exception of Rhonda; I don't know her material). I'm not gonna speak on the Sonny situation. Those that know, KNOW.
Prince is careful to hire musicians that are better than he is on their respective instruments and he hires cats that will take up his slack on instruments he doesn't play (horns, sax, etc.) He's really good about NOT hiring Andre Cymone types. He plans to stay the king of his castle. At this point, it doesn't even matter.
[Edited 8/19/05 12:57pm]

I know first hand that Andre did. To keep from choking P's little ass, Andre just decided to bounce. The other cat without question was Jessie. I've gone into this in depth in the past. Ya'll just don't know about all the shit that went down between P and Jessie. It was different between Andre and P cuz Andre's mom helped P out bigtime. So, the shit P pulled on Andre was deeper. But on a professional level, it got to the point where Jessie was looking to kick Prince's ass.

BlaqueKnight said:

yes and i got criticized for liking wendy over lisa not like the both of them, equally as people just can't separate them and they act like they are sinese twins. even people can able to separate wendy and susannah and they are identical and why people can't do the same for wendy and lisa puzzles me.
[Edited 8/19/05 14:55pm]

tookielv said:

that is a total blatant LIE!!

i did not criticize you...go back and read the thread...i was asking for clarification...once you voiced your opinion i shared my views on why *i* feel they are equally important to each other's musical creativity. your views were never....never...criticized..

and the scenerio of that thread was totally different then the question posed *here*.



now for my answer: andre

Definetly jesse on Guitar

sosgemini said:

did i said it was you! did you see me mention your name in my previous post? NO YOU reread my previous post and see if I mention you and I didn't did I?! NO because you seemed like one of the most open-minded, tolerant, and liberal orgers so why in the hell that i referred to you? and i remember the other thread but I forgot the title oh WELL but I didn't even think of you when i wrote my previous post!

you and some others on here aren't the only one who knows i am a bigger wendy fan! i hangs with a group of like-minded co-workers at my job and most are prince fans like me and they don't like any music after 90s. Anyway whenever we talked about prince and his associates and whenever we talked about wendy and lisa, i stated simply I am a bigger Wendy fan and just a few days ago a couple of those guys (who like Prince the Purple rain era the best) they ones CRITICIZED me said that I should like lisa equally to Wendy because of their mostly entity musical career and "doesn't look right" of referred to them separately. And I tell them that Lisa is a good keyboardist and songwriter and she is a beautiful but Wendy is the one who I feel more connected to musically and personality. ANd they called me lesbian when I said that Lisa is beautiful and she aging pretty well and i refuse to type what they say after I denied being a lesbian .

so why are u trippin? i was so damn shock of the nasty tone of your last message. i thought we were sort of cool? if you going to be like that then I don't know if I ever want to meet you if they going to have a Family Jamm like event etc or even bother to respond to your posts. you need to be more careful of who are u getting mad at and accusing someone lying and instead all you have to do is to ask me to clarified my post if was too vague for you before jumping the gun like you have when you want to know why i like wendy better than lisa or something like that. you know how suck most of our grammer is on here.



ANYWAYS i already had a suck day and i better finished this post before i about to go off big time and saying something regretful.

back to the topic I think that morris day because of his energic and also good onstage performance. And not the mention he was a good yet funny frontman for the time. I wished that Morris have wrote his own material early on the time albums because i felt that he would shine more as an artist if weren't for prince's controlling ways. But overall I glad that he left the time around Purple Rain and he a very good as a solo artist too.
[Edited 8/19/05 19:40pm]

tookielv said:

well,

1) its really hard to read your posts....

2) your responce was similiar in both that thread and this one...i made an assumption which was wrong....

3) i take the "lie" statement back...hopefully you can understand how easy it was for me to mis-interprete your comments..

forget the post was ever made..

toodles!!

tookielv said:

jeez - unclench.

My answer would be Andre as he seemed to surround himself with mostly yes men post fame.

Andre Cymone -- listen to "Still a Thrill" -- and Jesse Johnson. They were the cats who came to mind, when I read this thread's title.

To this day, both of those dudes could burn P in funk and chops. Twice!

sosgemini said:

I am going to be clear as possible I hope to avoid another you know what.

well i checked out that thread that you was referring (got a suck memory) to and it was that revolution surivior thing and I going summarize a bit. I don't recalled accusing you being intolerant of me favoring Wendy if you think that I did well I didn't meant to come out that way. Also on that thread the only complaint I said to you was that you wasn't so objective in regards that you didn't say anything to the Lisa fans of voting off Wendy first (it was the first round of that thread) and yes couple of them had but yet you asked me for more clarification when I done the same of Lisa, that's all. And I wished that you should have on this thread too asked me to be more specific earlier on.But you NEVER told me that I shouldn't voted lisa off first or that I should like Lisa equally as Wendy (my co-workers had). You respect my choice and you did disagreed but still you respect it because you realized it okay to be subjective, among other points. And also you mention that wendy and lisa have have different music styles yet that ables to combine a creative force and i even agreed that after working together for nearly 25 years the it be hard for them to just go on their separate ways for good. So has it refreshen your memory now?

I hope that i am more define now on this reply, I don't know what else to tell you.

if you want to forget the post made it should be delete and also delete mines (my bitchy one is that what I referring too.)

simm0061 said:

I am okay now.
[Edited 8/19/05 22:09pm]

tookielv said:

i dont moderate this forum..cant delete anything here.....but i can apologize....apologies.

blackguitaristz said:

dayummmmm.

definitely Andre.

How come Andre and Jesse never sued Prince?

CreamyThighs said:

Andre did

so did sonny...and levi.

BlaqueKnight said:

He did? When, and what happened with that? KNow any details?